Why Google transformed a quantum computing lab into an artistic oasis

Transcript

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Amna Nawaz: Advanced technology labs are not places you’re likely to find much creative artistic expression, let alone color. But a scientist and an artist have joined forces to help inspire the development of the next generation of computing at Google’s Quantum A.I. lab.

Special correspondent Mike Cerre reports from California for our arts and culture series, Canvas.

Mike Cerre: Your typical sterile technology office park building, until a scientist and an artist collaborated to turn this advanced technology lab for building the next generation of computing into an art museum to help inspire the innovation.

Forest Stearns, Artist in Residence: We have created a space where there is no edge between the hardware, the art, the architecture, the scientist and nature itself through the windows.

Mike Cerre: Forest Stearns, a Google artist in residence and Erik Lucero, the Google engineer charged with developing its first quantum A.I. computer, have a mutual fascination with art and science.

Erik Lucero, Director, Google Quantum A.I. Lab: I think a lot of the work that I have done throughout my career has been to try to capture what I think are beautiful things that we make in electrical engineering and in physics.

Mike Cerre: An accomplished photographer as well as a scientist, Lucero offered Stearns and artist in residency at Google Quantum A.I. after seeing Stearns’ Draweverywhere work imprinted on satellites in space.

Forest Stearns: Having figured out how to make the largest art exhibit in space, put the light bulb of let’s put art on technological things to amplify humanity.

So you asked him, what is quantum computing?

Forest Stearns: I asked Erik, what is quantum computing? And instead of sending me a white paper, he sent me his gorgeous portfolio of photographs of the quantum computers.

Mike Cerre: Since this next generation of computing relies more on the nature of physics than mathematical computation, like existing computers, quantum computing’s connection with nature became the unifying theme for the art everywhere, from the lobby sculptures of some of the hardware and 3-D installations in the company’s cafe to wrapping the quantum computers themselves in art.

Forest Stearns: The quantum computer to me looked like a beer keg.

(Laughter)

Erik Lucero: We started with Yosemite. So it’s lovely to experience flat, and then it’s a completely different experience when you see it adorning a quantum computer. I feel like that was when — I don’t know, I get chills thinking about having all these machines kind of like hugged by this art.

Mike Cerre: Chill is the operative term here, since the chandelier-like guts of the quantum computer need to be kept running at more than 400 degrees below zero inside these refrigerated containers called cryostats.

Forest Stearns: We have 16 artists internationally. Some of them are traditional oil painters. Some of them are digital artists. We have craftsmen that work in metal and we have sculptors that work in 3-D.

Ravis Henry, Park Ranger, Canyon de Chelly National Monument: My name is Ravis Henry. I’m a park ranger at Canyon de Chelly National Monument.

Mike Cerre: Park ranger Ravis Henry is also an accomplished Navajo artist and jewelry maker. Stearns and Lucero discovered him and his work while in the Southwest exploring national parks for the art project’s creative exchange.

Forest Stearns: He does his work in metal craft. It is silver and copper. And we take this piece and it goes from its local materials all the way to a quantum cryostat wrapped around within the scientific endeavor.

Erik Lucero: I actually had the opportunity to paint this mural that you see behind us. I basically finished my day working in the lab, change into my paint clothes and grab a paintbrush with Forest and finish the mural.

Forest Stearns: Art is very experiential, and we are creating an experience in here where people have inspiration to show up and be great.

JACOB AGUILAR, Google Technician: I mean, everything with vibrant color in here really just helps, I think, express our creative side in here, and it really just keeps the lab in a creative thinking space, just because, when stuff is just too technical, and it’s just basic black and white, it really closes off your mind.

Mike Cerre: Would you hang the Galapagos in your living room?

William Giang, Google Technician: Yes, I definitely…

(Crosstalk)

William Giang: … over the kitchen table. Yes, we asked for — if we could actually have one and any of the — or a copy of it.

Erik Lucero: It’s important to note that there’s real humans that are working on these projects, and we care deeply about the places that we live, where we have come from and the planet that we live on. And I believe these research tools are what are going to help us actually stay here and protect our Earth.

Mike Cerre: The intersection of art and technology is as old and rich as Leonardo da Vinci and as American as the 19th century painter Samuel Morse. In addition to his anatomy portraits, he developed the first telegraph and Morse code. His first electronic message, “What hath God wrought?”

Sometimes, there’s a perception of a love-hate relation between art, science and technology. Do you think that’s misinterpreted?

Erik Lucero: I would challenge that it exists.

Mike Cerre: In what way?

Erik Lucero: I see so much about the way that those things to me are one and the same. When you have the opportunity to do great science, there’s just an opportunity of looking at it with a particular perspective that can make it look artistic.

Forest Stearns: I am celebrating the fact that quantum physics is hard and it’s way out here. And when something is way out here, it takes art to bring it back to right here.

Mike Cerre: For the “PBS NewsHour,” I’m Mike Cerre in Goleta, California.