I am a body, and I am also a multitude of smaller, living bodies.

I am a body, and I am also part of a greater living body.

Superradiance is a multiscreen video and sound installation by Memo Akten and Katie Peyton Hofstadter that invites the viewer to extend their bodily perception beyond the skin and into the living environment. Integrating artificial intelligence with dance and insights from neuroscience, the project invokes an immersive, embodied experience that challenges us to not only understand but also feel our profound relationship with the planet.

By leveraging the cognitive phenomenon of embodied simulation—where the brain of an observer mirrors the movements of others—Superradiance creates an immersive space where participants can feel the movements of the animate Earth. This mirrors the rhythms of nature, inviting visitors to extend their bodily awareness into forests, oceans, and beyond, reminding us that the living environment is not separate from us but an integral part of who we are. Invoking dance as one of our earliest biotechnologies, the project highlights how embodied movement has long been a way to bridge the gap between self and the universe, inviting viewers into a sensory ritual of connection.

We know that we are deeply embedded within complex webs of living and non-living things, interdependent physically, chemically, and biologically, across multiple scales of time and space. It's one thing to intellectually know that we are part of a vast, interconnected system of life. But how do we feel it, and collectively honor it?

Dance is one of our earliest biotechnologies. We dance to express ourselves, to connect to each other. Through ritual and ecstatic dance, we dance to experience union with the universe directly.

The cognitive phenomenon of embodied simulation (an evolved and refined version of ‘mirror neurons’ theory) explains how we feel and embody the movement of others, as if they are happening in our own bodies. The brain of an observer unconsciously mirrors the movements of others, extending to the planning and simulating execution of those movements within their own body. This phenomenon is even evident when we 'feel' the movement of fabric blowing in the wind. As Vittorio Gallese writes, "By means of a shared neural state realized in two different bodies that nevertheless obey the same functional rules, the 'objectual other' becomes 'another self.’”

Superradiance leverages this phenomenon in an immersive, ritual space, connecting us to each other and to our environment. It is an immersive sanctuary where invisible dancers and voices create an embodied, mirrored experience in the viewer through animate environments. This experience extends our bodies beyond the skin, enhancing our understanding of the environment as part of our body: the forests and oceans become extensions of our lungs, heartbeats, and more — and vice versa.

Chapters

Chapter 1: Embodied Simulation

Embodied Simulation explores the body as a dynamic, interconnected assemblage of organisms, extending the body beyond individual human consciousness. Tracing our origins to stars and ancient life, it challenges the notion of the singular self. Through evocative movement, it calls attention to the paradox of feeling like an individual, which is yet part of a vast, interconnected web of life. Invoking dance as a biotechnology, this piece questions the boundaries between self and environment through the cognitive phenomena of embodied simulation.

Chapter 2: Embodying Earth

Delving into the deep symbiotic systems of our planet, Embodying Earth journeys beneath the surface, where life consumes rock and transforms minerals into soil. It captures the intricate alchemy of nature—lichens, fungi, microbes—metabolizing rock into living, breathing forests and rivers. Through poetic imagery, it recognizes the earth as a living organism, with soil, air, and water bound in a complex dance of life and regeneration, emphasizing how ancient life continues to nourish the present, even as we will nourish the future.

Work in Progress

Chapter 3: Collective Effervescence

Here, the focus shifts to the emotional and spiritual disconnect humans feel from the earth and each other. It reflects on the severance caused by modernity—where optimization and control overshadow care and connection. By evoking the astronaut’s view of Earth and ancient planetary memories, it explores the gaps in our lived experience, calling for a reconnection with the mycelial threads of life and the deep pulse of the planet. The section blends personal and planetary rhythms, searching for lost connections. It questions how to care for a world that speaks in multiple, often conflicting, languages—scientific, spiritual, biological. This section encourages holding space for complexity, acknowledging the superposition of life and death, spirit and matter, and embracing the mystery of life’s cycles as both individual and collective effervescence.

Exhibitions

Credits & Acknowledgements

With research support from:

We are grateful for the support of Getty PST ART: Art & Science Collide, Stochastic Labs, the Hellman Foundation, Birch Aquarium, the Tribeca Film Festival, London Film Festival, the Digital Body Festival and the Taikang Art Museum in Beijing. We are especially grateful to Ana Brzezińska, Megan Dickerson, Lisa Cartwright and Nan Renner, for their thoughtful curation, exhibition direction, and invaluable support. We would also like to gratefully acknowledge the support of: Joel Simon for workflow guidance and inspiration, Amy Kurzweil and Mieke Marple for editorial and script feedback, Dan Hofstadter for recording space, the comfyui community for opensource tools and libraries, and the Akten family and Kathy Hofstadter for contributions to the imagery.

