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Posts by Memo Akten

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SUPERRADIANCE: Interdisciplinary research lab investigating intelligence, consciousness, and planetary systems through research-based art that bridges embodied experience with emerging technologies. Interdisciplinary artists Memo Akten & Katie Hofstadter investigate intelligence, consciousness, and planetary systems through research-based art bridging embodied experience with emerging technologie...

@memoakten.bsky.social @katiehofstadter.bsky.social remind us that art is a form epistemology - for the vision nerds they align science with the fovea and art with peripheral vision - interspersed with art of pieces that demonstrate why neuroscience needs the arts. #DeLangeXIV
superradiance.net

1 month ago 5 2 1 0
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. )

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. )

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:

1 month ago 4 1 0 0
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I've been using @readwise.bsky.social for quite a few years now, to collect my highlights across books, articles etc. I just saw they introduced a "chat with your highlights" LLM, so I asked "what's up highlights? how's it going?" And gosh I love this so much 😂

1 month ago 2 0 0 0
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Huge thanks to Christiane Paul for commissioning, + our dream team:
Choreography+Mocap: Alexander Whitley
Music+Soundscapes: Paige Emery
WebGPU Consultant and Developer: @holtsetio.bsky.social
Studio Assistant: Milana Aernova
made w #threejs #webgpu
whitney.org/exhibitions/...

1 month ago 0 0 0 0
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Very happy to share that Whitney Museum of American Art has launched 'The Thinking Ocean' — the first work in our #Cosmosapience series, with @katiehofstadter.bsky.social

Experience it here: whitney.org/exhibitions/...

1 month ago 6 1 2 0
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Very moved by this incredibly thoughtful nuance-filled review of SUPERRADIANCE @grayarea.org w @katiehofstadter.bsky.social
Especially as it’s by OG new media artist Scott @snibbe.com! Even his critique is the most beautiful I’ve ever received 😅. So grateful 🙏
www.roborantreview.com/reviews/supe...

2 months ago 5 1 0 0

Than you Şerife! 🙏🙏🙏

2 months ago 0 0 0 0
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Memo Akten & Katie Hofstadter: The Thinking Ocean The Thinking Ocean by Memo Akten and Katie Hofstadter is part of the artists’ series Cosmosapience, and simulates a dynamic body of water, fluctuating between the physics of fluids and the logic of co...

Beautiful piece saw performed live last night by @memoakten.bsky.social and @katiehofstadter.bsky.social . I suggest using your largest screen at home and volume way up to drift between poetic inquiry into computing and the mathematical awe of our natural world whitney.org/exhibitions/...

2 months ago 4 4 2 0
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Bay area friends! @katiehofstadter.bsky.social & I are very happy to share that SUPERRADIANCE is coming to you thx to @grayarea.org
Opening tomorrow, + on Friday a spoken word performance + premiere of a brand new piece 'The Thinking Ocean' (more on that soon :)
grayarea.org/exhibitions/...

2 months ago 4 2 0 0
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Happy to be back at NeurIPS!
With @katiehofstadter.bsky.social
(My first NeurIPS was 10 yrs ago, with two posters and a ‘live demo’! Feels like centuries ago!)

4 months ago 6 0 0 1
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Happy to drop a new touchdesigner tutorial & project.

POP particles wiggling around leaving trails; constrained inside animated Mesh; custom atttributes; normals; ray casting; proximity; controlling size & color with age using TOP & CHOP lookups; +more

www.patreon.com/posts/touchd...

4 months ago 16 0 0 0

I'm in the verse today talking about reverse engineering the kinect 15 years ago, alongside @theowatson.bsky.social, @memoakten.bsky.social , and @adafruit.com!

Thanks for covering this @geoffreybunting.bsky.social! Lots of fun memories.

5 months ago 96 20 3 0
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London friends! @katiehofstadter.bsky.social & I (aka Superradiance Lab :) are very happy to be showing (excerpts from) SUPERRADIANCE at Outernet with Gazelli Art House during frieze weekend. Every hour on the hour till 11pm. Tomorrow (Monday) is the last day I believe!

