Memo Akten & Katie Hofstadter: The Thinking Ocean

The Thinking Ocean by Memo Akten and Katie Hofstadter, part of their series Cosmosapience, simulates a dynamic body of water, fluctuating between the physics of fluids and the logic of code. Viewers navigate an underwater scene, with drifting clouds of particulate matter and swirls of bubbles. The environment becomes increasingly abstracted, morphing into patterns reminiscent of organic cell structures, circuitry, and code. Currents generated by the movement of a faintly visible, abstract, humanlike form create the perception of the ocean as an embodied presence. The shift between fluid dynamics and computation exposes oceans and computers as expressions of the same underlying principles—systems that can store and transmit information and flow. Recent research has shown that Navier-Stokes equations, which govern the movement of fluids like water and air, in principle can perform any computation that a digital computer can. The Thinking Ocean highlights our increasing bias towards granting agency to machines that mimic human behavior while failing to notice the complex computations of natural systems. The work is accompanied by a voice reciting a nonlinear poem that is procedurally constructed in real time.

Alexander Whitley, choreography, performance, and motion capture; Paige Emery, music and soundscapes; Niklas Niehus, WebGPU consultant and developer; and Milana Aernova, studio assistant

Developed in dialogue with researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography’s SOARS Lab (Scripps Ocean-Atmosphere Research Simulator).