Function Collapse

A beam of light moves through a darkened room, methodically exploring its surfaces and corners. The projected images are 3D scans of this very space, captured at different moments in time. As the light traces its path, these multiple temporal states overlap with the physical architecture, creating a disorienting convergence where past recordings meet present reality.

This installation emerged from AATB’s 2022–23 residency at CERN, where the artists encountered the fundamental gap between measurement and reality that defines both particle physics and robotic perception. They explored the uncertain frontier where the map and territory diverge—the interface of measurement error and perceptual limitation. Function Collapse examines how machines build their understanding of space through accumulated observations. The superposition of scan states references the quantum wave function collapse, but applied to spatial cognition: when abstract data crystallizes into a singular interpretation of the world.

The work reveals the fragility inherent in machine vision. Each scan is imperfect, shaped by sensor limitations and the mechanical constraints AATB has long investigated—the flexure, play, and drift that prevent robots from achieving the mathematical perfection they’re programmed to follow. As these possible realities flicker across the actual space, Function Collapse shows perception not as objective truth but as an accumulation of uncertain measurements struggling to cohere.