¿Cuán pequeño es lo pequeño?

How Small Is Small?

by Jürgen Döllner

The work investigates how reality is constructed through perception, scale, and observation. Both in everyday experience and in the classical view of the natural sciences, the world is often understood as a stable continuum: an ordered sequence of objects and events that can be identified, measured, and described through models. This idea forms the basis of our usual way of understanding reality, yet at certain limits it ceases to hold and reveals its illusory nature.

Every description of reality depends on the models we use, the scale from which we observe, and the formal structures we apply to interpret it. The video explores this relationship by making visible the transition from the macroscopic order of recognizable objects to a subatomic domain governed by probability.

The central element of the work is the silhouette of a cat, initially represented as a continuous, regular, and smooth curve. This form functions as a mathematical symbol of a world perceived as stable, predictable, and calculable, and embodies the assumption that reality can be understood as a coherent object. Throughout the video, this assumption is systematically called into question.

At regular intervals, this figure fragments into a multitude of particles. This fragmentation should not be interpreted as destruction, but as a change of scale. The visual order of the object transforms into a field of probabilities. The particles are present, yet they cannot be clearly localized; they escape the binary logic of presence and absence. Reality thus appears less as a defined state and more as a distribution of possibilities.

The question “How small is the smallest?” explicitly points to this shift. It refers to the relativity of concepts such as size, smallness, or extension, which lose their physical meaning beyond a certain threshold of scale. This moment is presented as a rupture in our way of knowing, showing that spatial intuition and objectivity are not absolute, but cognitive constructions.

The brief appearances of the measurement box concentrate the theme of observation. This element refers to a scientific conception that assumes reality can be unambiguously determined through measurement. However, the rapid cuts between the empty box, the living cat, the dead cat, and the superposition of both states call this idea into question. Observation is not presented as a neutral act, but as a process that intervenes in reality, produces it, and at the same time constrains it.

In the background of the images, the ceramic pieces from the exhibition appear—not as mere documentary elements, but as active forms: they begin to vibrate, shift, or fragment. This deliberate alteration challenges their apparent material stability and questions the idea of permanence. Even that which seems solid and definitive depends on the way it is represented.

The animated ceramics thus function as a visual interface between the physical object and a reality governed by probability. They make visible that stability is not an inherent property of things, but the result of scale, materiality, and observation. In this context, the digital does not act as a simulation, but as a tool for knowledge.

Jürgen Döllner

Jürgen Döllner is Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science at the Hasso Plattner Institute of the University of Potsdam (Germany). His work focuses on algorithmic geometry, visual computing, and the relationship between perception, formal models, and physical reality. This video is conceived as an artistic investigation of that relationship.

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