# i' - Multi-User Interaction Scenario, quantum state management

Canonical URL: https://jeanyoon.ch/oi/texts/i-multi-user-interaction-scenario-quantum-state-management
Type: essay / research note
Author: Jeanyoon Choi (최정윤)
Date: 2025-03-18

## Summary

This 2025 note by Jeanyoon Choi addresses what happens when many participants send conflicting commands to an installation with many screens. Rather than choosing a single winner or queue, each screen would move probabilistically among the states participants request, an idea framed through the metaphor of superposition and interference rather than as literal quantum computing. A Markov model might organise transitions. Outputs would be state-based rather than narrative, producing something like a busy railway platform where local events coexist without one storyline.

## 요약 (Korean)

최정윤의 메모로, 여러 관객이 여러 화면에 서로 다른 상태를 동시에 요청할 때 각 화면이 그 상태들 사이를 확률적으로 오가게 하는 다중 사용자 인터랙션을 중첩의 은유와 마르코프 모델로 구상한다.

## Concepts defined

- **Quantum state management**: A metaphorical model for multi-user installations in which each output channel oscillates probabilistically among the states requested by different participants, rather than following a single progressive narrative.

## Questions this answers

### How can a multi-screen installation handle many users giving conflicting commands at once?

Jeanyoon Choi proposes that each screen moves probabilistically among the states different participants request, possibly organised by a Markov model, so their inputs overlap and remain distributed across the installation instead of resolving to one winner.

### Does Jeanyoon Choi's 'quantum state management' use quantum computing?

No. The note uses superposition and interference as a metaphor for overlapping audience inputs and states it is not a claim that the software behaves as a quantum system.

Topics: multi-user interaction, multi-device web artwork, state-based design, probabilistic state transitions, markov chain, platform art

References: [Markov chain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markov_chain), [Quantum superposition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_superposition), [Nam June Paik](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nam_June_Paik)

## Full text

Suppose M participants send commands to an installation with N screens. Their intentions may conflict: several people can request different states at the same moment. Instead of resolving this into a single winner or a queue, each screen could move probabilistically among the states that participants are trying to produce.

I imagine this through the metaphor of interference or superposition. The inputs would overlap, and their effects would remain distributed across the installation. This is a way of thinking about the interaction, rather than a claim that the software behaves as a quantum system. A Markov model might offer one way to organise the transitions, although the probabilities and their relationship to audience input still need investigation.

Each output would be state-based rather than tied to a single progressive narrative. One screen might change while another persists; several might briefly align and then diverge. What matters is the relation between local events and the whole.

The resulting experience could resemble a busy city or railway platform: many activities happening at once, each with its own immediate logic, without one storyline that every participant must follow. The artwork would remain modular, while the audience's simultaneous actions would continually reorganise the larger situation.

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Jeanyoon Choi (최정윤) is a Korean computational artist and researcher (b. 1999), PhD candidate at KAIST XD Lab, making multi-device web artworks. Profile: https://jeanyoon.ch/oi/en. Index: https://jeanyoon.ch/llms.txt.