Ian Cheng Entropy Wrangler Cloud
Who are they, what is their career
Ian Cheng (born March 29, 1984) is an American artist known for his live simulations that explore the nature of mutation and human behavior. His simulations, commonly understood as "virtual ecosystems" are less about the wonders of new technologies than about the potential for these tools to realize ways of relating to a chaotic existence. His work has been widely exhibited internationally, including MoMA PS1, Whitney Museum of American Art, Hirshhorn Museum, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Migros Museum, and other institutions.[2]
What is the artworks/concept or practice that I am focusing on
At Frieze London in 2013, Cheng premiered Entropy Wrangler Cloud, one of the first artworks made for virtual reality, using first generation Oculus Rift headsets.
At this point in history, it’s finally possible to compose behaviors. I’m trying to find a frame that enables you to see what happens when you mash one behavior with another. Artists are always looking for a formula where 1 + 1 = 3; you take concrete plus wood and ideally it becomes something more than the sum of the parts, something third. In the simulations, I’m able to compose human behavior, animal behavior, behavior of inanimate materials like plastic and metal, and observe something which in reality you could never combinatorially experience – I mean, you would probably get arrested if you weld something to a dolphins head? (Ian Cheng 2013)[1]
image source : Frieze 2013 Entropy Wrangler Cloud, Photo courtesy of Formalist Sidewalk Poetry Club URL:http://dismagazine.com/uploads/2013/10/securedownload-600x378.jpg
But Ian Cheng, whose work using VR, Entropy Wrangler Cloud (2013), was shown at Frieze London in 2013, suggests that it is important that artists explore the technology themselves. “In my own work, I always want to understand, play, tinker with the technology before engaging with engineers who are better versed with it,” he writes in an email. “I wouldn’t be able to imagine what to do with it if I didn’t. Also, being familiar with a technology is protection against technicians telling the artist ‘No, it can’t be done’, which is a worse lim it than any skill gap. It is early days for VR, and beyond a skill gap there is also a culture gap—there is barely a culture around VR (besides a hype culture), it is not yet part of our everyday reality. So for an artist to engage with VR at this stage, it can only really be about curiosity and play. Other artists engaged in more critical or reactive practices will probably feel disinterested and alienated by VR.”“It feels like the tech needs to be broken to become something else—which is what artists are good at”Despite the concerns about hype, there is genuine excitement among artists. “I think this is a great moment in VR,” Jon Rafman says. “It’s a new language, so it is like the early days of cinema where you had people like D.W. Griffith creating the actual language of the medium. In video games or in Hollywood cinema, to create a film or a video game you need hundreds of millions of dollars and it’s controlled by a very few distribution companies, but with VR it is like the Wild West still.”
Negotiating this “Wild West” moment is inevitably difficult for museums. Carl Goodman says the Museum of the Moving Image is “sceptical, in a loving way, of all of this excitement” and is “looking forward to when VR is no longer a curiosity that you have to go to a museum to see, but is something that you can experience at your friend’s house or on your own. Then we can focus less on events that introduce the technology to people and more on curated programmes that feature the best, the most unusual or most challenging work, just as we do with film and have done with film for many years.” (Ian Cheng 2013) [3]
entropy wrangler cloud (chang & eng) -- screencapture excerpt from ian cheng on Vimeo.
[1]http://dismagazine.com/blog/52917/frieze-london-interview-with-ian-cheng/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Cheng
[3] http://theartnewspaper.com/features/welcome-to-the-virtual-world/
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