“Thousand Lives” Installation view ©Gladstone Gallery Seoul. Photo: Jeon Byung-cheol

Gladstone Gallery Seoul presents a solo exhibition, “Thousand Lives” by Ian Cheng (b. 1984), on view through April 13.

The artist has been exploring the nature of human consciousness through philosophical thought and searching for the meaning of human existence through artificial intelligence (AI). In this exhibition, he features two works that extend a personalized experience of his art world to the audiences, and adapt to their attention in return, based on the questions ‘What if an artwork could integrate you into its dream?,’ and ‘What if the endgame of art is art that adapts to you?.’

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 audience 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. 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 the audience’s presence and adapt to precise viewing perspective, giving the audience a hyper-personalized portal into Thousand’s worldview.