At Bengaluru exhibition, an attempt to make the quantum seem human

If you enter Science Gallery Bengaluru one of these weekends, you should find Mr. Tomkins to your right. At first glance, he might appear asleep — or dead. But look at him from a different angle, and you might catch him in the middle of a prance.

‘Mr. Tomkins meets Schrödinger’ is one of the 34 exhibits at the Gallery’s latest programme, simply called ‘QUANTUM’.

Set up by The Hashtag# Collective, comprising artists Parvathi Nayar, Saira Biju, Abin Chaudhuri, Biju Kuriakose, and Sindhura V.S., ‘Mr. Tomkins’ depicts — somewhat literally — Erwin Schrödinger’s famous 1935 thought experiment called Schrödinger’s cat. The Austrian scientist came up with the thought experiment to contemplate a quantum phenomenon called superposition, where a physical system can exist in a combination of multiple possible states at the same time.