Monument to Chomp (Doggie’s Quantum Stick), 2003

Wood and steel

45” x 2” x 2” (114 cm x 5 cm x 5 cm)

In 2003, shortly after switching careers from physics to art, I made an unexpected connection between quantum physics and sculpture for the first time while building a fence. Our dog grabbed one of the posts and started biting it vigorously. When the dog had chewed up the stick so far that it was about to break I took it back from him. Later I lacquered it and made a steel stand for it. Our dog had made the accurately planed lumber fuzzy by chewing up the surface. This reminded me of the breakdown of the concept of precise object boundaries when going from classical physics to quantum physics. Moreover, the many irregular and individually unaimed bites had narrowed the stick quite regularly around the middle. Because the dog needed to balance the stick in his snout horizontally, the likelihood that his teeth would hit the wood was highest around the middle of the stick. This recalls the build-up of a well defined and regular density distribution out of many individually stochastic events, as frequently seen in quantum physics experiments.