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 code. Viewers can navigate a seemingly organic underwater scene, with drifting clouds of particulate matter and swirls of bubbles. The procedurally constructed 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, can in principle perform any computation that a digital computer is able to. The Thinking Ocean highlights our increasing bias toward granting agency to machines that mimic human behavior, while failing to notice the complex computations unfolding in natural systems surrounding us.

The work is accompanied by a voice reciting a non-linear poem that is dynamically generated in real time. Alexander Whitley contributed choreography, performance, and motion capture; Paige Emery created music and soundscapes; Niklas Niehus served as WebGPU consultant and developer; and Milana Aernova as studio assistant. Developed in dialogue with researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography's SOARS Lab (Scripps Ocean-Atmosphere Research Simulator). The Thinking Ocean utilizes the WebGPU API, which requires iOS 26 or MacOS 26 or later on Apple devices.