Work > Box Gallery

Tom Burtonwood
Tom Burtonwood
March 2018

​"Schrödinger's cat isn't dead after all" is a tongue in cheek project to explore states of possible simultaneity. A cardboard box is placed in the space and a url is distributed to attendees. By accessing the url one might look inside the box and observe whether or not Schrödinger's cat is present.

The actual "Schrödinger's cat" is a thought experiment whereby a cat in a sealed box can be both dead and alive at the same time. In this paradox a cat is locked in a steel box with a geiger counter, a radioactive substance and a flask of poison. Radioactive decay recorded by the geiger counter would trigger a mechanism to smash the flask, releasing the poison and killing the cat.

Schrödinger coined the term Verschränkung (entanglement) whilst developing the paradox. Entanglement describes a physical phenomenon whereby the quantum state of each pairs or groups of particles cannot be described independently from the state of the others.

By observing the cat in the box are we entangled with it?

Tom Burtonwood (b. United Kingdom) is a Chicago-based interdisciplinary artist, curator and educator. He/they are engaged in research probing thresholds between the virtual and the real, between image and object. Recent projects are motivated by an investigation of surface, texture and representation through sculpture, installation and time based media. Recent venues presenting Burtonwood's work include Lawrence and Clark, Chicago; CICA Museum Gyeonggi-do, Korea, DEMO Project, Springfield, IL; Terrain Biennial 2017, Oak Park, IL; Cedarhurst Center for the Arts, Mount Vernon, IL; Flux Factory, NY, NY; The Compound Gallery, Oakland, CA; The University of Illinois Springfield, Springfield, IL; Bruce High Quality Foundation University, NY, NY; Firecat Projects, Chicago; The Printing Museum, Houston, TX; Terrain Biennial, Oak Park, IL; Fuseworks, Brooklyn, NY; Front Room Gallery Brooklyn, NY; New Capital, Chicago, IL; The Chicago Cultural Center, Chicago, IL; and Printed Matter, NY, NY.

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