QAT QUBE
Is Schrödinger’s Cat Dead or Alive?

An augmented reality project between analogue and digital
by Maria Korporal

How would we interpret the digital signs if we were locked in a bunker without electricity and internet? This paradox is the central question of my previous project Qorporal Qodes, which combines a virtual reality space with analogue flipbook animations. With this new installation Qat Qube, I continue working and exploring the theme, this time using augmented reality.

At the center of the installation is a floating cube, beckoning viewers to discover its secrets. Each of the cube’s sides is imprinted with a code that can be scanned with a smartphone, revealing a vast array of animated charcoal drawings that bring the cube to life. As viewers explore the cube’s interior, they will enter a world of surprise and uncertainty as Schrödinger’s cat teeters between life and death.

Inspired by Schrödinger’s famous thought experiment*, the Qat Qube allows viewers to peer inside the box where the cat resides. However, what they see is determined by a random principle, ensuring that uncertainty remains at the heart of the experience. To explore the combination of multiple conceivable states, viewers can touch a button labeled “reload for other quantum qats,” which reloads the augmented reality view with different animations, revealing other possible realities.

Qat Qube also includes two flipbooks that offer an analogue way to experience augmented reality. Each flipbook contains an animation sequence that can be viewed by flipping through the pages, as well as by scanning a QR code printed on the back of the book. The animations, based on charcoal drawings, depict both a dead and a living cat, encapsulating the duality that lies at the core of the Qat Qube experience.

title: QAT QUBE – Is Schrödinger’s Cat Dead or Alive?
technique: AR-installation composed of a cardboard cube 20x20x20 cm with printed codes, and two flipbooks 15×21 cm
© Maria Korporal 2023

Exhibitions:
• March 14-29, 2024: Rencontres Internationales Traverse, Toulouse, France.
• November 24, 2023 – January 12, 2024: Digitales Chaos, Moderne Erhabenheit, Green Hill Gallery – Kulturschöpfer e.V., Berlin.
• October 12-14, 2023: Videomedeja 27th International New Media Art Festival, KS Svilara, Novi Sad, Serbia.
• October 6-29, 2023: IRRITATION: a maximum aesthetic confusion, Galerie VBK Berlin.
• June 3 – July 16, 2023: Irritation – The Art of Getting Lost, Vebikus Kunsthalle Schaffhausen, Switzerland.

QAT QUBE in the exhibition “Rencontres Internationales Traverse”:

QAT QUBE in the exhibition “Digitales Chaos, Moderne Erhabenheit”:

QAT QUBE in the exhibition “IRRITATION – a maximum aesthetic confusion”:

QAT QUBE in the exhibition “Irritation – The Art of Getting Lost”:

* The thought experiment of Schrödinger’s cat imagines a cat and an unstable atom in a box. If the atom decays, a poison gas is released and the cat dies. The experiment shows that the cat is both alive and dead at the same time until someone opens the box to observe what happened. This is because when a system can be in two different states, it can also be in a combination of both. The experiment highlights the idea that until an observation is made, a quantum system can exist in a combination of multiple possible states, which may seem paradoxical and defy our classical intuition.