chimerical
intelligence
lab

Ongoing

Cnidarian Economics

Rethinking the automation of finance with chimera intelligence

Hand-drawn notes on cnidarians, including siphonophores and colonial forms, in white on a dark blue ground
Poster titled Cnidarian Chimerical Phase Space, A Vitalist Materialism Mapping of Cnidarianness: a dark map of jellyfish and other cnidarians linked by fine lines
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Cnidarians (jellyfish, corals, siphonophores and their relatives) organise themselves in ways that look nothing like a brain: as individuals, as swarms, as colonies. Cnidarian Economics asks what finance would look like if its intelligence were modelled on them.

Chimera intelligence

The project sets the structural quality of ecosystems against the unsustainable direction of human, western economic models. Its proposal is a chimera intelligence: an AI that does not copy the self-interested, short-term profit view inspired by the human brain, but combines the behaviours of many species, individual, social, swarm and colonial, and acts as a diversified trading agent. It stretches the notion of intelligence beyond the animal brain, in response to global warming, the biodiversity crisis and other ecological crises.

Form

The work is developed through material objects, digital animated content, infographics and texts, assembled into multimedia, interactive and immersive installations. The poster above, Cnidarian Chimerical Phase Space, is a map in the same spirit as Mapping Blue Marble: it lays many states of a subject side by side.

Where it has been

The project was developed by Ianis Dobrev, first during a residency at Baltan Laboratories and then as one of the 15 fellows of ARTeCHÓ, the European programme on art, blockchain and decentralised technologies. On 12 June 2024 it was part of the ARTeCHÓ Learning Experience in Brussels. It also appears in the programme's publication, Investigating Decentralized Action in Art.

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