Celeste Viv Ly - Emergent:Immanence

Six and a Half Floors

Emergent : Immanence

Corps sanx Organes Collective

Celeste Viv Ly (Project Leader) & Mathieu Bissonnette and Others

Corps sanx Organes Collective is a London based multidisciplinary group led by nonbinary people of colour. We are amongst Goldsmiths University of London’s BA Fine Art graduating class of 2021, Royal College of Art’s MA Fine Art graduating classes of 2021 and 2023, and graduate from University of Montreal.

Our practices revolve around expanding the discursive space of diasporic art practice, centring on abjection in relation to technology, posthuman agencies, intersectional and displaced identities, labour, futurity and spatial politics. Catalysed by our thoughts and discussion on abjection as both a concept and a method and our diasporic experiences, Corps sanx Organes functions as a think tank and a rhizomatic incubating space for cross-diasporic community building, new ways of relating to technology (as othered entities), demystifying canonical, patriarchal technocratic narratives around visions of futurity.

We work in research-oriented, expanded time-based installation, game, transmedia and moving image works that challenge the institutional model of curation and show making, often compounded with writing, performance, workshops, talks, publications and so on. Corps sanx Organes provide curated time-based programmes, workshops, and academic research for educational institutions.

Six and a Half Floors -- emergent: immanence is a speculative, immersive computer game that functions as both a meta-commentary on gamification and a critical exploration of power, agency, and morality in techno-social systems.

Designed as an interdisciplinary fusion of art, philosophy, and game design, this project interrogates the relationships between the player, the game system, and broader sociopolitical structures by using quantum computing, AI and organic-synthetic biomaterials to deliberate reality production and manifesting the in-game impact onto the real world.

Drawing from themes of cybernetic systems, posthumanism, and game theory, the game challenges players to confront their own role within interconnected, self-perpetuating frameworks.

Project Proposal: Six and a Half Floors -- emergent: immanence 

Contemporary Art Game Work

Emergent:Immanence is a speculative, immersive computer game that functions as a meta-commentary on the relationship between gamification and sociopolitical systems. It explores themes of power, agency, and morality through an interdisciplinary blend of art, philosophy, and game design. The project challenges players to engage critically with the frameworks they inhabit, forcing them to confront the dynamics between themselves, the game system, and broader societal structures.

[Key Storylines and Themes]

✦ Player Agency and Subversion 

The player begins with what seems like agency: a set of resources and tools to manipulate the game world. As the narrative unfolds, it is revealed that these aids—pop-ups, extensions, and plugins—are part of the very system the player is meant to resist. This transforms the player’s journey into one of creative subversion, where actions of hacking and jailbreaking the game mirror acts of self-discovery.

✦ The Paradox of Power 

As the player gains control over the game system, their role shifts from resistance to dominance. However, this shift brings a philosophical dilemma: can one continue to rebel if the system is entirely within their control? The choices made throughout the game blur moral lines, raising questions about the nature of power and its consequences.

✦ Posthumanism and Immanence 

A nonhuman entity—a bio-cybernetic insect—emerges as both a lifeline and a catalyst for transformation. Initially a tool for survival, this entity evolves into a force that disrupts the system entirely, offering the player new possibilities that extend beyond the confines of the game’s logic. This theme draws heavily from cyborg anthropology and posthuman performativity.

✦ Meta-Structural Collapse and Alchemy 

In the third act, a sudden "electrical wipeout" drains all of the player’s resources. Survival now hinges on their relationship with the nonhuman entity. Its destruction or preservation directly influences the game’s outcome, while the player’s actions are converted into a real-world sigil, creating a direct link between the game’s virtual world and real-world economic systems. This mechanic interrogates the ways in which digital economies mirror and influence physical ones.

[Gameplay and Mechanics]

✦ Generative Systems and Risk 

The game employs generative AI, where players interact with scripts, commands, and system manipulations. However, the system actively resists, introducing unpredictable glitches, bugs, and shifts in the game environment. This creates a dynamic tension between player freedom and system control, blurring the lines between structured gameplay and emergent, player-driven chaos.

✦ Medium-Specific Storytelling 

Visual and auditory elements are designed to engage players psychologically and emotionally. Influences from glitch art and aesthetic themes like rottencrow’s style will manifest through shifting perspectives, flickering textures, and glowing hues that reflect the instability of the system itself. Meta-narrative elements, such as browser-like plugins and pixelated visuals, immerse the player in a fragmented, post-internet world.

✦ Philosophical Interludes 

Periodic narrative breaks allow players to engage in moral reflection, connecting their in-game choices to larger philosophical ideas about morality, change, and resistance. These moments explore complex topics like violence as a vehicle for change, ethical ambiguity, and anti-establishmentarianism.

✦ Jailbreaking and Collapse 

The core mechanic of Emergent:Immanence is the tension between liberation and destruction. The act of attempting to break free from system constraints only accelerates the collapse of the entire game world. Playing the game becomes an act of systemic deconstruction, where the boundaries between the player’s actions and the game environment dissolve into creative chaos.

[Artistic and Theoretical Framework]

§ Drawing on interdisciplinary sources, Emergent:Immanence merges concepts from Donna Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto and Karen Barad’s posthuman performativity, blending philosophy, cybernetics, and critical theory to explore new ways of thinking about technology and agency.

§ The game taps into anti-establishment hacker culture (inspired by works like Naked Lunch and cyberpunk fiction) and engages with speculative fiction and game theory to question the very nature of play and power.

§ The philosophical inquiry into the raison d’être of rebellion, along with the idea of agency as an act of creation, will underpin the game’s core narrative.

