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LAS Art Foundation Pushes Quantum Art Forward in a New Venice Commission

Natasha Tontey's "Phantom Combats," presented at the Ateneo Veneto, weaves together Indigenous ritual, B-movie aesthetics and experimental technologies to reactivate overlooked histories.

There are now many organizations operating at the fertile intersection of art, technology and science, and even museums are catching up, showcasing more experimental new media artists fluidly engaging across disciplines and between physical and digital realms. LAS Art Foundation was not only among the earliest to define this space, but it remains one of the most impactful. Established in 2019, LAS Art Foundation’s mission has been to commission and produce ambitious, cross-disciplinary projects at the intersection of contemporary art, science and emerging technology, including A.I. and quantum computing.

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Over the past few years, it has commissioned some of the most ambitious and forward-looking projects at this crossroads, collaborating with artists such as Pierre Huyghe, Laure Prouvost and Refik Anadol, among others, on works that now circulate through leading institutions worldwide.

“From the outset, we wanted to create a foundation centered on the future. We decided to work at the intersection of art, technology and science through leading artists of our time, and connecting them with leading minds from technology and science, to merge these worlds,” LAS Foundation co-founder Dr. Bettina Kames tells Observer.

In each project, LAS brings artists together with researchers, scientists, A.I. and machine-learning labs, universities and research institutions to enable in-depth artistic research, often through collaborations, while positioning artistic practice as a critical framework for exploring how emerging technologies are reshaping perception, identity and knowledge systems in real time.

“I often describe my role as translating between these worlds and their different languages,” she adds. Originally trained as an art historian, Kames developed her engagement with science and technology through sustained immersion—attending conferences, building relationships and facilitating collaboration. The quantum sensing program they launched last year, for example, is the result of extensive travel, conversations with scientists and deep engagement with those fields. “Before our exhibition with Laurie Anderson and collaborations involving figures like Hartmut Neven, it took years to build the necessary network and dialogue,” she recounts. “While I come from the art world, from early on in this project I embraced scientific and technological developments and worked to bring these together.”

These exchanges, she says, foster new modes of thinking. While recent developments in both........

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