Libby Heaney

Libby Heaney is a British artist and lecturer at the Royal College of Art. She works on the impact of future technologies and is a resident of Somerset House Studios. Her work has been featured in the Victoria and Albert Museum, Tate Modern and the Science Gallery.

Heaney is from Tamworth, Staffordshire. She joined the Royal Air Force Air Cadets at the age of 13 and was intent on becoming a pilot. She was awarded a Flying Scholarship at the age of 17, and has flown by herself in a Cessna. Heaney completed A-Levels in Art, Physics, Maths and German. She studied physics at Imperial College Londongraduating in 2005 with first class honours. She spent a year in Freiberg at the Albert Ludwig University, modelling the decoherence of trapped ions. She spent time using physics in an industrial setting, modelling flow systems for a tidal power spin-out company. Heaney was inspired by her lectures on quantum mechanics to pursue postgraduate study, moving to the University of Leeds to work on quantum information with Vlatko Vedral. She completed her PhD thesis on mode entanglement in ultra-cold atomic gases, working at the National University of Singapore. She worked for the Ogden Trust as teaching fellow between 2006 and 2007, working with local schools to communicate the excitement of physics research. Heaney was awarded the 2008 Institute of Physics Very Early Career Woman in Physics Award (now Jocelyn Bell Burnell Medal and Prize).

Heaney was made an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council postdoctoral fellow at the University of Oxford to pursue her own research on ultra-cold gases within Dieter Jaksch's research group. She studied Bell inequalities for systems restricted by the particle number superselection rule and mode-entanglement in relation to quantum communication. In 2011 she joined the National University of Singapore, where she worked for two years in theoretical quantum physics.

In 2013 Heaney returned to the UK and completed a master's degree at the University of the Arts London. She studied arts and science at Central Saint Martins and graduated in 2015. Heaney has since been employed as a lecturer at the Royal College of Art, teaching Information Experience Design. Her graduate work was featured in the Affordable Art Fair in 2015. She exhibited digital prints of computer codes and was selected as one of the top artists to look out for by Christie's. She explored the links between quantum information, quantum physics, linguistics, digital art and design. Her artwork was featured in the 2016 Tate Modern Internet Yami-ichi, an exhibition of internet culture at Tate Modern. She created a personalised Tarot service that offered advice from Match.com. Her work Sensory Apparatus, a collaborative project was on show in Valletta in 2016. The show was inspired by panopticism and the Quantum Zeno effect. She is an artist in residence at Somerset House.

Tinderbot

In 2016 she created a Tinderbot, which presented Tinder conversations between AI bots programmed using Lady Chatterley's Lover. The Tinderbot was covered by BBC News, TheJournal.ie and the Irish Examiner and was exhibited at The Lowry in 2018. She has collaborated with the University of Bristol Centre for Quantum Photonics.

Quantum Breathing

Heaney used virtual reality in Quantum Breathing, an insight into quantum mechanics that integrated computer games and art. She collaborated with physicists at the Aarhus University and included the narratives of Haruki Murakami. The creation was exhibited in the Non-space Gallery in Denmark as part of the Aarhus 2017 EU capital of culture celebrations.

Britbot

In 2017 Heaney was commissioned by Sky Arts and the Barbican Centre to design the Britbot, an internet bot built using artificial intelligence and the citizenship book Life in the UK: a guide for new residents. The book, a manual for the citizenship test, has been described by Heaney as being "largely a white male privileged version of British history and culture". The bot created a test for the public, learnt from their responses and assesses how British they are. She was awarded an Arts Council England grant to widen participation of the Britbot to social media. She ran a workshop on Quantum Britishness at the Goethe-Institut.

Heaney's artwork was featured in Tabitha Goldstaub's festival of Artificial intelligence CogX. Heaney has exhibited her chatterbots at the Victoria and Albert Museum. She has created quantum physics inspired artwork for Science Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Awards and honours

Her awards include

• 2018 - Arts Council England, National Lottery Project Grant
• 2018 - HeK Basel Net Based Art Award (shortlisted for Tinderbot)
• 2017 - Sky Arts 50
• 2016 - LIFEBOAT programme award
• 2015 - University of the Arts London Picton Art Prize (shortlisted)
• 2015 - Helen Scott Lidgett Award (shortlisted)
• 2014 - Ideas Tap Innovators Award