Memo Akten

Memo Akten Profile Image

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 prestigous Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica. His work has been widely exhibited and performed internationally at venues such as The Grand Palais, The Barbican, The Royal Opera House, ZKM Center for Art and Media, Sonar Festival, Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Shanghai Ming Contemporary Art Museum and many others. He has been featured in major publications such as Wired, The Guardian, Dazed, Nowness, The Financial Times, and he has collaborated with celebrities such as Lenny Kravitz, U2, Depeche Mode and Professor Richard Dawkins. He has served as mentor and jury on numerous international awards, residencies and conferences such as SIGGRAPH, Ars Electronica, and Google Arts and Culture.

Katie Peyton Hofstadter

Katie Peyton Hofstadter Profile Image

Katie Peyton Hofstadter is a Los Angeles-based writer, artist and curator. She has co-founded several international art campaigns, including ARORA, a network of over 70 artists creating new AR monuments to diverse female and gender-expansive voices in public spaces; the Climate Clock monument NYC, a global call to #actintime on the climate crisis; and Future Art Models, an experiment in prefigurative imagination commissioned by apexart, guiding young creatives to design alternative professional models in the arts. As a writer, she is a contributor to Flash Art, The Believer, BOMB, The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, and Right Click Save. Her work has been featured in publications including the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, Smithsonian Magazine, Hyperallergic and ArtFCity. Her writing has been curated into exhibitions at EPOCH.GALLERY, Vellum/LA and Cal Poly + The Center for Expressive Technologies. She has taught at Parsons, The New School, and F.I.T.

Script

Chapter 1: Embodied Simulation

I stand before you today,

A collection, of trillions of cells.

— more than half of which are not even genetically human,

But other microorganisms.


Trillions of incredibly complex, intelligent little machines,

work together, to keep me alive, so that I can keep them alive.

And somehow, through their interactions, I emerge.


And to me, it feels like I am a single unitary entity, with clear boundaries, that I call my skin.

But intellectually, I know that I am in fact a network, a network of cells and organisms.

A chimera.

A chimera.

But I am more than that. I am not just the network of the cells within my body. I am also the network of

atoms that I borrow, and exchange with my environment, with other living and nonliving things.

The atoms that I eat and drink; the atoms I inhale and exhale.


Forged in the dying hearts of stars, exploding into supernova, billions of years ago, billions of light years

away, spewed across galaxies to come together — for a very brief moment in time — to momentarily

become me

and you.

I know I’m part of a living planet, but how can I feel this, in my body?

in my body.


Dance is one of our earliest biotechnologies.

We dance to connect to each other.

We dance to connect back to the living earth

Extend our bodies beyond our skin, into the living environment.

We dance to remember who we are


I feel like I’m missing something, but what am I missing?


I am in superposition

My body is an animal, alive in the present

But my mind is trapped in the future and the past


I dance to a pulse inside me, that did not begin with me


How do I care for you?


I stand before you today, nourished by ancient oceans

Warmed by ancient starlight

My body, a site of journeys and transits, portals and interfaces

A chimera.


What if we shed our skin?

Vibrate in collective effervescence

Superradiance


Superradiance

Chapter 2: Embodying Earth

Two miles beneath my feet

Life eats rock.

Draws energy

From Metal.


In these sunless tunnels

Our ground is their sky.


We have burrowed into the heart of the Earth,

Drilled into the clockwork of the planet


From the atoms,

forged in the stars

I create the minerals,

of life

We are the alchemists,

The earth shapers,

The architects,

We are the lichen,

The fungi

The microbes

The Chemolithotrophs,


Metabolizing rock into soil


I am the soil

[I am alive]

I am the rootless plants

[bryophytes]

that retain water

I am the wet sediment that becomes mud.

I am the worms that wriggle.

I am the cracks, that grow

into rivers, veins

across the skin of the earth

[my skin]


Soil Stands Up


I am the soil that stands up

Unfurls [as fungi]

lofts into the sky [as forests]


I am the forest, feeding on the sun

I breathe

You breathe

We breathe


How do I care for you?


