Max Cooper – Morphosis (2019)

A collaboration between visual artist Memo Akten and electronic musician Max Cooper, created as part of Cooper’s Yearning for the infinite audio-visual performance at the Barbican in London (2019).

The piece explores how natural structures – from the most tiny to the most huge – share aesthetic properties, as recognized by both artificial and biological neural networks, and are recreated using deep artificial neural networks in continuous flowing sequences via these connections. It is a study of the seemingly infinite nature of space and natural physical structure, which can loop back on itself to give endless visual exploration and variation.

The visuals are an extension of Akten’s Deep Meditations series, a monument that celebrates life, nature, the universe and our subjective experience of it. The work invites us on a spiritual journey through slow, meditative, continuously evolving images and sounds, told through the imagination of a deep artificial neural network, celebrating the interconnectedness of all human, non-human, living and non living things across many scales of time and space – from microbes to galaxies.

The live performance at the Barbican consisted of a six-channel projection onto a 20m wide gauze in front of the stage as well as projections on the side walls, the audience, and the ceiling for a fully enveloping and hypnotic experience.