Christina Lu, Connor Cook, & Dalena Tran
Whole Earth Codec
Single-channel video (colour, sound), 18:04, interactive website, text
The Whole Earth Codec is a foundation model that transforms planetary-scale, multi-modal ecological data into a single knowledge architecture.
Traditional models of the observatory have focused on gazing outward, towards the cosmos. The recent proliferation of planetary sensor networks has inverted this gaze, forming a new kind of planetary observatory that takes the earth itself as its object. Could we cast the entire earth as a distributed observatory, using a foundation model to compose a singular, synthetic representation of the planet? The current generation of models primarily deal with human language, their training corpus scraped from the detritus of the internet. We must widen the aperture of what these models observe to include the non-human.
The Whole Earth Codec is an autoregressive, multi-modal foundation model that allows the planet to observe itself. This proposal radically expands the scope of foundation models, moving beyond anthropocentric language data towards the wealth of ecological information immanent to the planet.
Moving from raw sense data to high-dimensional embedding in latent space, the observatory folds in on itself, thus revealing a form of computational reason that transcends sense perception alone: a sight beyond sight. Guided by planetary-scale sensing rather than myopic anthropocentrism, the Whole Earth Codec opens up a future of ambivalent possibility through cross-modal meta-observation, perhaps generating a form of planetary sapience.
Christina Lu (b. Shanghai, China) is a AI researcher, technologist, and artist working via technical proposals, philosophical implications, and narrative infrastructures. She is pursuing a PhD at the Univeristy of Oxford in Computer Science within the Human-Centred AI group. Formerly a software engineer at Google DeepMind, she serves as an affiliate researcher at Antikythera, a thinktank for the speculative philosophy of computation hosted by the Berggruen Institute. Christina holds a BA in Computer Science and Studio Art from Dartmouth College and is based in London.
Dalena Tran (b. 1992, West Valley City, UT) is an artist and educator based in Los Angeles. Her work explores the imagination of collective and future histories through moving image and interdisciplinary research. She has taught at institutions like CalArts, Ohio State, and UCLA, where she engages students in thinking critically about the role of media in shaping narratives. Her work has been featured internationally at places like the New York Film Festival, MoMA PS1, and ICA London. Supported by organizations such as the Berggruen Institute and Serpentine Arts Technologies, her projects emphasize new models of collective knowledge and creative worldbuilding. She is the co-founder of Fuser, a platform for co-creating with AI.
Connor Cook (b. Houston, USA) is a media artist and researcher currently based in Amsterdam. Utilizing real-time software systems and hardware interfaces, he designs informatic circuits that integrate body and machine, exploring their libidinal interplay through a practice of 'computational performance.' His research interests concern the evolutionary dynamics of techno-cultural systems. He holds a BA from Harvard University and an MA from the Design Academy Eindhoven, where he now acts as a tutor in both the BA and MA degree programs.