Reality Looks Back

Fascinated by the mysteries of quantum mechanics, director Anne Jeppesen reflects on their implications for everyday life. For if the state of particles is only certain when observed, what does that mean for the adjacent room? Jeppesen imagines clouds of particles that are “shaking, glitching, tinkling, dancing, jumping” until she looks at them: “When I observe [...], reality changes from clouds of possibility to fact.”

Jeppesen also investigates the experience of split déjà vus, in which you anticipate not just the next moment but all possibilities at once—until just one of them becomes real. Or do all the other alternatives actually occur as well, in countless parallel realities that include slightly different versions of Jeppesen herself? And what about her elderly hamster, Oliver? Is he, like the cat in Schrödinger’s famous thought experiment, both dead and alive until someone observes him?

These musings unfold in a dome filled with processed documentary footage of places that also seem to shake, glitch and dance—as if reality can barely keep itself together under our collective gaze.