Entangled Meanings: Quantum Leaps in Semiotic Thought
Klara de Wit
As quantum computing moves from theory to mainstream technology, its implications stretch far beyond physics and engineering—challenging the very frameworks through which we understand meaning.
This workshop invites participants to explore how quantum principles such as superposition, entanglement, and uncertainty disrupt the binary foundations of traditional semiotic theory.
If signs have historically operated within dualistic logics—signifier/signified, presence/absence, true/false—what happens when computation itself becomes probabilistic, non-local, and multidimensional?
Through playful inquiry and critical dialogue, we’ll interrogate how quantum logic might reshape semiotic practice across disciplines: from language and design to AI and cultural theory.
Can a quantum-informed semiotics better reflect the complexity of contemporary meaning-making? What new models of interpretation emerge when we abandon the comfort of either/or?
This session is for thinkers, makers, and questioners curious about the future of meaning in a post-binary world. Expect provocations, paradoxes, and possibilities.
Klara de Wit
Klara began her career as a media and cultural studies academic, before moving into commercial research and consulting, where she uses her training in cultural frameworks to help businesses future proof their products and services. As a dualist she uses her toolbox of qualitative & quantitative skills to unearth commercially driven cultural insights across key industries such as financial services, FMCG, media & entertainment, telecommunications,retailers and others. For the past 4 years, she has been working as a dedicated cultural forecasting researcher in the Cultural Intelligence team at Accenture Song, Australia. There she has had the pleasure of collaborating with design researchers and brand and marketing strategists to unearth trends and cultural movements to ensure innovation, design, brand and marketing outputs are cultural relevant today and tomorrow.
She holds a BA (Hons) degree from UNSW as a well as a PhD in Arts and Media (UNSW).