Antikythera

Antikythera

Antikythera is a program reorienting planetary-scale computation as a philosophical, technological and geopolitical force. Visit their website, here.

Through research, design and debate, Antikythera is convening 75+ leading technologists, engineers, designers, philosophers, and writers to develop new models, programs, and speculative projects that steer computation towards a viable future.

Antikythera is directed by Philosopher of Technology, Benjamin Bratton, and is supported and housed at the Berggruen Institute in Los Angeles, and developed in partnership with the One Project foundation.

Why is the program called “Antikythera”?

The program takes its name and inspiration from the Antikythera mechanism, dated to 200 BC and discovered in 1901 in a shipwreck off the Greek island. This “first” primordial computer was not simply a calculator; it was an astronomical machine, mapping and predicting the movements of stars and planets, marking annual events, and organizing a naval culture upon the globe’s surface.

The Antikythera mechanism not only calculated interlocking variables; it oriented intelligence. The future of computation is tied to this relation between thinking, navigation and the planetary.

Research Themes

Antikythera’s work in speculative philosophy and design focuses is based in several research themes:

Synthetic Intelligence: The long-term implications of machine intelligence, particularly focused on natural language processing and large language models.

Hemispherical Stacks: The geopolitics of planetary computation, particularly focused on platform infrastructures.

Recursive Simulations: The emergence and development of worlds in response to simulations across domains, from scientific to VR / AR, and the way these models create worlds.

Synthetic Catallaxy: The ongoing and potential organization of computational economics, pricing, and planning.

Planetary Sapience: The long-term evolutionary emergence of natural and artificial intelligence, and how it must now conceive and compose a viable planetarity.

The Antikythera mechanism on display in Athens. It dates to as early as 200 BC and was one of the first known computers. The Antikythera mechanism not only calculated interlocking variables; it oriented intelligence. The future of computation is tied to this relation between thinking, navigation and the planetary.

Studio

The first Antikythera studio will begin in February 2023 in Los Angeles, with fieldwork in locations including Seoul and Mexico City.

Studio Researchers from across the world will spend five months working in multidisciplinary teams on design proposals, and joining Affiliate Researchers for workshops, talks, and design sprints that inform thinking and propositions around Antikythera’s core research topics and key positions. The Studio is directed by architect and creative director Nicolay Boyadjiev.

The global cohort will represent diverse forms of expertise and program participation is fully funded. The studio program is supported by One Project, an operating non-profit and a giving foundation whose mission is to support a global transition to an economy that is equitable, ecological and effective.

Benjamin Bratton, Director of the Antikythera program, discusses the Antikythera Studio projects, the team, and creativity.

Antikythera Application Portal

Antikythera’s five-month speculative design-research Studio runs from February to June 2023. 

Read more and apply here >


composed by Arswain
machine learning consultation by Anna Tskhovrebov
commissioned by the Berggruen Institute
premiered at the Bradbury Building
downtown Los Angeles
april 22, 2022

Human perception of what sounds “beautiful” is necessarily biased and exclusive. If we are to truly expand our hearing apparatus, and thus our notion of beauty, we must not only shed preconceived sonic associations but also invite creative participation from beings non-human and non-living. We must also begin to cede creative control away from ourselves and toward such beings by encouraging them to exercise their own standards of beauty and collaborate with each other.

Movement I: Alarm Call
‘Alarm Call’ is a long-form composition and sound collage that juxtaposes, combines, and manipulates alarm calls from various human, non-human, and non-living beings. Evolutionary biologists understand the alarm call to be an altruistic behavior between species, who, by warning others of danger, place themselves by instinct in a broader system of belonging. The piece poses the question: how might we hear better to broaden and enhance our sense of belonging in the universe? Might we behave more altruistically if we better heed the calls of – and call out to – non-human beings?

Using granular synthesis, biofeedback, and algorithmic modulation, I fold the human alarm call – the siren – into non-human alarm calls, generating novel “inter-being” sonic collaborations with increasing sophistication and complexity. 

Movement II: A.I.-Truism
A synthesizer piece co-written with an AI in the style of Vangelis’s Blade Runner score, to pay homage to the space of the Bradbury Building.

Movement III: Alarmism
A machine learning model “learns” A.I.Truism and recreates Alarm Call, generating an original fusion of the two.

Movement IV: A.I. Call
A machine learning model “learns” Alarm Call and recreates A.I.Truism, generating an original fusion of the two.


RAVE (IRCAM 2021) https://github.com/acids-ircam/RAVE