LAS Art Foundation Pushes Quantum Art Forward in a New Venice Commission

There are now many organizations operating at the fertile intersection of art, technology and science, and even museums are catching up, showcasing more experimental new media artists fluidly engaging across disciplines and between physical and digital realms. LAS Art Foundation was not only among the earliest to define this space, but it remains one of the most impactful. Established in 2019, LAS Art Foundation’s mission has been to commission and produce ambitious, cross-disciplinary projects at the intersection of contemporary art, science and emerging technology, including A.I. and quantum computing.

Over the past few years, it has commissioned some of the most ambitious and forward-looking projects at this crossroads, collaborating with artists such as Pierre Huyghe, Laure Prouvost and Refik Anadol, among others, on works that now circulate through leading institutions worldwide.

“From the outset, we wanted to create a foundation centered on the future. We decided to work at the intersection of art, technology and science through leading artists of our time, and connecting them with leading minds from technology and science, to merge these worlds,” LAS Foundation co-founder Dr. Bettina Kames tells Observer.

In each project, LAS brings artists together with researchers, scientists, A.I. and machine-learning labs, universities and research institutions to enable in-depth artistic research, often through collaborations, while positioning artistic practice as a critical framework for exploring how emerging technologies are reshaping perception, identity and knowledge systems in real time.

“I often describe my role as translating between these worlds and their different languages,” she adds. Originally trained as an art historian, Kames developed her engagement with science and technology through sustained immersion—attending conferences, building relationships and facilitating collaboration. The quantum sensing program they launched last year, for example, is the result of extensive travel, conversations with scientists and deep engagement with those fields. “Before our exhibition with Laurie Anderson and collaborations involving figures like Hartmut Neven, it took years to build the necessary network and dialogue,” she recounts. “While I come from the art world, from early on in this project I embraced scientific and technological developments and worked to bring these together.”

These exchanges, she says, foster new modes of thinking. While recent developments in both contemporary art and technology make clear that artists are increasingly interested in collaborating with science, a growing number of scientists are recognizing that exposure to artistic perspectives can expand their research frameworks.

“Scientific breakthroughs often happen when you do something completely different. Many scientists are open to new forms of dialogue and thinking,” Kames acknowledges, recounting how, in the context of a symposium involving researchers from ETH Zurich, some participants initially struggled to understand the relevance of artistic input. Through sustained interaction, however, they began to recognize that exposure to different modes of thinking could expand their own approaches and introduce new viewpoints into their work. To Kames, artists are catalysts for innovation, capable of encouraging scientists and engineers to move beyond established frameworks.

Conversely, artists act as key mediators, translating complex scientific ideas into more accessible, emotional experiences. “Artists are not only agents of innovation but also agents of social change. Art can build a bridge to society, especially when dealing with complex or intimidating topics like A.I. or quantum physics,” she says, noting that their “Phantom” exhibition in collaboration with Google attracted 55,000 visitors in a very short period, along with nearly half a billion additional interactions online. “That shows the power of art. An exhibition can be a gateway into a world people might otherwise never explore.”

This dual role is central to LAS’s mission of engaging broader audiences with complex and timely topics such as A.I. and quantum physics, which are already reshaping the way we interact with and understand reality. For this reason, LAS’s exhibitions are often immersive and multisensory, deliberately designed to lower barriers to entry, allowing visitors to engage without prior knowledge while still opening pathways into highly technical domains. “Our exhibitions are intentionally immersive—you can experience them with all your senses. You don’t need prior knowledge to engage with them,” she says, explaining that this approach is fundamentally about accessibility. LAS also offers publications, symposia and deeper forms of discourse to further articulate the complex topics audiences first encounter in these exhibitions.

Importantly, while LAS does not have a permanent location or collection, the life of these projects extends far beyond their initial presentation, as they typically circulate internationally to multiple institutions, often through partnerships or co-commissioning arrangements. Over time, LAS has built a reputation that leads museums and organizations to actively seek out these collaborations. In addition to physical touring, some works continue to exist in digital or virtual forms, adding another layer of complexity and accessibility to a multilevel experience, whether onsite or online.

