TECHNĒ 2.0
Art + Interpretability in the age of quantum computing
TECHNĒ 2.0 — Art + Interpretability in the Age of Quantum Computing transformed Hyde Park Labs into a live experiment in how we make sense of increasingly opaque technical systems. Across keynotes, conversations, and installations, quantum physicists, artists, curators, and technologists treated “interpretability” as both a design challenge and a civic obligation—asking how architectures of code, data, and qubits can be translated into forms that institutions and publics can actually live with.
In closing, the symposium returned to entropy—not as chaos, but as a measure of possibility—proposing TECHNĒ itself as an experiment in “accelerating” productive disorder so that new languages, frameworks, and shared intelligibilities can emerge.
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hyde park labs
october 29, 2025
1:00–5:30 pm Symposium
5:30–7:30 pm Reception
speakers
speakers
libby heaney, Artist & quantum physicist
vanja malloy, dana feitler director, smart museum of art
kevin flavin, director of design & experience, portal innovations
David awschalom, founding director of the illinois quantum computing and microelectronic park
spencer topel, Chief technology officer, moth quantum
THemes INDEX ▼
01 Interpretability
How quantum and AI systems become understandable—or remain opaque—to artists, institutions, and publics, and what is at stake in that legibility.
02 entropy & possibility
Entropy reframed from “disorder” to a measure of possibility, positioning TECHNĒ as a designed space of productive instability where new configurations of knowledge can emerge.
03 signal, noise, & meaning
Art and information science as parallel practices negotiating the boundary between signal and noise, and designing forms that can carry meaning through technical complexity.
04 curatorial architectures
The curator as architect of relationships and interpretive environments, building spaces where human and machine intelligences encounter one another and generate understanding.
05 cultural entanglement
Borrowing from quantum entanglement to describe cross-disciplinary resonance—artists, scientists, theorists, and practitioners becoming linked in a shared state of possibility.
05 collective intelligibility
TECHNĒ framed as an ongoing experiment in collective intelligibility: a civic practice of interpreting complex technologies together rather than outsourcing understanding to experts alone.