Superradiance

Entangled Intelligence & Planetary Consciousness.
Research-based art bridging embodied experience with emerging tech.
@memoakten + @katiehofstadter

[Superradiance @SuperradianceX]

New mini-essay
https://t.co/pk63qhzkRL

What if we are the ants?
Where is our superorganism taking us?

The real alignment problem isn't whether superintelligent AI will kill us or not

It's whether the broken feedback loops in the superorganism will

@MemoAkten @KatieHofstadter

[memo akten @memoakten]

Major update: multi-cargo, multi-colony, different 'scenarios' (race straight, across, tug of war etc.)

Myrmecophobia warning :)
Two ant colonies carrying human-shaped food home :P
(orange ants -> orange food, blue ants -> blue food).

There’s no global coordinator. Each ant only senses & acts on local cues: pheromones guide toward home & food; once attached, they sense contact forces & movement.

The human-shaped food are completely passive. They’re not animated and only move because of physics simulation, ants pushing & pulling on their articulated limbs, collisions etc. (i.e. they’re ragdolls with stiffness & springiness in the joints).

[Gray Area @GrayAreaorg]

What happens when our thoughts become data?

This Sunday, cognitive scientist, AI researcher, and artist @Albert_DATA presents 𝙎𝙔𝙉𝘼𝙋𝙏𝙄𝘾𝙊𝙉, a live performance that uses a brain-computer interface to transform his brain activity into language, immersive visuals, and sound.

As brain-computer interfaces become more powerful, they open up new possibilities for creativity and communication while raising new questions: Who owns our neural data? How should our thoughts be protected? What rights should we have as AI gains new ways of interpreting the human mind?

𝙎𝙔𝙉𝘼𝙋𝙏𝙄𝘾𝙊𝙉 is part of 𝐂𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 & 𝐌𝐨𝐫𝐞-𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐧-𝐇𝐮𝐦𝐚𝐧 𝐒𝐲𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐦𝐬, a hybrid evening of research talks, performative lectures, installation, and live performance featuring @Albert_DATA, @kcimc, @entangledothers, @soficrespo91 , @feileacan_net , Esen K. Tütüncü, and @KatieHofstadter & @memoakten .

Come experience it live this Sunday!

𝐂𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐥𝐥����𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 & 𝐌𝐨𝐫𝐞-𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐧-𝐇𝐮𝐦𝐚𝐧 𝐒𝐲𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐦𝐬
📅 Sunday, July 26
�� 6 PM
📍Gray Area / Grand Theater
Tickets: https://t.co/Yub6JNQHVX

[memo akten @memoakten]

Can’t be there in person but v happy to be part of this historic show at @ArtBasel w BOUNDARIES, collab w @KatieHofstadter

A meditation on life, on being alive, on being aware of being alive, and being aware of being aware.

Commissioned for Venice Art Biennale 2024 by @Vanhaerents_Art

https://t.co/ACak0nDYbM

[ArtMeta @artmetaofficial]

Boundaries by Memo Akten & Katie Hofstadter, 2024

Experienced by over 90,000 visitors at the 2024 Venice Biennale, Boundaries is a monumental, contemplative artwork that blends computational media with embodied expression.

[memo akten @memoakten]

Major update: multi-cargo, multi-colony, different 'scenarios' (race straight, across, tug of war etc.)

Myrmecophobia warning :)
Two ant colonies carrying human-shaped food home :P
(orange ants -> orange food, blue ants -> blue food).

There’s no global coordinator. Each ant only senses & acts on local cues: pheromones guide toward home & food; once attached, they sense contact forces & movement.

The human-shaped food are completely passive. They’re not animated and only move because of physics simulation, ants pushing & pulling on their articulated limbs, collisions etc. (i.e. they’re ragdolls with stiffness & springiness in the joints).

[memo akten @memoakten]

You are a collection of trillions of cells, more than half of which are not even genetically human. Trillions of intelligent little selves work together, to keep you alive, so that you can keep them alive. And somehow, through their interactions, *you* emerge. And to you, you feel like a single unitary entity, an *I*. But you are in fact a network. Could a collection of ants also be an *I*?

[memo akten @memoakten]

Bay area friends! @KatieHofstadter & I are very happy to share that SUPERRADIANCE is coming to you thx to @GrayAreaorg .
Opening tomorrow, + on Friday a spoken word performance + premiere of a brand new piece 'The Thinking Ocean' (more on that soon :)
https://t.co/F1TCu6uIwx

[memo akten @memoakten]

Huge thanks to @ChristianePaul2 @whitneymuseum for commissioning, + our dream team:
Choreography+Mocap: @WhitleyDanceCo
Music+Soundscapes: @PaigeEmery_
WebGPU Consultant and Developer: @holtsetio
Studio Assistant: Milana Aernova
made w #threejs #webgpu
https://t.co/P4rTIQEKp7

[memo akten @memoakten]

Very happy to share that @whitneymuseum has launched The Thinking Ocean — the first work in our #Cosmosapience series, with @KatieHofstadter

Experience it here: https://t.co/P4rTIQEKp7

[memo akten @memoakten]

Look, even if AI is better than you at what you love doing, that's no reason to stop doing it.

There have always been machines that are better than me at pleasuring my partner, yet this has never discouraged me from trying. In fact, when I work with the machines, we are far more effective together, and make a great team.

Don't be afraid that the machine will replace you. Learn to work together. Stay human. Human++;

[memo akten @memoakten]

Very moved by this incredibly thoughtful, nuance-filled review of SUPERRADIANCE @GrayAreaorg (w @KatieHofstadter) . Especially as it’s by OG new media artist Scott @snibbe! Even his critique is the most beautiful I’ve ever received 😅. So grateful 🙏🙏🙏
https://t.co/Qdu90q41fL

[memo akten @memoakten]

The transformer architecture is feed-forward. The only feedback loop in an LLM is via autoregressive inference, and that's a single, discrete, low-bandwidth bottleneck*.

**If you believe** that's enough for an LLM to be 'conscious', then you must also believe either:

i) every time you have a conversation with someone - or even read this tweet - you're bringing into being a conscious entity that spans you and the other person,
or

ii) if the attention mechanism is what makes it conscious, then a brand new consciousness flashes into existence and dies with every single token. Forget about the water consumption, you're spawning and annihilating hundreds of consciousnesses just to generate a small paragraph, and millions more for your vibe coded app.

---

(*KV caching is a computational optimization, not an additional information channel. It contains no state that isn't already strictly derived from the low-bandwidth token sequence. H(KV | Tokens)==0. )

[memo akten @memoakten]

10 years ago today I wrote about AlphaGo as a (and I don't use this lightly) game changing moment. My focus was on MCTS Value Network as an example of modeling intuition, tacit inarticulable knowledge.

And yes AlphaGo is creative. Shouldn't even be a discussion (LLMs are not though 😅).
https://t.co/azKTEw3UXW

[memo akten @memoakten]

What a month! Again very moved by this wonderful review of 'The Thinking Ocean' @whitneymuseum ! After months (+ yrs) of reading, talking, thinking, writing, working, it's so nice to see ppl *see* what we're doing 🙏🙏
https://t.co/b5WXu05ote

explore the work here: https://t.co/eTmvz2Qo6X

@KatieHofstadter @SuperradianceX @cosmosapience