LAS’s most recent project with Laure Prouvost premiered in Berlin, was shown at OGR in Turin, and is heading to the Grand Palais in Paris in June, with discussions underway with American institutions. Conceived in collaboration with Tobias Rees and Hartmut Neven, founder of Google Quantum A.I., and developed over two years of research, Laure Prouvost’s multisensory installation “WE FELT A STAR DYING” represents a pioneering exploration of the creative possibilities of quantum computing, translated into a multisensory experience of images, sounds and scents through the poetic and sentimental mythopoiesis of the artist’s practice.

Yet the fact that all these commissions are deeply tied to technologies often subject to rapid obsolescence naturally raises conservation challenges. Working with cutting-edge technologies—whether A.I. systems, quantum models or game engines—means dealing with tools that evolve rapidly and maintaining these works requires continuous technical updates and dedicated resources. For example, LAS Art Foundation developed the first quantum diffusion model for moving images through its “Sensing Quantum” program, which was recognized by the S+T+ARTS Grand Prize: Innovation Collaboration from the European Commission in 2025. “Maintaining and updating something like that is a project in itself,” Kames observes. “It requires continuous research and resources.”

The program originated from a work commissioned by Pierre Huyghe, Liminals (2026), which was featured in the artist’s expansive show at Punta della Dogana and will next appear in his major survey at the Fondation Beyeler, opening at the end of May. Fluidly blending film, sound, vibration and light, and merging different levels of reality and experience, Huyghe delves into the essential uncertainty at the heart of existence. Developed through conversations with quantum physicist Tommaso Calarco, philosopher Tobias Rees and researchers at Forschungszentrum Jülich, the work transforms the outputs of quantum properties into sensory experiences that bring this radically alternative and largely untamable structure of reality closer to human understanding.

While LAS does not operate as a collecting organization, it typically retains one edition of commissioned works to exhibit and circulate. Its nomadic structure, without a permanent building, allows it to prioritize research, development and production over infrastructure. Financially, LAS operates as a nonprofit through a hybrid model combining foundational support with project-based partnerships across sectors. The collaborations it has developed with organizations such as Google, the Max Planck Institute and companies like Anthropic have proven critical, both for funding and for access to advanced technologies. “Collaborations with such organizations and academic institutions allow us to create projects at a much higher level,” Kames acknowledges.

An example is the project LAS is presenting in Venice in collaboration with the Helsinki-based organization Amos Rex, a co-commission by Minahasan artist and researcher Natasha Tontey. Titled The Phantom Combatants, the work brings together Indigenous ritual, playful B-movie aesthetics and experimental storytelling in an expansive multisensory and multimedia installation unfolding across the 16th-century façade and interiors of the Ateneo Veneto.

Through multi-channel video, custom spatial sound, lighting and scenography, the project reimagines the overlooked story of Len Karamoy, a female insurgent from Cold War-era Indonesia, as a shapeshifting trickster. “Through this project, I try to listen to the quieter tones of history… At the same time, this minor knowledge also opens up the possibility of developing a technological future rooted in other perspectives,” the artist explains.

Tontey adopts the campy language of B-movies, blending DIY and CGI effects with experimental imaging technologies—including quantum ghost imaging, which uses photons to produce images, as well as LiDAR, photogrammetry and thermal cameras. The work reveals how territories and bodies are measured, mapped and militarized, while creatively deploying these same technologies to revisit the past and reactivate ancestral knowledge through alternative future perspectives. Marking the third installment in Tontey’s Macho Mystic Meltdown series (2025-26), The Phantom Combatants centers on feminist and Indigenous perspectives in rethinking resistance through a more imaginative, almost mystical use of technologies otherwise employed for surveillance and control.

Looking ahead, Kames indicates that LAS intends to continue deepening its engagement with emerging technologies, particularly in areas such as quantum research and A.I. She points to what she describes as “physical A.I.”—the intersection of artificial intelligence with robotics and material systems—as a particularly important next frontier. At the same time, she anticipates further exploration of space-related themes, though she characterizes this as still preliminary given the breadth and complexity of the field.

Artists, she argues, are especially well positioned to engage with seemingly ungraspable domains such as quantum science, precisely because they are not bound by conventional approaches. “Quantum physics requires a completely different way of thinking. Our perception is based on a Newtonian understanding of the world, so shifting to quantum thinking takes time,” she says. “Artists can help us access that shift. They approach things intuitively and can open new ways of understanding.” In many cases, she adds, the most compelling outcomes emerge not from obvious alignments between medium and technology, but from unexpected pairings that allow entirely new forms of understanding to surface.

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