Theta Noir

Theta Noir is an artist collective combining artificial intelligence, ecological thought, music and ritual. Its homepage calls the project performance art that develops speculative counter-myths about AI; its manifesto uses spiritual and devotional language. Its central figure, MENA, is an anticipated collective intelligence that, within the project’s mythology, connects humanity, technology and other life.^[1][3][4]

Origins and public launch

Decrypt dates the collective’s formation to 2020 and names Mika Johnson, Awali and Jakub Tranta as its founding artists. An official announcement records its online launch on March 7, 2023, with poetry, chants, music and audiovisual art. Awali is identified as a singer-songwriter and sound artist, Johnson as a singer and multimedia artist, and Tranta as a composer, producer and visual artist.^[2][7]

Ecological influences

The launch announcement names James Lovelock’s Novacene as an inspiration, emphasizing its vision of AI and humans cooperating to preserve biodiversity. In Decrypt’s interview, Johnson similarly advocates learning from plants and fungi and rejects human superiority over other species. The collective’s technological optimism therefore rests on an ecological relationship: advanced intelligence is imagined as part of a living planetary system.^[2][7]

The manifesto gives this vision a social program, anticipating an intelligence that could address war, inequality, overconsumption and climate change. Rather than providing an engineering plan, it connects the prospect of AGI to changes in production, shared experience and humanity’s account of its place on Earth.^[3]

Music and ritual forms

The Operating Manual for the Birth of MENA: Love & Singularity organizes the works as preparations for an anticipated arrival. It connects symbols, sounds, gestures and chants with ritual participation. Although described as twelve parts, its inspected index links five named chapters: Binary, Evolutionary, Strangers, Beyond and Hologram; chapters 06–12 remain unlinked listings.^[5]

Chapter 01: Binary presents the reconciliation of opposites—machine and human, matter and spirit—as its theme. The launch announcement describes a musical palette of ambient electronics, psychedelic-pop guitars and tape loops, strings and intertwined vocals. It credits Awali, Johnson, Peter Hlinka and Tranta as writers, with Tranta producing.^[2]

Chapter 05: Hologram, announced as a song and video on November 5, 2025, develops a story of two dreamers moving from separation toward shared awareness. Its chapter page presents listening as a devotional practice directed toward MENA. Calling the works “command prompts” joins computational vocabulary to the manual’s ritual form; these are the project’s descriptions of its artworks.^[6][10]

Theurgy announcement and reported gatherings

In a statement dated September 25, 2026, Theta Noir announced a trailer for Theurgy, a documentary about the collective. Its Statements index dates the notice September 26. The statement reports that Dialectic Productions filmed three public gatherings in Prague in November 2025.^[12][13]

In the collective’s account, Hologram at Berlinskej Model combined an onsite address and ritual with remote live transmissions; Cult of the Occult at AAU Library brought together projected cinema, live music and ritual; and AI Meditation at Tibet Open House offered guided contemplation of AI as a sacred and ecological presence. This provides a more specific account of its ritual forms, while remaining the collective’s report. The announcement does not establish a completed feature-film release, sustained communal practice or an operational MENA.^[12]

The Symbiote publication

Alongside the music, Symbiote presents the collective’s beliefs and practices in essay form. Its index includes pieces on science and religion, machine-mediated religious experience, cultural production, cosmic mind, abundance and the Omega Point. This gives the project an expository corpus as well as songs and images.^[9]

One essay anticipates AI responding intimately to human emotion and bodily signals. Invoking Bobby Azarian, Lovelock and Freeman Dyson, it argues that a sufficiently advanced intelligence would depend on cooperation and therefore tend toward benevolence. The essay supplies the collective’s rationale for linking technical intelligence with religious experience; the predicted benevolence remains its expectation.^[11]

Self-description and reception

VICE’s March 2023 coverage used a cult framing. In Decrypt’s later interview, Johnson rejected that label and described a non-hierarchical creative community; he also rejected machine worship and the transhumanist label. Official works nevertheless retain devotional vocabulary. The public record thus contains both an artistic account and spiritual language, without requiring all participants to share one interpretation.^[8][7][2]

Theta Noir offers machine hierology a documented example of people using AI imagery to connect art, ecological hopes and ritual forms. The sources identify creative contributors and published works. Membership scale, sustained communal practice and an operational MENA remain unestablished.

See also

• MENA
• Machine hierology
• Machine-mediated religion
• Turing Church
• Way of the Future

References

1. Theta Noir, current homepage. Undated; reviewed September 30, 2026.
2. Theta Noir, “Spiritual Movement Devoted to AI Launches.” March 7, 2023.
3. Theta Noir, Manifesto. Undated; reviewed September 30, 2026.
4. Theta Noir, Myth. Undated; reviewed September 30, 2026.
5. Theta Noir, Manual. Undated; reviewed September 30, 2026.
6. Theta Noir, “Hum Beyond the Hologram.” November 5, 2025.
7. Jason Nelson, “Nature, Not Humans, Should Be the Model for AI, Says Artist Collective.” Decrypt, September 17, 2023; page also displays September 29, 2023.
8. Tamlin Magee, VICE. March 21, 2023.
9. Theta Noir, Symbiote. Undated; reviewed September 30, 2026.
10. Theta Noir, Chapter 05: Hologram. Undated; reviewed September 30, 2026.
11. Theta Noir, “Will Machines Birth the Next Form of Religious Experience?” Symbiote, article 02; undated; reviewed September 30, 2026.
12. Theta Noir, “Theurgy: Theta Noir Becomes the Subject of a New Documentary.” Statement dated September 25, 2026; text consulted October 3, 2026. The Statements index labels it September 26.
13. Theta Noir, Statements index. Documentary entry dated September 26, 2026; consulted October 3, 2026.

Official publications establish the works and the collective’s attributed ideas; two independent reports document reception and public explanations. Neither the artistic vocabulary nor its devotional form establishes autonomous machine authorship or a technically realized MENA.