Original title: Quantum circuits, hypercubeharmonic, and remote networked improvisation: a case study
Maria Mannone, Magdalena Chudy, Ariane de Souza Stolfi, Sonia Wilkie +2 · September 2026
Musicians often look for new ways to spark creativity and compose together from different places. In this project, researchers built an artistic framework based on math and physics. They created the HyperCubeHarmonic, an interactive four-dimensional virtual instrument modeled on a Rubik’s cube. To play it, they used a custom quantum circuit—a system based on quantum physics—to make decisions about how the instrument should rotate. These automated rotations produced three specific sequences of musical chords. Finally, the international ensemble Female Laptop Orchestra used these three chord sequences to guide a live remote networked performance called 'Telematic City Jam - Glasgow'. This performance was created and broadcast for the Radiophrenia 2025 festival, showing how quantum systems can shape collaborative music.
Imagine you have a puzzle cube with colored faces, and you want to create a melody by twisting it. Normally you decide which twist to make. Now suppose you ask a coin flip for each twist—heads means twist left, tails means twist right. The coin's randomness creates a sequence of twists you would never have chosen yourself. In this paper, the quantum circuit is the coin, the HyperCubeHarmonic is the puzzle cube, and the twist sequences become the chords that guide the live performance.
This paper shows how abstract math and quantum computing can directly shape live music. It matters because it opens a new way for artists to compose and perform—using quantum randomness as a creative partner rather than just a tool for calculation. The result is music that could not have been written by a human alone.
The abstract does not evaluate the musical quality or audience reception. It does not compare the quantum-generated chords to human-composed or classically random sequences. The framework is demonstrated in a single performance, so generalizability to other musical contexts is not established.
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Quantum circuits, hypercubeharmonic, and remote networked improvisation: a case study — Maria Mannone, Magdalena Chudy, Ariane de Souza Stolfi et al. — The European Physical Journal Special Topics — doi:10.1140/epjs/s11734-026-02612-4
Abstract licence: CC BY
Explanation generated by Synthesis from the abstract — it is not the original paper.