NEW YORK, NY.- The Whitney Museum of American Art launches The Thinking Ocean, a digital art project by Memo Akten and Katie Hofstadter commissioned for artport, the Museum’s online gallery space for Internet art. Part of the artists’ Cosmosapience series, this project simulates a natural body of water that shifts between fluid dynamics and computational code. With The Thinking Ocean, Akten and Hofstadter explore the ways society grants agency to machines that mimic humanlike behavioral patterns, while overlooking the complex computations that similarly unfold in nature.
The Thinking Ocean situates viewers in an environment procedurally constructed with rule-based algorithms. The environment is fluid, dissolving into abstraction, and morphing into patterns that evoke biological cell structures, circuitry, and code. The shift between fluid behavior and computation uncovers that oceans and computers are governed by the same underlying logic, each serving as systems that carry, store, and transmit information. Recent studies have shown that Navier-Stokes equations, which describe the fluid motions of elements such as water and air, can theoretically perform the same computations that digital computers are capable of carrying out. The Thinking Ocean exposes the increasing bias humans have in trusting technology that follows familiar logic but simultaneously overlooking patterns that are mirrored in the surrounding natural world.
“Both poetic and visually striking, The Thinking Ocean invites us to rethink our relationship to nature and bodies of water, in particular,” said Christiane Paul, Curator of Digital Art at the Whitney. “Drawing parallels between thinking, consciousness, fluid flows and computation, the work highlights the ‘operating systems’ we share with the natural environment.”
Upon entering The Thinking Ocean, viewers can navigate a seemingly organic underwater state, with clouds of suspended particles and bubbles drifting by. The motion of a faintly visible, abstract human form in the distance generates currents in the habitat, giving the impression that the ocean embodies agency and presence. A voiceover of a non-linear poem that is dynamically generated in real time accompanies viewers as they explore the layers of the fluid environment.
Memo Akten and Katie Hofstadter’s The Thinking Ocean was organized by Christiane Paul, Curator of Digital Art at the Whitney and commissioned for artport, the Museum’s portal to Internet art and an online gallery space for commissions of net art and new media art. Contributions to the project included choreography and performance, and motion by Alexander Whitley; music and soundscapes by Paige Emery. Project support was also provided by Niklas Niehus, WebGPU consultant and developer, and Milana Aernova, studio assistant. The Thinking Ocean was developed in dialogue with researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography’s SOARS Lab (Scripps Ocean-Atmosphere Research Simulator). More information about artport can be found at whitney.org/artport.
Memo Akten & Katie Hofstadter are interdisciplinary artists and researchers whose work investigates the entanglements of technology, consciousness, embodiment, and culture. Together, their collaborative research and practice explore how emerging technologies—particularly AI and data systems—interact with the embodied, emotional, and ecological dimensions of human experience.
Memo Akten (b. 1975, Istanbul, Turkey) is an artist, musician, and researcher whose practice bridges machine learning, consciousness, perception, and spirituality. He is a pioneer in artistic explorations of Deep Neural Networks and a recipient of the Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica (2013). His works have been exhibited worldwide, from the Shanghai Ming Contemporary Art Museum and the Moscow Museum of Modern Art to the Grand Palais in Paris, the Venice Biennale.
Katie Hofstadter (b. 1981, Macon, Georgia) is a multidisciplinary artist, writer, and curator whose work investigates the complex relationships between embodiment, consciousness, and technologically mediated imagination. Her projects have been exhibited worldwide, and her writing appears in publications like Flash Art, BOMB, and The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. She is co-founder of global public art campaigns such as the ARORA network and the Climate Clock in NYC.
