EARTH ENGINE

Alice Bucknell

Related events (as part of ARIA, Worlds’ End Hackathon programme):

18 August, 5 pm, Museum of Modern Art Ljubljana / Talk all the world’s polygons

19 – 23 August, Krušče / Closed-door workshop for the participants of ARIA Real Game Play (applications are now closed)

During the residency in Ljubljana, Alice Bucknell will continue developing Earth Engine, a video game and research project exploring planetary play.

The game uses real-time climate data to respawn a speculative Earth every time it is played. It builds on the emerging lore of EVEs (Earth Virtualization Engines), digital Earth twins put forward as the future of climate research. Rejecting the idea of more data = more reality, Earth Engine triangulates ideas of posthuman play, ecological reworlding, and planet as player. Inverting typical game mechanics and distinction between player and environment, here the Earth becomes the player, and the human an NPC.

Earth Engine builds upon several of Bucknell’s long-term research interests, including the interrelation of gaming and ecological thinking, video games as affective interfaces for understanding complex forms of knowledge, and the paradox of predictive technologies in foreclosing other possible futures.