[Outcomes]

§ Interactivity as Critical Inquiry The game invites players to participate in a deeper examination of the power dynamics at play in digital and sociopolitical systems. Through interactive mechanics, players are forced to critically reflect on their agency and the broader implications of their choices.

§ Gamified Medium-Specificity The medium itself is an integral part of the message, as the game reflects the ways in which art, technology, and life have become intertwined in the contemporary era. The game serves not just as entertainment but as a tool for self-reflection and critique of the systems we inhabit.

§ Real-World Integration By tokenising in-game outcomes, the game blurs the line between the digital and the physical, linking the player’s virtual actions with real-world economic implications. This final mechanic forces players to grapple with the gamification of life and its consequences, allowing their digital choices to extend beyond the game world.

Emergent:Immanence combines art and gaming into a complex, thought-provoking experience, challenging players to engage with their roles as creators, destroyers, and participants in a world where agency transcends boundaries, questioning both the systems they navigate and the very act of play itself.

Lance of Plausible Deniability, installation view at NARS Foundation, New York, NY, US, Sep 2024

Lance of Plausible Deniability, 3D scanned installation view, 2024

✺

Lance of Plausible Deniability
2024

Interactive sculpture.

Installation view at NARS Foundation, New York, NY, US, Sep 2024. Silver, carousel projector slider, stainless steel, roulette, ceramics, hole, steel marble, gravity, light, electronic components, etc. Dimensions variable (No.AD33-1638 of the series: 42 x 12 x 12 inches approx.)

An intent, an action, a material-semiotic speech act flash frozen into a diegetic instrument insinuating a parliament of unnamed purposes ←↑→͍ ⌍⌏↜↝↞↟↠ contending with a set of contradictions observed in the teleoplex system at large that the work is also part of while aknowledging-enacting the facet that it is problematising as a result of a cocktail mixture of complicity, inevitability, and survival instincts, all of which get covertly transcribed into plausible deniability in action.

Both works made during the residency employ a metafictional perspective. "Lance of Plausible Deniability" and "Aegis (Eternity MMA Ring) JH37(29)F-TR:0185" engage with latent kinetic energy and hyperstitional machinations of cultural regurgitation through the lens of objecthood, temporal tension, diagrammatics and transmedia.

“Lance of Plausible Deniability" is a time-based sculptural piece embodying the tension between stasis and violence. The lance, as a weapon, is the material artefact of the intrumentalisation of potential force. It is an intent, an action, a material-semiotic speech act flash frozen into a diegetic instrument insinuating a parliament of unnamed purposes ←↑→͍⌍⌏↜↝↞↟↠. Flirting with the tropes of fictitious instruments of violence, play, casino contraptions, and the interplay of eros and thanatos, it is constructed based on the nondual symbolism of a carrier-spear (in reference to Ursula Le Guin’s thoughts on technology, tool and worlding in The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction). The work contends with a set of contradictions observed in the teleoplex system at large that the work is also part of while aknowledging-enacting the facet that it is problematising as a result of a cocktail mixture of complicity, inevitability, and survival instincts, all of which get covertly transcribed into plausible deniability in action.

Lance of Plausible Deniability & Aegis (Eternity MMA Ring) JH37(29)F-TR:0185, installation view at NARS Foundation, New York, NY, US, Sep 2024

Aegis (Eternity MMA Ring) JH37(29)F-TR:0185, 3D scanned installation view at NARS Foundation, New York, NY, US, Sep 2024

✺

Aegis (Eternity MMA Ring) JH37(29)F-TR:0185
2023-2024

Interactive sculpture-print.

Inkjet prints, embedded giant poker index playing cards. Dimensions variable (No.AD33-1810 of the series: 5 x 7 inches each, double-sided).

High-bitrate material-semiotics via meta-stories® expounding on referencism* (ditto) through egregore engineering the syntactical strata.

In "Aegis (Eternity MMA Ring) JH37(29)F-TR:0185”, the "Aegis" in the title refers to the goatskin shield materialising the attribute of Zeus and Athene in classical mythology, suggesting the balance between aggression and defense, between kinetic release and potential energy through its surface tension. It is composed of High-bitrate material-semiotics via meta-stories® expounding on referencism* (ditto) through egregore engineering the syntactical strata. The work is made of an analog anthology of (un)ironic meta-schizoposting IG stories made from 2022 up to the recent months, referring to instances of content regurgitation and copyright infringement against my works and the works of people in the creative scene (sometimes by the scene itself). These transient digital artefacts were laminated on the surfaces of giant playing cards selected by a literal sleight of hand, melded in the materiality of the anadig surface and interfaces almost towards a point of fetishisation in the mind of a collector/hoarder/poster. When ironically and transtextually exported into the contexts of a mixed martial arts (MMA) ring through the suggestion of its title, the allegorical ring of the cyber-realm itself becomes a charged space of latent energy; the work reflects on how individuals, systems, and thought-forms (egregores) are constantly engaged in a baccarat of kinetic and latent energy, where forces remain in tension and the constant shuffling of an open ended participatory narrative, waiting for catalysis.

In both pieces, the concepts of cyclically reenacted discursive constructs and latent kinetic energy become metaphors for the unseen forces that shape human behaviour and social systems. It highlights the precariousness of these energies, the way they are harnessed, suppressed, or unleashed, and how they define the the fabric of cultural realities and power dynamics of both individuals and institutions.

Selected Printed Stories™️

✺

Prev | Next

← prev ↞

↠ next →