Memo Akten
Bio
b. Istanbul, TR, 1975
Very Short (~170 words)
Memo Akten is a multidisciplinary artist, researcher, and computer scientist working with emerging technologies both as creative medium, and as subject of critical inquiry. He creates Speculative Simulations and Data Dramatizations that probe the cultural, social, and ecological impacts of our contemporary techno-lifestyles, and the collisions between science and spirituality, modernity and ritual, self and collective intelligence. For more than a decade, he has worked with AI, Big Data, and our Collective Consciousness as scraped and shaped by the internet, to reflect on the human condition. He holds a PhD in creative explorations into Deep Neural Networks (aka ‘AI’) from Goldsmiths, University of London, and is currently Associate Professor at UC San Diego. He has won numerous awards, including the prestigious Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica. His work has been exhibited internationally at venues including the Venice Biennale, Tribeca Film Festival, Barbican, Grand Palais, Mori Art Museum; presented at leading academic conferences such as NeurIPS and SIGGRAPH; and featured in major publications including Wired, Art in America, NY Times, and the Guardian.
Short (~250 words)
Memo Akten is a multidisciplinary artist, researcher, and computer scientist working with emerging technologies both as creative medium, and as subject of critical inquiry. He creates Speculative Simulations and Data Dramatizations that probe the cultural, social, and ecological impacts of our contemporary techno-lifestyles, and the collisions between science and spirituality, modernity and ritual, self and collective intelligence. For more than a decade, he has worked with AI, Big Data, and our Collective Consciousness as scraped and shaped by the internet, to reflect on the human condition. His work is ultimately driven by a profound curiosity into the nature of reality, the nature of life, and the nature of the mind. His highly collaborative practice spans moving images, sound, poetry, dance, light, performances, installations, and online interventions, often employing algorithmic, data-driven, and interactive processes.
He holds a PhD in creative explorations into Deep Neural Networks (aka ‘AI’) from Goldsmiths, University of London and he is widely regarded as one of the pioneers in this field. He is Associate Professor at UC San Diego and cofounder of Superradiance Lab, investigating consciousness, intelligence, and planetary systems through research-based art that bridges embodied experience with emerging technologies.
He has won numerous awards, including the prestigious Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica. His work has been exhibited internationally at venues including the Venice Biennale, Tribeca Film Festival, Barbican, Grand Palais, Mori Art Museum; presented at leading academic conferences such as NeurIPS and SIGGRAPH; and featured in major publications including Wired, Art in America, NY Times, and the Guardian.
Extended (~1000 words)
Memo Akten is a multidisciplinary artist, researcher, and computer scientist working with emerging technologies both as creative medium, and as subject of critical inquiry. He creates Speculative Simulations and Data Dramatizations that probe the cultural, social, and ecological impacts of our contemporary techno-lifestyles, and the collisions between science and spirituality, modernity and ritual, self and collective intelligence. For more than a decade, he has worked with AI, Big Data, and our Collective Consciousness as scraped and shaped by the internet, to reflect on the human condition. His work is ultimately driven by a profound curiosity into the nature of reality, the nature of life, and the nature of the mind. His highly collaborative practice spans moving images, sound, poetry, dance, light, performances, installations, and online interventions, often employing algorithmic, data-driven, and interactive processes.
He holds a PhD in creative explorations into Deep Neural Networks (aka ‘AI’) from Goldsmiths, University of London and he is widely regarded as one of the pioneers in this field. He is Associate Professor at UC San Diego and cofounder of Superradiance Lab, investigating consciousness, intelligence, and planetary systems through research-based art that bridges embodied experience with emerging technologies.
His practice is fluid and dynamic, quickly responding to urgent issues and engaging with emerging technologies in their earliest stages, before they are contextualized by broader media and culture.
In 2013, his artwork Forms won the Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica, one of the most prestigious awards in the field. The following year, he received the inaugural commission from the Blenheim Art Foundation, creating the first-ever installation for their historic courtyard. In 2015, he was commissioned by Future Everything and the Royal Northern College of Music to create Simple Harmonic Motion #12 for 16 Percussionists, which went on to win the Jury Selection at the Japan Media Arts Award.
In 2016, he became the first artist-in-residence at Google’s Artists and Machine Intelligence program. Subsequent commissions include STRP Biennale (2017) and Somerset House Studios (2018). In 2020, he was appointed Artist/Scientist-in-Residence at the Centre for Practice & Research in Science & Music at the Royal Northern College of Music.
He presented a year-long solo museum exhibition at ACMI (Australian Centre for the Moving Image) in Melbourne from 2023-2024. That same year, Superradiance Chapter 1: Embodied Simulation was named an Official Selection for the Tribeca Film Festival’s Immersive category, and Superradiance Chapter 2: Embodying Earth was commissioned by Getty’s PST ART: Art & Science Collide. In 2024, he was also awarded a Hellman Fellowship.
