MARKUS WINTERSBERGER · VERSION 02 · 2026 · AV 4K · GLB · GAME · AR
NULL IST NICHT NULLZERO IS NOT ZERO
The Nature of Nothing — Cast for Eternity · 02
“For short periods of time, zero is not always zero.” (Don Lincoln) — “But we cannot speak about the atoms in ordinary language.” (Heisenberg, after Marcelo Gleiser). This version takes both sentences literally: the bronzes of the Princes of Liechtenstein are not depicted but counted.
“Nothing” doesn’t exist. Instead, there is “quantum foam”.
bigthink.com/hard-science/nothing-exist-quantum-foam ↗Our language is inadequate to describe quantum reality.
bigthink.com/13-8/quantum-uncertainty-language ↗Every image arises from single events as on a detector screen. A bronze is a statistic of up to 2.4 million hits.
As in Heisenberg’s reinterpretation the figures appear as tables of values. You see them only as long as you do not read.
NICHTS, NOTHING, NIHIL, NULLA lie on top of each other. Only measurement turns them into one word – and changes which.
3840 × 2160 · 25 fps · H.264 · AAC 48 kHz · −16 LUFS · titles and credits with all data, sources and references
still from the 3D animation
| Palace | Liechtenstein Garden Palace, Vienna-Rossau, as a point cloud of about 430,000 hits. The windows are void: nothing was measured there. |
| Ground | The zero field: 0.0000 in every cell, ultramarine fluctuations in between. |
| Measuring field | 18 bronzes in the garden parterre, each with the morph target “foam”. They are measured one by one, decohere and are measured again. |
| Casimir | Two plates in the court of honour close from 10 m to 0.6 m, with only standing waves between them. |
| Time axis | The garden axis is log t, from 10⁻⁵⁴ s (a bronze from nothing) to 4.4·10¹⁷ s (age of the universe). |
| Language layer | Six text panels: ≠0, Heisenberg’s transition matrix, g/2, superposed words, Lincoln, Δx·Δp. |
| Files | GLB · web (meshopt) · camera „Kamerafahrt_178s“ · animation „NULL_IST_NICHT_NULL_178s“ |
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18 · x / kBronzes of the Princely Collections of Liechtenstein, 3D scans in the exhibition “Cast for Eternity”, Liechtenstein Garden Palace, Vienna, March 2023. Position image: 1.5 million detection events. Momentum image: magnitude of the Fourier transform, colour by |k|.
| AV | long version 4:54 · trailer 3:24 · 3D animation 2:58 · 3840 × 2160 · 25 fps · H.264 · AAC 48 kHz · −16 LUFS |
| Image | detection renderer (single events from density maps of the scans), monospace number grids, Fourier momentum space with Gaussian blur (Δx·Δk = ½), photon-starved reading of the V&A film · Python / NumPy / OpenCV · type: IBM Plex Mono, Instrument Serif |
| Sound | detector clicks (Poisson), Gabor quanta (click ↔ tone by Δx), comb filter (Casimir), Rydberg transitions as sines, formant voices in superposition, beating 1.00115965 (g/2) |
| 3D | GLB (glTF 2.0) “Detector Palace”: point clouds, morph targets “foam”, 120 fluctuation pairs, Casimir plates, time axis, text panels, camera and animation 178 s · meshopt web version · 18 AR GLBs |
| Interactive | experience ZERO POINT (three.js: film, simulation, game) · Art & Science game OBSERVER (web + desktop macOS, AR window) · AR (model-viewer: WebXR, Scene Viewer, Quick Look) |
| Sources | D. Lincoln, Big Think 16.2.2023 · M. Gleiser, Big Think 4.1.2023 · W. Heisenberg, Z. Phys. 33 (1925), 43 (1927) · H. B. G. Casimir 1948 · X. Fan et al., PRL 130, 071801 (2023) · footage: How was it made? Lost-wax bronze casting © V&A, London |
| Credits | concept, image, sound, 3D, code: Markus Wintersberger · medienwerkstatt006, Vienna · AI-assisted realisation (Claude, Anthropic) |