Ian Cheng: Thousand Lives

Opening February 23
4pm - 6pm
February 23 - April 14, 2024
Gladstone Seoul

What if an artwork could integrate you into its dream?
What if the endgame of art is art that adapts to you?

The exhibition features two works that extend a personalized experience of its world to you, and adapt to your attention in return.

Life After BOB: The Chalice Study Experience (LABX), 2021-2022, is a 50-minute anime built in the Unity video game engine and presented in real-time. It centers on the life of Chalice, the first child to grow up with an AI symbiote called BOB. Unlike typical cinematic productions, LABX was conceived and built as a simulated world, populated by characters and artifacts with rich lore beyond the story. LABX features “worldwatching” mode, an intuitive way for you to pause the cinematic story and freely explore every detail of the LAB world and its many secrets.  

Thousand Lives, 2023-2024, is a simulation that dramatizes the daily life of Chalice's pet turtle, Thousand. Thousand is driven by a neuro-symbolic AI model that attempts to learn the relevance of everything it encounters to its own internal reptilian urges. Over the course of many days, Thousand develops a recognition of the affordances and threats in Chalice's messy apartment environment, minimizes upsets to its expectations, and constructs new motives to better satisfy its competing urges. This slow but steady developmental process forms the ongoing drama of Thousand’s lifetime in a new kind of "slow story" achieved only via simulation. When viewed one-on-one, Thousand Lives may recognize your presence and adapt to your precise viewing perspective, giving you a hyper-personalized portal into Thousand’s worldview. 

Learn more about Life After BOB at https://lifeafterbob.io/

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