EMERGENCE
Every complex system begins with a simple rule.
Current State
Society is born
CHAPTER IV
Society
Language · Interaction · Culture
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How does intelligence become shared meaning?
Conversation I of III
“Language is our original artificial intelligence.”
Sasha Stiles
Next: Society — II of III
26th August
EARLIER CHAPTERS
Chapter III — Organism
Living Systems
Organism explores the threshold between computation and life. Across three conversations, the discussion moves from emergence and resilience to learning, embodiment and consciousness, culminating in Memo Akten's provocative proposition that perhaps consciousness did not emerge from life—but life evolved to embody consciousness.
Conversation III
"I used to believe consciousness is evolution's solution to dealing with big data. I've now come to wonder whether life evolved to embody consciousness."
Memo Akten
Conversation II of III
Alexander Mordvintsev
"I think AIs will 'become' conscious once people start recognising them as such."
Conversation I of III
Jared S. Tarbell
"Biological life has a kind of thirst for life."
Chapter II — Pattern
Emergent Structure
Pattern marks the moment when local interactions become legible as higher-order structure. No individual cell contains the pattern; it exists only through the relations established between many simple behaviours. Emergence appears here as a property of organisation itself, revealing forms that exceed both their constituent parts and the intentions that produced them.
Conversation I
David Young
"Computation becomes interesting when behaviour cannot be predicted from individual parts."
Chapter I — Cell
How can simple rules produce unexpected complexity?
Cell begins with the smallest possible unit of organisation: the rule. Before there are forms, organisms or intelligence, there are only local interactions repeated across time. Computation appears here not as a tool for producing images, but as a medium through which complexity can arise without authorship, intention or central control. The chapter considers the cell not as a biological object, but as a conceptual threshold where autonomous behaviour first becomes possible.
Conversation II of II
Jonathan McCabe
"A complicated state, undergoing transformation by the simplest of rules"
Conversation I of II
Casey REAS
“The artwork exists in the relationships among things”
Current state — Society is born
EMERGENCE unfolds one chapter at the time.
Beginning on 28th July, a new chapter emerges every Tuesday, gradually revealing artists and conversations until the exhibition opens on 8th September 2026.
The exhibition emerges weekly until its public opening on 8 September.