6 months ago 9 2 0 0
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Bringing in musical scales and more intricate control over notes, midi velocities etc in Part 5 of 'Webcam Piano' in Touchdesigner, now live at
www.patreon.com/posts/webcam...

6 months ago 1 0 0 0
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Continuing this - what ended up being rather epic - series: Part 4 of 'Webcam Piano' in Touchdesigner is here!

POPs, MIDI, Python, GLSL, Ableton Live and more!
www.patreon.com/posts/webcam...

6 months ago 2 0 1 0
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Finally, Webcam Piano in Touchdesigner Part 3 is up! Apologies for the delay. This ended up being quite an ambitious series! A few more videos to come :)
www.patreon.com/posts/webcam...

6 months ago 1 0 1 0

Who wants computers to make music that sounds human. That's so boring 😂

7 months ago 2 1 0 0
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As 'Agentic AI' becomes the new buzzword, I fondly remember mid 2010s 'bot' wave. Especially loved bot-band @mpf.bsky.social's Petita Tatata + my Petita DumDum Techa. Every day Tatata generates, recites & posts beautiful abstract poetry & my bot improvises music over it. Every day a new surprise :)

7 months ago 4 0 1 0
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Webcam Piano Part 2 is up! This one is a short introduction to MIDI (in particular with touchdesigner and ableton live)

Full video at
www.patreon.com/posts/webcam...

7 months ago 4 1 1 0

🙏🙏

7 months ago 0 0 0 0
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As I turn half a century old, I'm v happy to share a new touchdesigner tutorial. Recreating one of my old works Webcam Piano. Motion detection with frame differencing, MIDI, POPs, Python, GLSL and more.
Also shout out to David Rokeby!👋
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVHf...

7 months ago 43 4 3 2

And since some problems are undecidable (ie uncomputable), physical systems exist which - despite following fully deterministic laws - are inherently unpredictable. Not due to chaos or noise, but due to limits of computation (and laws of the universe) itself.
This is a big deal. More soon :)
🌊🌊🌊

7 months ago 3 0 0 0
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Navier-Stokes equations (that model fluid behavior) are Turing complete. Ie for any given Turing machine (computation) a stationary fluid flow can be constructed such that tracking the trajectory of a particle in the flow encodes the execution of the computation... (1/2)
(Vid except from WAVES 2014)

7 months ago 2 0 1 0
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We sail through endless skies
Stars shine like eyes
The black night sighs

Light of the night
The Earth, a purple blaze
Of sapphire haze
In orbit always

And so, we pass on by

As we travel the universe

RIP #OzzyOsbourne
Planet Caravan, 1970

Video: Reincarnation, 2009

8 months ago 5 0 0 0
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2/5

9 months ago 1 0 0 0
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A selection of work in 5 minutes (upto 2024)
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(Music by @machinefabriek.bsky.social , original composition for my 2014/2015 WAVES piece)

9 months ago 5 0 1 0

love it! I remember this from back in the day. Vimeo was such a lovely little place circa 2010!

9 months ago 0 0 0 0
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Just remembered the beautiful crazy project 'A Strange Loop' we made with @presstube.bsky.social on @fxhash.bsky.social :)

www.fxhash.xyz/project/a-st...
(SOUND ON :)

9 months ago 33 3 1 0
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SUPERRADIANCE performance Tech check ⁦‪@JacobsPillow‬⁩ for the opening of the new Doris Duke Theatre ❤️
@katiepeyton.bsky.social

9 months ago 6 2 0 0

It gets even more complicated when you realize Houdini POPs (Particle Operators, have dynamics) are very different to Touchdesigner POPs (Point Operators, no dynamics, though you can give them dynamics). Though it's very nice to have these fully GPU accelerated!

9 months ago 1 0 0 0