IAN CHENG

Ian Cheng was born in Los Angeles, USA in 1984. He lives and works in New York, USA. 

"The first question for me is what is a simulation? Simulation is not a symbolisation or a representation. It is a sandbox of reality’s dynamic processes or like reality’s gym. Writers simulate a thousand forking worlds on the draft page. Boeing simulates new aerodynamic designs in a subzero wind hangar. Athletes simulate low oxygen conditions and new diets in training. We simulate with friends what to say to haters, what to say to lovers. It is a private game we devise when the aliveness of a situation is too complex to really know. It is drafting reality through an ocean of forking behaviours to find an optimal end. What is a live simulation? It is playing this game in public and not letting it end when the game gets good. Darwin said the greatest live simulation is nature herself, who incessantly tries and fails aloud, never stopping at perfection. But nature is often too fast, too slow, too big, too small for us. We desire a live simulation at scale with human spacetime, but unending in its variety and blind to our barometers of quality. A live simulation that we can feel, but that does not give a fig for us. This name, live simulations, is vital for compressing these contradictions into one thing, one phrase, for the mind to recall and use."

Ian Cheng in conversation with Elodie Evers, 2015

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