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At the Grand Palais, Laure Prouvost Translates Quantum Physics Into Something You Can Feel

Developed over three years in collaboration with philosopher Tobias Rees and Google Quantum A.I. founder Hartmut Neven, "Nous, frissons d'étoiles" uses kinetic sculpture, spatialized sound, video and scents to give form to the strange continuity between humans, nature and matter.

Art has always enhanced the imagination and our ability to visualize phenomena that remain beyond our sensory reach, but more recently, this ability of art to impact perception has been embraced by institutions such as MIT and CERN. These and other scientific organizations increasingly recognize artists’ ability to translate complex scientific ideas into more accessible experiences. That interdisciplinary thinking is at the root of LAS Foundation’s latest endeavor, which offers artists the opportunity to explore and engage with, on their own terms, the expertise science has so far developed in the realm of quantum physics.

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"Nous, frissons d’étoiles" Artist: Laure Prouvost Venue: The Grand Palais Address: 75008 Paris, France Through: July 26, 2026

As part of the program, French artist Laure Prouvost has taken over the Grand Palais in Paris, after premiering in Berlin and later being shown at OGR in Turin. Conceived in collaboration with Tobias Rees and Hartmut Neven, founder of Google Quantum A.I., and developed over two years of research, Laure Prouvost’s multisensory installation “WE FELT A STAR DYING,” here retitled “Nous, frissons d’étoiles” (transl: “We, star-swept shivers”), is a pioneering exploration of the artistic possibilities of quantum computing, translated into a multisensory experience of images, sounds and scents through the poetic, sentimental mythopoiesis of the artist’s practice.

The entire installation is an exercise in understanding the individual self as part of a symbiotic and symbolic ecosystem: the entanglement of entities, forces and energies that quantum physics already suggests. In the Grand Palais, Prouvost invites visitors on a journey into matter, from the micro to the macro realms, staging a series of seemingly random prompts, clues and allegories that encourage an understanding of reality as grounded in probability and entanglement rather than determinism.

“Quantum needs a conceptual and perceptual shift and a new language,” Prouvost asserted during the press preview. In a separate conversation with Observer, she elaborated further. The multisensory installation, which combines video, sculpture, sound, scent and light, is the result of three years of discussions with experts during which she constantly asked herself how she could even articulate this idea of quantum, and of quantum computing. “This Newtonian training that we have—this whole evolution of humanity—is suddenly turned upside down.”

Eventually, she realized that her work had already been dealing with it, without pointing to it directly or presenting it as the protagonist. Perhaps that’s why she is one of the first artists to engage with these seemingly unattainable truths about the very structure of the universe.

“It is this........

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