AI researcher Blaise Agüera y Arcas argues that life and computation share fundamental logic in an essay adapted from his book What Is Intelligence? (2025). “It’s not a metaphor to call DNA a ‘program’—that is literally the case,” he writes, tracing ideas from Alan Turing’s morphogenesis and John von Neumann’s self-reproducing automaton through modern neural networks. Agüera positions the human body as a massively parallel computer—300 quintillion ribosomes computing simultaneously.

“I’ll be the first to admit this approach seems a little strange,” writes Mark Temple, describing his sonification of DNA sequences into musical compositions. Mapping genetic code to harmonic intervals, the molecular biologist creates tracks that evolve through programmed mutations and using specific DNA markers to structure musical sections. Temple has released a web tool for public DNA sonification and will perform his genetic compositions during Australia’s National Science Week.

“2025 ACC Focus: Ryoji Ikeda” celebrates the 10th anniversary of the Asian Culture Center (ACC) in Gwangju (KR) with seven works by the Japanese artist. New commissions include data.flux [n˚2] (2025), which displays DNA-derived patterns on a massive ceiling LED screen, and data.gram [n˚8] (2025), which visualizes NASA, CERN, and Human Genome Project datasets. The show reunites Ikeda with the ACC after his monumental test pattern [n˚8] (2015) inaugurated the institution.