New/No Lenses

Delft has long been revered for its optical innovations, which are highlighted by the 300-year celebration of Antoni van Leeuwenhoek and the monumental Vermeer exhibition at the Rijksmuseum. Currently at TU Delft, QuTech researchers are at the forefront of quantum optics and photonic nanotechnology. Based on nitrogen vacancies in synthetic diamond, QuTech is developing the optical hardware for the imminent quantum internet destined to redefine our digital lenses.

Societal gains in these arenas don’t rely entirely on new technology and innovation. More powerful is the matter of examining your lenses, finding alternative lenses, and removing outdated ones (the scientific traditions of observation, discovery, and criticality).

This programme and the resulting Lens(less)ness exhibition have emerged from many inquiries and experiments. The TU Delft Library asked: what can be revealed when you put together renowned artists (Evelina Domnitch and Dmitry Gelfand) with researchers from QuTech?

Through the lenses of QuTech physicists, you plunge into the quantum nanoworld. The imaging lens is removed entirely when the researchers collaborated with the artist duo to create photochemical lasergrams, cameraless exposures of microscopic landscapes illuminated with lasers. As the lasergrams depict, a focused laser beam can generate large projections that barely lose any sharpness, creating mind-boggling scales of magnification and unusual interactions between light and matter.

These light trails, beautiful as they may be, leave us with more perceptual expansion than answers. Society can see the limits of our eyes and our mental lenses, but can we ever remove them?