Life After BOB: The Chalice Study

Ian Cheng

Life After BOB imagines new archetypal characters for our weird chaotic times, and gives life to them through an experience that integrates authored cinematic storytelling with open-ended simulated worlding.

Life After BOB: The Chalice Study, introduces the character of Chalice Wong, a 10-year-old girl whose father, Dr. Wong, installs in her nervous system an experimental artificial intelligence named BOB ("Bag of Beliefs") to guide her through the challenge of growing up in an ever-changing world. As Dr. Wong begins to prefer BOB to Chalice, and as BOB threatens to lead Chalice's life better than herself, a jealous Chalice wonders: what is left for me to do, as a classic human?

Life After BOB invents a new form of programmable narrative that allows the visitor to explore more deeply the narratives of the world, and even to influence its contents. Ian Cheng combines the real-time cinematic tools of the Unity program with an AI-managed 'wiki world', which gives the viewer read and write rights to play, modify and expand the details of the fictional world by editing the wiki.

The exhibition presents a large-scale experience of narrative animation that emphasises the drama of the story, but is also a vivid presentation of the changes made to the wiki world of Life After BOB. The exhibition also includes an interactive 'World Watching' which is a presentation of the animation that allows the viewer to freely explore the details of the Life After BOB world at their own pace.

In his latest work, Ian Cheng has defined the principles of video game design, improvisation, and cognitive science to create computer simulations that explore an agent's ability to respond to a constantly changing environment.

Co-commissioned by LUMA Foundation, The Shed (New-York), and Light Art Space (Berlin).