Emissaries : A Trilogy of Simulations
Cheng, Ian
Emissaries : A Trilogy of Simulations - Wiley, 2019. - Vol. 89, Issue 1, 2019 : (118-125 p.)
In the belly of a supercomputer, scientists' predictive modelling software simulates the life of a landscape. Weather systems ebb and flow, economies boom and bust, and ecologies thrive and die as a billion algorithmic operations prototype a digital proxy of the world. The data generated by these programs inform the policies of governments, the actions of scientists and the gambles of brokers. These computational environments are oracles for an uncertain tomorrow.
Against this context, New York‐based artist Ian Cheng develops his own alternative system of digital simulations as models of imaginary worlds, populated by non‐playable characters and fields of narrative agents that rerun past histories and rehearse strange futures. Landscapes are no longer interconnected fields of growing biomatter, the exchange of energies and the cycles of seasons. They are ecologies formed from a multitude of machines, a community of intelligent programs, living out their complex lives in a world without us. These simulated territories are the new nature of the Post‐ Anthropocene, a landscape of artificial life playing out endlessly in stacks of silica and rows of rare‐earth hard drives.
Emissaries : A Trilogy of Simulations - Wiley, 2019. - Vol. 89, Issue 1, 2019 : (118-125 p.)
In the belly of a supercomputer, scientists' predictive modelling software simulates the life of a landscape. Weather systems ebb and flow, economies boom and bust, and ecologies thrive and die as a billion algorithmic operations prototype a digital proxy of the world. The data generated by these programs inform the policies of governments, the actions of scientists and the gambles of brokers. These computational environments are oracles for an uncertain tomorrow.
Against this context, New York‐based artist Ian Cheng develops his own alternative system of digital simulations as models of imaginary worlds, populated by non‐playable characters and fields of narrative agents that rerun past histories and rehearse strange futures. Landscapes are no longer interconnected fields of growing biomatter, the exchange of energies and the cycles of seasons. They are ecologies formed from a multitude of machines, a community of intelligent programs, living out their complex lives in a world without us. These simulated territories are the new nature of the Post‐ Anthropocene, a landscape of artificial life playing out endlessly in stacks of silica and rows of rare‐earth hard drives.