Memo Akten & Katie Hofstadter: The Thinking Ocean

The Thinking Ocean is a digital artwork at the Whitney Museum of American Art that simulates a dynamic body of water, shifting between the physics of fluids and the logic of code. It is created by Memo Akten and Katie Hofstadter, interdisciplinary artists and researchers who explore how emerging technologies such as AI interact with embodied, emotional, and ecological human experience. Viewers navigate an underwater scene of drifting particles and bubbles that morphs into patterns recalling cells, circuitry, and code, accompanied by a voice reciting a poem generated in real time. The work highlights our bias toward granting agency to machines while overlooking the complex computations unfolding in natural systems.