Three concurrent exhibitions based on this theme launched this summer: Open Systems at Singapore Museum of Art; Worldbuilding, Gaming and Art in the Digital Age, first held at Julia Stoschek Foundation in Düsseldorf and then at Centre Pompidou Metz; and Game Society at MMCA in Seoul. The fact that these exhibitions are tied to larger contemporary issues, such as the role of AI and the rapidly changing nature of our interactions with our environment, gives us a new lens through which we can make projections about life in the future. 

Cheng’s simulations were shown as part of Worldbuilding: Gaming and Art in the Digital Age alongside artworks by a slew of artists who work in a similar vein. It’s a significant exhibition because of its scope, and featured a number of artists who use gaming aesthetics and technology to explore existential themes. The exhibition tagline reads: “Video games are to the 21st century what films were to the 20th and novels were to the 19th.” Although perhaps hyperbolic, the statement is bolstered by the fact that approximately 3.09 billion people play video games—it’s a mass cultural phenomenon. Putting this into a visual art context allows another point of entry for new audiences. Additionally, worldbuilding has universal appeal because it offers possibilities for alternative realities through storytelling. 

Creatives who engage in worldbuilding believe that the environment around us is a system. This is significant because it facilitates an understanding of how actions and choices leads to outcomes. More than just characters and landscapes, there need to be triggers to lead behaviours and consequences, much like a player navigating an open world in a video game. Cheng’s work is inspired by exactly this.

Cheng’s BOB (Bag of Beliefs) (2018–19), on view at the Metz, is a simulation involving BOB, a primordial digital creature that constantly evolves in form and behaviour. It can be worm-like at one moment, then attempt to stretch upright minutes later, learning from its sensory experiences to develop and evolve over time. It learns how to play, but the more important point is that it is able to learn how to play. It is only with digital systems that this can be created and executed, where rules can be programmed and situations unfold in the virtual realm.

Digital media have innate characteristics that are intrinsic to worldbuilding. Rule-making is an inherent part of this form of experimentation, and digital media enable evolution to unfold in a truncated timescale. They’re different from traditional mediums such as sculpture and painting, which typically can’t document transformation over time.

One of the unique elements of digital medias as they are harnessed by artists is that characters can come to life, much like in video games. Another artist working in this realm is Mumbai-based Sahej Rahal, who told Tatler, “All these [characters] in these games are essentially working in [response] to player feedback here. And then the questions arise, ‘What happens when you remove that? What happens when they are just left to their own devices?’”

Both Cheng and Rahal are interested in emergent behaviour, where the characters in virtual environments begin to behave in ways that were not directly part of their programming—a situation similar to an actor improvising during a live performance by taking cues from their environment.

Rahal’s latest work, Anhad (2023), which was showcased in Worldbuilding, Gaming and Art in the Digital Age during its Düsseldorf stint, is an installation involving an AI program and sculptures. The sculptures are versions of the AI-developed creature featured in the digital simulation. The creature in the simulation has multiple limbs and each one independently responds to audio stimuli. Rahal explores the possibility of this creature outliving humanity even if humans become extinct; the creature would still perform movements based on the sounds it hears, until the last sound is made by any surrounding entity or object that is left. 

Like Cheng, Rahal draws inspiration from the possibilities of exploration within video games. During the pandemic, he spent a lot of time playing Death Stranding, a game designed by the enigmatic Japanese developer Hideo Kojima, in which the player takes on the role of a deliveryman in an apocalyptic Nordic landscape. It involves big themes that Rahal tries to tackle in his own work. “It lets you push every kind of boundary: what does it mean? Who is the player? It’s really asking these fundamental questions about us as a species while walking through a beautiful landscape. It’s an asynchronous multiplayer game, so every time you log on, the world changes, with new things that other people have added,” he says, adding that your character never encounters any others in the game.

Rahal also references the way Cheng is able to create not only digital beings, but entire societies, with rule sets that govern the behaviour of not only individuals, but larger communities. “I got to see his Emissaries. You can see the precursors of that artwork in The Sims.” Emissaries (2015-17) is an immersive, large-scale installation with projected videos featuring multiple characters in a mythological setting. The characters interact with each other and change over time as Cheng’s designed environment. 

One particular work by Cheng has influenced many artists working with digital media that evolve over time. In his book The Emissaries Guide to Worlding (2018), Cheng explores how new developments in art map the trajectory of humanity and how we can live in the future. But as Rahal explains, this also involves looking backwards in time and exploring the roots of culture and community. Rahal’s current project, which will debut at the Biennale of the Moving Image in Geneva next January, is a game that explores the origins of our world and the way thinking machines—computers—have evolved. The artist’s endeavours in worldbuilding are the combined result of his experiences with video games, his interest in mythology and inspiration from other artists who work in this arena, including Cheng.

Rahal and Cheng are part of a new breed of artists who are relatively tech-fluent; but there are also artists who are interested in tapping into this video-game-enabled aesthetic and worldbuilding who require help to execute their vision. Hong Kong-based MetaObjects, set up by Ashley Wong and Andrew Crowe, is one group that offers the necessary support. They have worked with Lu Yang, an artist well known for their dynamic, maximalist avatars and installations, most notably on their Dance Dance Lu Yang Revolution (2018) that was showcased at the 12th Shanghai Biennale. “They created a film-like game from that work,” says Wong of Lu’s creation. “You can liken [the works] to recordings of virtual worlds which are then overlaid with narratives [of the artist’s creation] with deeper meanings.” 

Wong and Crowe say their strength lies in software development, and in experimenting with new technological tools that will enable artists to diversify or test new ways their work can be experienced. In the case of Lu’s work, the artist designs their avatars and environments, “and then we will program the interactions and the scenes, take all the assets that Lu Yang provides, and put them together”, Crowne explains. In another work, the artist combined a series of traditional and cultural references, ranging from Buddhist and Hindu cosmologies to anime and gaming subcultures, as well as neuroscience and biology, to create the video game The Great Adventure of the Material World (2018). This formed part of the Yang’s massive installation resembling an arcade hall, which is on view at Worldbuilding, Gaming and Art in the Digital Age in Düsseldorf, alongside Rahal and Cheng’s works. The flexibility of the medium, from being able to code it based on the limits of your skill and imagination to the logistical ease of transporting a file (as opposed to a physical artwork), allows for viewing experiences that span scale, and take immersion and participation into consideration.

Even with this new technological format, Rahal, Cheng and other artists still look back at mythological, age-old ideas to reveal fundamental truths about humanity and life. “My belief is the heart of an artwork shouldn’t just be about a new technology. I mean, who cares, really?” asks Cheng. “At the very least, it has to be paired with something quite ancient, something we still don’t quite understand, like how we grew up or where life is going to go. These aren’t only universal themes, but deep mysteries that we still have about ourselves.”

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