In June 2025, Jack Schnepf developed and became the first participant in the Artist-in-Residence program at QCORE, Montana State University's quantum computing research initiative. What began as an exploration of how art can broaden public understanding of quantum mechanics has grown into the groundwork for a cross-institutional partnership, one that examines how the interaction of art and science can create impact greater than the sum of its parts, and how the concepts proposed by quantum mechanics can reshape how we perceive and engage with each other, social systems, and the world around us.

Over the past year, this residency has engaged with diplomats, CEOs, educators, students of all ages, investors, federal researchers, and the broader public, opening conversations about how we relate to and are shaped by the ideas and technologies we are developing together.

The first piece created as part of this residency, The Shape of Uncertainty is a large-scale mixed media work using the imagery of horses and the American West to illustrate quantum concepts including superposition, entanglement, and uncertainty. From a distance the painting resolves into an abstract wave of light and dark. As a viewer moves closer, individual horses begin to emerge from that wave, the act of observation itself collapsing the abstract into the concrete. Through contributing chalk marks to the surface, viewers become entangled with everyone who has touched the piece before them, individual acts of participation accumulating over time into emergent patterns no single person could have created alone.

The second piece, Into the Storm, continues this exploration. Bison are unique in that when a storm approaches, they run directly into it, moving through faster than any creature that runs away. Built on the actual shipping panel of a BlueFors dilution refrigerator, the piece uses this intelligence as a metaphor for the quantum industry today, leaning into an uncertain frontier and bringing the next generation with it. An albino calf, considered sacred across many Native American traditions as a sign of hope and new beginnings, runs confidently alongside the herd. The mountains appear realistic from a distance but up close reveal equations and contributions from those building these technologies. The back of the bison carries the textural marks of everyone who has engaged with the work, the whole of the quantum community running into the storm together. At the heart of the bison sits a ruby crystal provided by Teledyne Flyr, the same material used to build the world's first laser in 1960, an invention that brought photonics to Bozeman and ultimately gave rise to the quantum research happening here today.

From this residency:
Two gallery exhibitions
One museum exhibition
A published research report
A poster session
The Art + Science Kickoff, co-sponsored by QCORE and the MSU Office of Research and Economic Development