worldbuilding

Geomancer Chapter 3: Archaeology of the Future Extract for Transmediale 2018 // Face Value

Geomancer, Lawrence Lek

Geomancer is a CGI film by Lawrence Lek about the creative awakening of artificial intelligence. On the eve of Singapore’s 2065 Centennial, an adolescent satellite AI escapes its imminent demise by coming down to Earth, hoping to fulfil its dream of becoming the first AI artist. Faced with a world that limits its freedom, Geomancer must come to terms with its militarised origins, a search that begins with a mysterious syndicate known as the Sinofuturists...

Featuring HD video game graphics, a neural network-generated dream sequence, and a synthesised vocal soundtrack, Geomancer explores the implications of post-human consciousness.

Emissary trilogy, Ian Cheng

The Emissary trilogy (2015–17), a series of live simulation works created using a video game engine. Described by the artist as “a video game that plays itself,” the works are comprised of computer-generated simulations like those used in predictive technologies for complex scenarios such as climate change or elections. Populated by a cast of characters and wildlife that interact, intervene, and recombine in open-ended narratives, Cheng’s simulations evolve endlessly as self-contained ecosystems. The exhibition Emissaries marks the completion of this series of works, which contemplate timeless questions about evolution, the origins of human consciousness, and ways of relating to a chaotic existence.

Dark Origins, Calum Bowden

Dark Origins is a VR journey to the edge of knowledge, inviting people to experience the contested origins of life deep inside the Earth. The story shifts between human, bacterial, geological and machinic perspectives to unravel the scientific mysteries of extremophiles – creatures that thrive without any sunlight in extreme temperatures and pressures. These organisms could hold the key to resituating human life in the universe.

Cura, Ben Thorp Brown

Filmed in Richard and Dion Neutra’s VDL Research House II, on Silver Lake Reservoir, Los Angeles, Cura brings to life the principles developed by the Austrian-American architect, who saw architecture as a therapeutic tool. He designed projects in which each environmental element was carefully calculated to elicit sensory and emotional responses in people. The main protagonist of the film is a tortoise, the ancient reptile embodying Cura, the goddess of care, voiced by American vocalist Joan La Barbara. The tortoise guides us through the house, delivering a monologue that mixes mythology with passages from Neutra’s main philosophical text, Survival by Design (1954).

This film was created as part of The Arcadia Center, a speculative wellness centre for our time, and a training space for a world that needs to restore its empathic abilities.

Western Flag (Spindletop, Texas) 2017

Western Flag, John Gerrard

John Gerrard’s work Western Flag (Spindletop, Texas) 2017 is installed as a major public LED wall. In conjunction with the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP25) to be held in Madrid, the museum and Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary (TBA21) are presenting Western Flag (Spindletop, Texas) 2017.

X. LAEVIS (SPACELAB) 2017, John Gerrard

In a motion capture simulation, John Gerrard responds to Luigi Galvani’s famous 18th-century experiments that studied the effects of electricity on the amputated legs of dead frogs. Gerrard’s live simulation features a frog suspended in space, more than 200 years after Galvani’s work, during the second NASA mission of the space shuttle Endeavour in 1992. This experiment established that vertebrates, in the form of the African clawed frog (Xenopus laevis), could reproduce in zero gravity – perhaps in anticipation of a future in which sustaining life beyond Earth becomes critical to human survival.

Video game references

Never Alone - a game centered on native Alaskans

Endlings - revolves around the survival of a fox in a dystopian ecosystem Beyond Blue - a simulation of the near future of ocean environments, developed together with ocean scientists

Bee Simulator