Superradiance

Superradiance is a multiscreen video and sound installation and film by Memo Akten and Katie Peyton Hofstadter that invites the viewer to extend their bodily perception beyond the skin and into the living environment. The work combines poetry, dance, and insights from neuroscience, woven together with code, simulations, and generative AI, to evoke a visceral, intimate connection to the living planet, inviting us to not only observe, but also feel this connection in our own bodies. It’s one thing to intellectually know that we are deeply embedded within complex assemblages of life, interdependent physically, chemically, and biologically, across multiple scales of time and space. But how do we feel this, and collectively honor it? ‘Embodied simulation’ is a cognitive phenomenon where, as you observe another person moving, you feel their movement in your own body. Superradiance leverages this phenomenon in an immersive, ritual sanctuary, where invisible dancers connect us to each other and to animate environments. Embracing a superposition of epistemologies and holding space for complexity, we want to challenge the boundaries of self, biology, geology, and technology – contemplating the whole planet as a living cyber-organism which exists across time.

Katie Peyton Hofstadter
Katie Peyton Hofstadter is a Los Angeles-based multidisciplinary artist, writer, and curator whose work investigates the complex intersections of embodiment, technology, and consciousness. Through her diverse practice, she explores the evolving relationship between our bodies, cognition and the technologically mediated world, examining how emerging technologies — particularly artificial intelligence and our growing digital ecosystems — shape both cultural narratives and direct experience. Her contributions to public art and social discourse include several international art campaigns. She is a co-founder of the ARORA network, bringing together over 70 artists creating new AR monuments to diverse female and gender-expansive voices in public spaces; as well as the Climate Clock monument NYC, a global call to #actintime on the climate crisis. Her art and public projects have been covered by major media outlets such as the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. Her essays and interviews appear in leading arts and literary publications including Flash Art, The Believer, BOMB, and The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.

Memo
Memo Akten is a multi-disciplinary artist, musician, and researcher creating Speculative Simulations and Data Dramatizations investigating the intricacies of human-machine entanglements. His work explores perception and states of consciousness; the tensions between ecology, technology, science and spirituality; and for more than a decade he’s been working with Artificial Intelligence, Big Data and our Collective Consciousness as scraped by the Internet, to reflect on the human condition. He writes code and uses algorithmic / data-driven design and aesthetics to create moving images, sounds, large-scale responsive installations and performances. He holds a PhD from Goldsmiths University of London, specializing in artistic and creative applications of Artificial Intelligence, and he is currently Assistant Professor of Computational Art at University of California San Diego (UCSD). Akten has received numerous awards including the Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica, his work has been widely exhibited and performed internationally and featured in major publications.