From the moment that Prometheus stole the gift of fire from the gods of Olympus, we mortals have turned to its flickering warmth, huddling together, mesmerized by the light within.
Could Prometheus have anticipated the myriad ways that man would subvert and reinvent fire, all for our collective amusement? Probably not, I thought, while staring at a giant Technicolor laser beam morphing in the middle of a dance floor in the Mission.
That laser is named AiBeacon, and it’s billed as a “bonfire, reimagined.” The tagline made me snicker the first time I saw it — as if lasers were anything new for a DJ set? But as I looked at the hundreds of people mingling and grooving at Gray Area on Saturday night, it became clear that they just couldn't help gravitating to the fiery pillar of light.
The April 27th event was the work of New Nostalgia, which markets itself as a “fake tech company headquartered in Silicon Valley.” Its website references “late stage capitalism,” “the rise of automation,” and the “meaning crisis for creatives” as core motivations for its work. Much of its advertising, if you can even call it that, comes in the form of bizarre deepfaked videos with unreal human figures.
In reality, AiBeacon and New Nostalgia blur the lines between party, prank, and philosophy. I’m pretty sure they decided to wear matching grey Patagonia sweaters as a joke for our interview, and they’re quick to drop casual references to cultural theorists like Mark Fisher and the existential question of “lost futures” while talking about tech. As it turns out, the collective isn’t based in Silicon Valley — it’s just a small crew of artists operating out of the Mission. And if calling a big ol’ laser a “powerful light, connecting humanity” sounds like a comically lofty concept, it’s because it is.
But as I watched AiBeacon’s colors glow, glimmer and fade over the course of nearly three hours on Saturday, soundtracked by the unrelenting rhythms of Miami DJ duo INVT, the concept started to make sense. Few people cared about facing the DJs on stage, as is common on so many dance floors. Instead, they mostly gathered in a circle around the light, either hypnotized by the digital bonfire or chatting curiously about it.
A day earlier, I met three members of New Nostalgia at their studio in the Secret Alley, a shared space for creatives that is nestled into an unassuming building on Capp Street. It’s a young, diverse crew: Jordan Ponciano, 30, grew up in Millbrae and moved to the City as a teen. Brendan Luu, 27, migrated from the East Coast to the Bay Area after college. Aakash Malhotra, 26, arrived in San Francisco after living and studying in Georgia. (Another member, Osebo, is currently in New York City.)
Their studio doesn’t give away the scope of their wit and ambition. It mostly looks like a laboratory for a hobbyist with ADHD. One room offers a workstation with an array of synths, MIDI controllers and DJ gear for recording and performing music. The other looks like a half-empty supply closet that just happens to have a high-powered laser hanging from the ceiling.
“It doesn’t look like much, but we’ve been doing a lot of testing,” Ponciano told me.
Long before AiBeacon was even a concept, the trio bonded by going to underground dance parties and throwing impromptu events around the city. Luu and Malhotra learned to DJ together during the onset of the pandemic, and eventually they met Ponciano, who was booking events at the immersive audio venue Envelop SF. They grew close last spring at a rave in the Mojave Desert, then began to brainstorm a group project.
“We all DJ, but what connects us is the desire to do a bunch of visual arts beyond that. Designing things in any way, really,” Ponciano said. “Thankfully, I was in a position where people I met and worked with were putting amazing equipment into my hands.”
In a scene that could be out of the HBO comedy Silicon Valley, they spent days whiteboarding words and sensations that comprise a perfect party. At one point, Ponciano mentioned that the event could serve “as a beacon,” and the metaphor turned literal. “We thought it could be a beam of light, like throwing up the Bat-Signal,” Malhotra recalled.
The most ironic element of the laser is that, despite its name, AiBeacon uses no AI. Frankly, I was worried that I would witness an underwhelming party full of tech evangelists standing around a weak laser powered by crude machine-learning software. Instead, it was a spectacular bit of DIY artistry on display as Ponciano and Luu smashed buttons from 10 yards away, coordinating the dancing light to the sound reverberating in the room.
Given that the rise of AI-generated content is an actual threat to creative artists, the twisting of the concept to live performance while calling it “AiBeacon” is a way to personify the tension, Malhotra said.
“We’ve been seeing all these superfluous ads about building AI that’s going to do X, Y, Z with all these broad claims. We thought that was funny because how would it possibly be true in practice? We’re playing into that,” he continued. “We say we’re building AI experiences that inspire and connect humanity, but we’re throwing a party. That’s it. And that feedback loop, when people come, they actually end up inspired and connected about that.”
“We're joking, but also we’re serious,” Ponciano added. “It’s not fabricated. We do want to connect humanity.”
In so many ways, New Nostalgia’s approach feels like a commentary not just on AI, but the broader culture of tech trends and ideologies powering it.
AI-oriented companies accounted for a third of San Francisco’s commercial real estate gains in 2023, with some industry observers predicting exponential growth in years to come. Groups like Solaris Society are recruiting AI believers to work and play together, with the hope of transforming neighborhoods into “campus living.” The Mission District alone has seen such a flood of newcomers, including OpenAI and Adept, that it now has the inauspicious nickname of “Area AI.” Meanwhile, industry juggernauts like Marc Andreessen are extolling the existential virtues of “techno-optimism” and accelerationist social theory, claiming that intervening in the growth of AI is tantamount to ending humanity.
It’s a little more complicated for Luu, Malhotra and Ponciano, and they display ambivalence about working in the industry. Malhotra quit his last job at a startup due to burnout. Luu works with AI and design at YouTube, but shrugs sheepishly when he mentions it. Ponciano earns his wage at a startup that makes point-of-sale software for pot businesses.
As Luu put it, New Nostalgia is “occupying the techno-optimist viewpoint” to critique the thing itself. “We don’t think technology is bad. It amplifies your senses but also amputates them,” Luu continued. “There needs to be discourse around how it’s being applied.”
It’s why they chose to be precise with the tone of the project, Malhotra added. “We needed it to be subversive,” he said. “So calling ourselves a ‘fake tech company,’ well… I think with that one statement, we’ve inspired several questions. It colors everything we say and do afterward.”
All their takes bounced around in my head on Saturday night as the crowd started to thin at 1:20 a.m. The AiBeacon was still going strong, looking especially psychedelic amid the accumulated fog. We had been told the event had a no-phone policy; security even made us put stickers over our cameras, as if we had entered a club in Berlin. I couldn’t help but take it off, just for a few photos, before the night ended.
The crew will continue to upgrade the hardware and software of AiBeacon for more performances in the near future, and they think it could run on actual AI-generative models to automate visuals one day. Then again, I couldn’t imagine anyone in the audience on Saturday actually caring. The gravity of the room had changed because of a collective instinct. Moths don’t care if their light is automated, I thought.