His work Boundaries, commissioned by the Vanhaerents Collection for the 2024 Venice Biennale, was highlighted by several publications as one of the Biennale’s “must-see” exhibitions. It will also feature in the upcoming feature-length documentary Wider Than the Sky (October 2025). In 2025, he was invited to perform at the opening night of Jacob’s Pillow’s new Doris Duke Theatre. He is currently developing a new commission for the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Artport collection.
His work has been exhibited in landmark exhibitions such as: ‘Decode: Digital Design Sensations’ at the Victoria & Albert Museum (London, 2009), ‘Digital Revolutions’ at the Barbican (London, 2014), ‘The Art of Neural Networks’ at the Gray Area Foundation (San Francisco, 2016), ‘Artistes & Robots’ at the Grand Palais (Paris, 2018), ‘AI: More than Human’ at the Barbican (London, 2019), ‘Future and the Arts: AI, Robotics, Cities, Life’ at the Mori Art Museum (Tokyo, 2019), ‘Immaterial/Re-material: A brief history of computing art’ at the UCCA Center for Contemporary Art (Beijing, 2020), ‘The Question of Intelligence: AI & the Future of Humanity’ at the Kellen Gallery (NY, 2020), ‘Notes from the Ether’ at The ArtScience Museum (Singapore, 2023).
In addition, his work has been shown at leading institutions including The Wellcome Collection (London), Max Ernst Museum (Brühl), Trapholt Museum of Modern Art And Design (Kolding), Ming Contemporary Art Museum (Shanghai), Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Haus der Kunst (Munich), Tretyakov Gallery (Moscow), Royal Opera House (London), ZKM Center for Art and Media (Karlsruhe), ACMI (Australian Centre for Moving Image, Melbourne), Taiwan Contemporary Culture Lab, OK Center for Contemporary Art (Linz), Itaú Cultural (São Paulo), and the Garage Center for Contemporary Culture (Moscow).
He has presented his work and spoken at major art/cultural festivals and events such as Ars Electronica (Linz), Sonar+D (Barcelona), RIXC Art Science Festival (Riga), File (São Paolo, Rio), Gray Area (San Francisco), MUTEK (Montreal), STRP (Eindhoven), Athens Digital Art Festival, Future Everything (Manchester), Europalia (Brussels), SXSW Interactive (Austin), Resonate (Belgrade), Kikk (Namur), and IDFA DocLab (Amsterdam).
His work has been featured and cited in numerous books, as well as publications such as Art in America, Vice, NY Times, Wired, Guardian, Dazed, Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post.
His works are in major collections including Whitney Museum of American Art’s Artport collection, Trapholt Museum for Moderne Kunst, Guy & Myriam Ullens Foundation, M+ Museum of Contemporary Visual Culture, Vanhaerents Art Collection, Borusan Contemporary.
He has collaborated with public figures such as Lenny Kravitz, U2, Depeche Mode, Max Cooper and Richard Dawkins; and brands such as Google, Apple, Twitter, Deutsche Bank, McLaren, Saatchi, and Sony PlayStation. He has served as mentor and jury on numerous international awards, residencies and conferences such as SIGGRAPH, Ars Electronica, and Google Arts and Culture.
As an academic, he has presented his research at conferences such as NeurIPS and SIGGRAPH, the leading academic conferences on AI and Computer Graphics, respectively. In 2021, his PhD thesis abstract was selected and published by Leonardo – one of the most prestigious peer-reviewed journals focusing on the intersections of art, science and technology – for its ‘special relevance’.
In 2011, Akten co-founded the Arts x Technology studio Marshmallow Laser Feast. In 2014, after a string of hugely successful, influential and large-scale projects, he left MLF to pursue his PhD and focus on personal work, collaborations and research. He holds a PhD from Goldsmiths, University of London, where he specialized in creative and artistic investigations into Deep Neural Networks (aka ‘AI’), and he is widely regarded as one of the pioneers in this field. In 2020 he joined UC San Diego Visual Arts Faculty. In 2024 he co-founded Superradiance Lab with his partner Katie Hofstadter to further their investigations into the nature of consciousness, intelligence, and planetary systems through research-based art that bridges embodied experience with emerging technologies.
Awards & Fellowships
Commissions
Residencies
Collections
Service & Affiliations
Exhibitions, Performances and Other Showings
Solo Exhibitions and Presentations
Performances
Group Exhibitions
Invited Talks, Panels and Performance-Lectures
PhD Research
I’m delighted to learn that Leonardo, the prestigious peer-reviewed journal focusing on the intersections of art, science and technology, has selected my thesis abstract to be amongst their highest-rated, and to be published in their October 2022 issue (Vol 55, No 5). https://leonardo.info/labs-2021
Thesis can be downloaded from https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/30191/
This work was made primarily between 2014-2019, and published in 2021. Completed in the Department of Computing, Goldsmiths University of London; under the supervision of Dr. Mick Grierson and Dr. Rebecca Fiebrink; funded by the EPSRC.
