range orderʼ is a metaphor for the linking between nodes in any system or network. However, the entanglement of two distant elements in a quantum system, like the linking of two spatially separated nodes in a network, does not yet give us complexity. For that we need to “move beyond structure and topology and start focusing on the dynamics that take place along those links” [13].
)[14]. When we combine two systems capable of complex behavior, the result is a new system: an entangled system. Though entanglement is normally used to describe quantum systems, it is also apt metaphor for our encounters with interactive art: the entanglement of two systemshuman and non-human- creates a third system. Entanglement is a metaphor for the interdependence of the components of any system.
The entanglement of two or more sub-systems produces the non-linear behavior we associate with complex systems. Entanglement as a “throughput” function results in a geometric expansion in the state space that the quantum system can explore. The capacity for the nonlinear exploration of possible outcomes is, another layer in the connective tissue between quantum systems, complex systems, and interactive art.
From the macroscopic perspective of classical physics, you and the chair you are sitting on are distinct objects separated in space. However, from quantum perspective, you and the chair are two interacting systems of energy. From the quantum perspective, [3] your wave functions are entangled and impossible to separate. From the quantum perspective, you and the chair are a single complex system. Again it all boils down to a matter of perspective: macro or micro, classical or quantum. If we cannot Norbert Weiner achieve, as cyberneticist says: “a sufficiently loose coupling with the phenomena we are studying,” [15] then we must consider ourselves as part of that phenomena—that system.
[There is a] dramatic discrepancy between the number of states available to a quantum system and the number of states available to its classical counterpart. Crudely speaking, the classical counterpart can occupy any one of a complete set of orthogonal quantum states, whereas the quantum system can occupy not only the orthogonal states, but also any linear superposition of the orthogonal states. (Carlton Caves 14