Superradiance

Superradiance is a multiscreen video and sound installation, film and performance by Memo Akten and Katie Peyton Hofstadter exploring embodiment, technology, and planetary consciousness. It invites the viewer to extend their bodily perception beyond the skin and into the living environment. The work combines poetry, dance, and insights from neuroscience, woven together with code, simulations, and generative AI to evoke a visceral, intimate connection to the living planet. It's one thing to intellectually know that we are deeply entangled within complex assemblages of life, interdependent physically, chemically, and biologically, across multiple scales of time and space. But how can we feel this connection in our own bodies? Dance is one of our earliest biotechnologies. We dance to express ourselves, to connect to each other. Through ritual and ecstatic dance, we dance to experience union with the universe directly. We draw upon the cognitive phenomenon of ‘embodied simulation,’ where, as you observe another person moving, you feel their movement in your own body. As Vittorio Gallese writes, "By means of a shared neural state realized in two different bodies ... the 'objectual other' becomes 'another self.’” Superradiance leverages the cognitive phenomenon of ‘embodied simulation,’ in an immersive, ritual sanctuary, where invisible dancers embedded in animate environments transform forests, oceans, and deserts into extensions of our own bodies. And where technological mediation becomes a means of exploring embodied consciousness rather than escaping it. Requests for name changes in the electronic proceedings will be accepted with no questions asked. However name changes may cause bibliographic tracking issues. Authors are asked to consider this carefully and discuss it with their co-authors prior to requesting a name change in the electronic proceedings. Use the "Report an Issue" link to request a name change. Do not remove: This comment is monitored to verify that t