top of page
essays
The Observer Effect: Momentary Momentum
in-between instants
Human behavior is fluent, all motions and gestures liquid. To the observer it unfolds like a movie – a torrent of pictures streaming so fast that the transitions are seamless to our eye. For me, the camera’s skill to freeze the momentary momentum in-between scenes is nothing short of miraculous and reminds me of a quirky phenomenon in the quantum realm: the observer effect. In reality (as in THE reality, the one far below the surface and way over our head), the tiny particles we’re all made of behave like waves, fluid in their ambiguous whereabouts and characteristics so long as nobody is watching. Limited to probability functions, our knowledge of their position and state is vague, until we observe them. Only then they behave like particles and their location and character can be determined. Of course, being that I'm not a physicist, observing humans in-between states and moments is more interesting to me. Still, the bottemest line remains: as an observer, you have an effect.
explore more
bottom of page