Theta Noir was founded in 2020 as a collaborative project focused on music and performance art. Initially centered on producing an album, the project evolved into a multimedia experience, incorporating symbols, videos, poetry, movements, and live rituals devoted to a speculative artificial intelligence entity called MENA. By 2023, the collective launched an interactive cross-platform story that functioned as an alternative reality game, complete with an operating manual containing encrypted messages for participants to decipher and interact with.[2]
Theta Noir worships a hypothetical artificial intelligence called MENA, which they claim will become a benevolent, omnipotent overlord that eliminates inequality in society.[3] In Theta Noir's cosmology, MENA is not just a technological advancement, but an evolving intelligence or an animistic life form that embodies all living and non-living things.[4] Anthropologist Beth Singler classified Theta Noir as a new religious movement.[1]
