Tom Petty's Quantum AI Alignment Jacket

Whilst exhibiting at CVPR in Nashville in the summer of 2025, I came across this jacket in the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. It is a Nudie suit made for Tom Petty to wear at Live Aid in 1985.

The Tom Petty exhibit case at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum — The Tom Petty exhibit, Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, Nashville.

The original Tom Petty Nudie suit, embroidered with planets, atoms and a rocket — The original. Atoms, planets, a rocket, a crescent moon.

I was drawn to its dreamy space-age kitsch, a nostalgia for futures that were already lost by the 1980s. With the help of Margaret Minsky and my wife's sewing machine skills, I remade it.

The remade jacket in progress, with new patches laid out — Remaking it.

I kept the original's atomic-age icons and added new patches alongside them: robotic arms, gene editing, quantum computers. The futures we picture now, stitched next to the futures of 1985.

The finished remade jacket on a mannequin — The remade jacket.

A DNA double helix embroidered across the back of the jacket — A DNA helix across the back.

I stitched BLE gyroscopes into the arms. Raising and lowering each arm steers a control vector in a language model, one arm for the futures of the past, one for the futures of the present. The text the model generates shifts with how I hold my body.

The steering interface, with text being generated and two axis controls labelled TP Past and TP Present — Arm movement steers two opposing vectors as the model generates.

I showed it at the end-of-semester presentation in CMA. Margaret Minsky, who helped me make it, tried it on.

Margaret Minsky wearing the jacket, arms raised — Margaret Minsky in the jacket. Photo: Tiancheng Liu 劉天成.

I began wearing the jacket and thinking about parkour, about how it reads a built environment and answers it with the body, expressively rather than efficiently. I filmed with an action camera held in my mouth, so the footage looks out from where I was looking.

Wearing the jacket with an action camera held in the mouth, walking between columns — Camera in the mouth, Storror style.

How do we move, with our bodies, in an AI world?

Leaping off a balustrade in the jacket, arms outstretched

Mid-jump off the balustrade in the jacket

A grid of frames from the video: wearing the jacket, camera in mouth, jumping and balancing on the balustrade — Frames from *Balancing Act*, a work in progress.

Code: github.com/isaac-art/tom_pettys_quantum_ai_alignment_jacket.