Juneteenth | Degrees of Freedom

June 15, 2024

By invitation, Hoopti Laboratories participated in the design of a conceptual art installation for Juneteenth Celebration at the George Washington Carver Institute in Phoenix, Arizona. The installation titled, Degrees of Freedom, invited attendees to reflect on the notions of freedom that inspired the celebration. By integrating concepts of freedom from particle physics with cultural modalities in contemporary African immigration and African American culture, the collaborative team rendered a series of art pieces which served as premises for in-situ discussions about the freedoms and cultures of the mind, body, and soul. As well, the team collaborated with Nigerian Youth Collaborative, a local cultural organization, to design and deliver an interactive booth that invited festival goers into conversations about freedom. The key interactive element was a table-top wishing well into which over 40 attendees, as young as three years old and as old as 88, stood with their eyes closed envisioning a dream they held dear before gently tossing a copper penny (provided by the booth) into the still water of the well. A presentation accompanied the booth to provide visual representations of the quantum principles to the discourse of the community.

Key Questions: Can we measure freedom? How distant from pure freedom are we? How can we define freedom?