I am the forest,

Rivers, streaming water from the soil into the sky


Here in the sky, water has a secret name

A microbe

So perfectly shaped, it nucleates ice directly from vapor,


I am the trees lofting microbes to the sky

I seed my breath with life,

Cast a spell

[Pseudomona syringae]

To summon atmospheric rivers back from the living air.

I call back the rain

From oceans above, to oceans below


My lungs

My lungs


My heart

My heart


How do I care for you?


I am the moon that gently pulls on your skin

I am the flowering tides

My currents pulse like arteries

My veins bloom blue-green

I am the waves spuming with life

I am the spirit in your breath

I am the air-sea boundary

The frisky interface

Dynamic, Volcanic, Galvanic

I breathe

You breathe

We breathe


I am the waves that caress your skin

As my body warms, I thrash and tear deeper,

deeper into the seabed,

deeper into myself,

deeper into my past

My fury casts into the sky, ancient memories from the deep

[biosediments]

Calcified remnants, of ancient life


I am the reefs that sing, summoning wanderers

I am the larva of coral and fish, drifting in the open ocean.

I follow the music of a thriving reef,

Calling me to my new home


I am the diatoms, that once drifted in an ancient sea

Now a desert, in the Holocene depths of the Sahara

The cratered sand floor of a paleo lake

A reservoir of dust, between paleo shores


I am the sand, ancient memories of life

I am the wind that swirls the desert dust into the living sky


Swarms

Scatters across my body

Atmospheric rivers bloom red, plumes of mineral dust


An offering, from the distant past


The past, blows into the present,

I am the soil, thousands of miles away,

Replenished

Life, Laughs, Green.

Unfurls,

Deep memory


I am the fungal air vents that throw my spores to meet the winds

I, Stand Up.

Unfurl [as fungi]

Loft into the sky [as forests]

Bring life back to air

Bring life back to earth

Chapter 3: Collective Effervescence

In Progress. Coming 2025.

Context and Inspirations

Below is a very inexhaustive list of theories, texts and other media that inspire us in this project.

  • Akomolafe, Bayo, Dancing with Mountains and The Emergence Network. https://www.bayoakomolafe.net/ and https://www.dancingwithmountains.com/ and https://www.emergencenetwork.org/
  • Bakker, Karen. The Sounds of Life: How Digital Technology Is Bringing Us Closer to the Worlds of Animals and Plants. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2022.
  • Bateson, Nora. Combining. Axminster: Triarchy Press, 2023.
  • Borges, Jorge Luis. The Book of Imaginary Beings. Translated by Norman Thomas di Giovanni. New York: Viking Press, 1969. Originally published in 1957.
  • brown, adrienne maree. Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good. Chico, CA: AK Press, 2020.
  • Damasio, Antonio. The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feeling, and the Making of Cultures. New York: Pantheon Books, 2017.
  • Deloria, Vine, Jr. Evolution, Creationism, And Other Modern Myths. Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing, 2004.
  • Ehrenreich, Barbara. Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006.
  • Federici, Silvia. Caliban and the Witch: Women, The Body, And Primitive Accumulation. New York: Autonomedia, 2004.
  • Graeber, David, and David Wengrow. The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021.
  • "Gaia Hypothesis." Theory developed by James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis in the 1970s.
  • Haraway, Donna J. "A Cyborg Manifesto." The Socialist Review 80, 1985: 65–108.
  • Haraway, Donna J. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham: Duke University Press, 2016.
  • Hirshfield, Jane. The Asking. New York: Knopf, 2023.
  • Jaber, Ferris. Becoming Earth: How Our Planet Came to Life. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2024.
  • Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 2013.
  • Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses. Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 2003.
  • Kumar, Satish. Interviewed by Richard Dawkins. BBC 4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_mFtQiI0EY.
  • LeGuin, Ursula K. "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas." In The Wind's Twelve Quarters, 275–284. New York: Harper & Row, 1975.
  • Lorde, Audre. Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power. Brooklyn: Out & Out Books, 1978.
  • Ostendorf-Rodríguez, Yasmine. Let's Become Fungal!: Mycelium Teachings and the Arts: Based on Conversations with Indigenous Wisdom Keepers, Artists, Curators, Feminists and Mycologists. Berlin: Archive Books, 2023.
  • Popkin, Gabriel. "A Soil-Science Revolution Upends Plans to Fight Climate Change." Quanta Magazine, February 25, 2021.
  • Schlanger, Zoë. The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth. New York: Scribner, 2024.
  • Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt. The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015.

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