ART CITIES:N.York-Ian Cheng
Ian Cheng is best known for his digital simulation works that draw on his background in cognitive science and employ rudimentary forms of artificial intelligence. Coding these unpredictable animated worlds from the ground up, he uses the language of video games to probe complex themes such as evolution, human behavior, and the history of consciousness.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: MoMA PS1 Archive
Ian Cheng “Emissaries”, his first Museum solo exhibition in the U.S. A., that is on presentation at MoMA PS1, features the complete “Emissary” trilogy (2015-2017), a series of three live simulation video works dedicated to the history of cognitive evolution. These works ask us to imagine technology not as a subordinate reflection of our own minds, but as a tool to model a non-anthropomorphic vision of history and consciousness. Using an engine for developing video games, Emissary is made up of open-ended animations with no fixed outcome or narrative, a format Cheng calls live simulation, a kind of neurological gym in which art becomes a means to deliberately exercise the feelings of confusion, anxiety and cognitive dissonance that accompany moments of change. “I see my simulations as a kind of neurological gym in which art becomes a means to deliberately exercise the feelings of confusion, anxiety and cognitive dissonance that can accompany life in a world of intense change and uncertainty. In this way Bad Corgi functions as a shadowy mindfulness tool about refusing to eradicate stress and anxiety, and instead learning to deliberately setup and collaborate with those bad-feeling feelings.” In his simulations, familiar objects are programmed with basic properties, but are left to influence each other without authorial control or end. What results are often unpredictable emergent behaviours that ceaselessly combine and disassemble within a living virtual ecosystem. Algorithmic modelling, game design and principles of improvisation inform Cheng’s work and serve as technologies to render sacred human dignities and habits as raw material for mutation. In “Emissary Forks at Perfection” (2015), a dog character named the Shiba Emissary, a descendant from another simulation, appears 3,000 years later. The landscape is the same, but now it’s populated by artificial animals that resurrect a dead celebrity from the 21st Century. The dog, Cheng said, is “A means of talking about where consciousness can go, without eradicating powerful emotions like fear and anxiety, which can be very useful”.
Info: MoMA PS1, 22-25 Jackson Ave, Long Island City, Duration: 9/4-25/9/17, Days & Hours: Thu-Mon 12:00-18:00, http://momaps1.org
