Memo Akten & Katie Hofstadter at Mesh Festival 2026
Memo Akten and Katie Hofstadter will present Cosmosapience: Embodying our Planetary Mind at Mesh, the festival for art and technology in Basel, on Saturday, October 17, 2026. Part of the festival’s Circular Systems programme and supported by ERES Foundation, the performance lecture will take place at HGK Basel, D1.04 Aula, from 18:10 to 19:00.
©Superradiance' by Memo Akten & Katie Hofstadter, 2024, Installation view at HOPE Alkazar, Istanbul, TR, 2024
The performance lecture weaves ancient biotechnologies together with computational systems. It explores the entangled nature of intelligence, computation and our planetary body and mind.
We are not discrete entities. We are chimeras of ancient starlight, symbiotic microbes, flowing water and the vast networks of human and non-human minds. How might we repurpose emerging technologies to reconnect with our planetary consciousness, rather than sever that connection further?
Our tech influencers race to ascribe mind to corporate machines that mimic human behavior. Are we overlooking the inherent intelligence of the natural systems that sustain us? Cosmosapience interrogates the limits of these enclosed systems through the lens of planetary ecology and embodied simulation.
Memo Akten and Katie Hofstadter are California-based interdisciplinary artists and researchers. Their work investigates the entanglements of technology, embodiment, consciousness and culture. They merge backgrounds in dance, writing, poetry, drawing and sculpture with computer science, artificial intelligence, computational art and public practice. Together, they create speculative simulations, data dramatizations, immersive installations and narrative experiments that probe the human condition in an age of artificial intelligence and accelerating transformation.
Their research and practice explore how emerging technologies interact with human experience, focusing on AI and data systems and the embodied, emotional and ecological dimensions of that experience.