Title
Deep Visual Instruments: Realtime Continuous, Meaningful Human Control over Deep Neural Networks for creative expression
Abstract
In this thesis, we investigate Deep Learning models as an artistic medium for new modes of performative, creative expression. We call these Deep Visual Instruments: realtime interactive generative systems that exploit and leverage the capabilities of state-of-the-art Deep Neural Networks (DNN), while allowing Meaningful Human Control, in a Realtime Continuous manner.
We characterise Meaningful Human Control in terms of intent, predictability, and accountability; and Realtime Continuous Control with regards to its capacity for performative interaction with immediate feedback, enhancing goal-less exploration. The capabilities of DNNs that we are looking to exploit and leverage in this manner, are their ability to learn hierarchical representations modelling highly complex, real-world data such as images. Thinking of DNNs as tools that extract useful information from massive amounts of Big Data, we investigate ways in which we can navigate and explore what useful information a DNN has learnt, and how we can meaningfully use such a model in the production of artistic and creative works, in a performative, expressive manner.
We present five studies that approach this from different but complementary angles. These include: a collaborative, generative sketching application using MCTS and discriminative CNNs; a system to gesturally conduct the realtime generation of text in different styles using an ensemble of LSTM RNNs; a performative tool that allows for the manipulation of hyperparameters in realtime while a Convolutional VAE trains on a live camera feed; a live video feed processing software that allows for digital puppetry and augmented drawing; and a method that allows for long-form story telling within a generative model’s latent space with meaningful control over the narrative.
We frame our research with the realtime, performative expression provided by musical instruments as a metaphor, in which we think of these systems as not used by a user, but played by a performer.
Description
This research investigates how the latest developments in Machine Learning – with an emphasis on Deep Learning – can be used to create intelligent systems that enhance artistic expression. These are systems that people can interact with and gesturally ‘conduct’ to expressively produce and manipulate text, images and sounds – in effect, collaborating with a ‘creative’, ‘talented’ agent. These systems learn – both offline and online – and have a level of autonomy that could be perceived as creative behaviour.
The desired relationship between human and machine (software) here is analogous to that between an Art Director and graphic designer, film director and video editor, concept / story teller and ghost writer – i.e. a visionary communicates their vision to a ‘doer’ who produces the actual output under the direction of the visionary (though often the doer also shapes the output with their own vision and skills). Crucially, the desired human-machine relationship here also draws inspirations from that between a pianist and piano, a conductor and orchestra, an abstract expressionist painter and the system comprising of brush + paint + canvas + gravity + fluid dynamics. I.e. again a visionary (human) communicates their vision to a system which produces the actual output, but this communication is real-time, continuous and expressive; it’s an immediate response to everything that has been produced so far, creating a closed feedback loop.
Within this very broad topic, the key problem area that the research tackles is as follows: Given a very large corpus of example data (e.g. thousands or millions of examples), we can train a generative deep model. That model will hopefully learn something, and contain some kind of ‘knowledge’ about the data (and its underlying structure). The questions are: i) What exactly has the model learned? how can we investigate what knowledge the model contains? ii) how can we do this interactively and in real-time, and expressively explore the knowledge that the model contains iii) how can we use this to steer the model to produce not just anything that resembles the training data, but what we want it to produce, when we want it to produce it, again in real-time and through expressive, continuous interaction and control.
Employment & Academic Appointments
- 2024–Current Co-founder / Co-director, Superradiance Center for Entangled Intelligence and Planetary Consciousness
- 2026–Current Associate Professor, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA
- 2020–2026 Assistant Professor, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA
- 2011–2014 Founder / Director, Marshmallow Laser Feast, London, UK
- 1998–2003 3D Artist, Design & Technology Manager, Deibus Studios, London, UK
Education
- 2014–2021 PhD, Computational Art + Artificial Intelligence, Goldsmiths University of London, Dept of Computing, UK.Thesis: “Deep Visual Instruments: Realtime Continuous, Meaningful Human Control over Deep Neural Networks for creative expression”
- 1993–1997 BSc, Civil Engineering, Bosphorus University, Istanbul, TR.Awarded second prize for final thesis “Automation of Reinforced Concrete Frame Structures”
- 1986–1992 High School Degree, Robert College of Istanbul, Istanbul, TR.Awarded (highest) Sait Halman Prize for “Excellence in Computer Science”
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