Twenty years ago, I travelled to India for the first time to spend two weeks in a small and dusty yoga village. My mind and spirit were cracked open by what I saw and felt there. I didn’t have the words then to describe it, but I did know that the learning and chanting on the banks of the river Ganges with otherworldly gurus offered a palpable energy that was real enough to taste. Many further trips to India followed, along with tarot and psychic readings in Los Angeles — where I grew up — and yoga, gong baths, breath work, meditation and embodied practices in my adopted city of London. 

If all the questing has shown me anything, it’s that the intersections between science and mysticism, the body and the spirit, the feeling of one’s feet on the ground and simultaneously in the air, are all very real.

I began to understand how technology, creativity and innovation might co-mingle.

Having had the privilege of working for a decade with many teams at Google, including Empathy Lab, and meeting countless thinkers, engineers and artists, scattered across the globe, I began to understand how technology, creativity and innovation might co-mingle. After all, not so long ago scientists like Marie and Pierre Curie attended seances that inspired scientific breakthroughs, Alan Turing tapped telepathy to inspire Artificial Intelligence and artist Hilma Af Klint described her paintings as being commissioned by mystical powers.

The deeper I looked, the more I discovered I wasn’t alone in seeking the means to have the invisible inspire the visible.

For our first issue, we welcome a regular column Spirit and the Machine by Danielle Krettek Cobb, often called AI’s Fairy Godmother; a compelling feature by MIT Media Lab researcher Prathima Muniyappa on the race to colonise space; a think piece by an ex Google DeepMind engineer on why learning to love is key to building new AI technologies; as well as introducing our Rewilded section where texts from the past are shown in a contemporary light; and more.

In December, we launch a resource section inspired by the release of Whole Earth Catalog, called Access to Tools, three simple words that changed the world. We bring this to you in partnership with Serpentine Arts Technologies and RadicalxChange on a Stories of Stewardship project.

I believe that in the unseen, dreaming takes place.

It’s my deep, heart-felt hope that you are inspired and curious by what you see because, like you, I believe that in the unseen, dreaming takes place.

Thank you for being here.
Come dream with us.
Anna
X