The first version of THE FUTURE IS CODED (videogame 20 min.) will be presented at the exhibition Differences which opens on Thursday September 9, 18:00 > 23:00 on the occasion of Brussels Gallery Weekend and will remain open that weekend Friday September 10 till Sunday September 12, 11:00 > 19:00.
Afterwards, the exhibition will be open from September 16 till October 3, from Thursday till Sunday, 11:00 > 18:00.
Gosset Site, Building A (first floor)
Rue Gabrielle Petitstraat 4-6, 1080 Brussels
THE FUTURE IS CODED refers to a future that's already present here and now but remains somehow inaccessible to us. It's an old philosophical idea that past, present and future exists simultaneously. If the future exists, it could be accessed like a space or a room.
In Chris Marker's science fiction film La Jetée 1962 we hear the voice-over saying: 'The future was better protected than the past. After more, painful tries, he (the protagonist) eventually caught some waves of the world to come.'
Since ancient history we've tried accessing the future through mediators. Noise and randomness (chance) are media that are used worldwide to access the future in so called divination techniques. Noise mediates via articulating hidden layers to our conscious mind.
The future is like a wall of noise. We carve our path through time, sifting meaning from noise.
Shoshana Zuboff writes in her book Surveillance Capitalism about big data companies that harvest rich predictive data in the waste materials of our online behavior. The rich data companies are after are in the extra data, in the noise. They use them to forecast our future behavior.
The NOISESCAPES I create in the work are screens of noise depicting settings for a possible future. The videogame is about discovering and experiencing a particular set-up built from layers of noise.
'Invisible lines appear at bottom left, creating what feels like tremors. They resonate outward from the initial mark and become increasingly vague and indiscernible until a point where their origins are all but obscured.'
Pragma is the first character that appears in THE FUTURE IS CODED. She is a multiple and thus so forms a small group with herself.
She navigates in cross correlation with you and reflects what singular action does executed as a group.
'Picking up rhythmic, high-pitched beats, the pebbles vibrate against the body.'
THE FUTURE IS CODED is developed in the context of Ars Electronica FutureLab, Linz Austria of March 2021 supported by Vlaanderen Department CJM.
PRAGMA, A MULTIPLE IN CROSS CORRELATION.
Illustrated Book in progress.
(Introduction page)
I am in acoustic space. Gently pulsating bells are dotting the surface as far as I can see. The idea of color is entirely lacking, but I know it's there because of the elaborate geometry.
In the back of my head lives a memory of something, something from here. I'm trapped in this universe. One in which there are no stars, no nights, and no tides. Yet, there are just the miniature bells, glowing in a sea of grey darkness. Light rains down on me, low and vibrant in the interior. Once I pass through the border, I will see it. For the first time in years, I know that there is something else out there. The sky is hazy and dark, with grey clouds and dark water. I know what they are: they are memories. Over the course of the next five years, they’ll fade until they are indistinguishable from the surrounding sky.
A sea of orange color, generated by billions of microscopic creatures, rises up from the depth. It's an intense color, like nothing I've ever seen before. Life is scattered almost everywhere like a fine dust. I blank my mind and relax my body. The tunnel will take me to the next spot. The creatures inside me show the gooey orange gunk that comes out of my body. I like this. “I will return here”.
Play short version
