Memo Akten

Memo Akten, born in Istanbul in 1975, is an artist, researcher and computer scientist. He uses emerging technologies both as his material and as the subject of his work. He works across moving image, sound, language, dance, performance and installation, often building pieces from algorithms, data and interactive systems. He teaches at the University of California San Diego, where he became Associate Professor in 2026.

Akten calls his works "Speculative Simulations" and "Data Dramatizations". After an early interactive work, Body Paint (2009), he turned to neural networks in Learning to See (2017) and Deep Meditations (2018), which consider perception and how people make meaning. Distributed Consciousness (2021) and Waves 2.0: Terra (2023) followed. He studied civil engineering at Bosphorus University and completed a doctorate at Goldsmiths, University of London, in 2021, in artificial intelligence and computational art.

Forms (2012), made with Quayola, received the Golden Nica of Prix Ars Electronica in 2013. His work has been shown at the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Grand Palais, the Barbican and the Mori Art Museum. ACMI in Melbourne gave Distributed Consciousness a solo presentation from 2023 to 2024. Holdings include M+ in Hong Kong, the Whitney Museum of American Art and Borusan Contemporary. He co-founded the studio Marshmallow Laser Feast in 2011.