Since 2017, the Yale Quantum Institute (YQI) Artist-in-Residence (AiR) program has welcomed artists for year-long residencies in our laboratories. During their time with us, these artists create collaborative quantum science-based artwork, participate in a series of public talks to explain both their work and the science behind it, and bridge the gap between the humanities and the sciences. This program received an overwhelmingly positive reception by YQI students and faculty members, as well as by the general public who took part in our projects and attended the related events, with over 6,000 people attended our events since its creation. This year, YQI continues its commitment to the intersection of art and science by welcoming Pioneer of interactive cinema and technologist Toni Dove as our 7th AiR for the 2026–2027 academic year.
Considered a pioneer of interactive cinema, New York-based artist Toni Dove is an instrument builder. She creates human-operated machines that tell stories using embodied interface such as motion sensing or skeletal tracking to manipulate media in real time. Her genre mashing narratives examine the impact of technological change on the world we live in as it evolves around us and she asks how these changes alter how we invent ourselves. Her disruptive practice has produced over many years projects that blur the boundaries between performance and installation and fuse film, games, literature, experimental theater, robotics and artificial intelligence-based interaction to create immersive experience.
Dove’s interest in Quantum Mechanics reaches back to her earliest media project Fugitive Concepts, 1989, a libretto of fragments based on Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. It was a book, an installation and a slide movie comprised entirely of text and image quotations and was inspired by Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project.
Toni Dove showcased her artistic practice during a public talk at YQI on November 12, 2024, held on-going conversations with many of our scientists during campus visits, and recently presented ‘Sunjammer 6 – A Tale Blown by a Solar Breeze’ at Yale on January 2026 with the Yale Schwarzman Center, Yale Center for Collaborative Arts and Media, and YQI.
Additional public events will be hosted at YQI to showcase the work that Toni and the YQI members will create during the residency. To be informed of the upcoming events, consider subscribing to the YQI public events newsletter or check our calendar. To learn more about our artist-in-residence program or our previous artists, visit art.quantuminstitute.yale.edu.