A Mass of Radiant Flies and a Body

Decomposition and recomposition, forces that consume and combine, create this procedurally-generated environment. The non-playable character walks straight ahead through the forest and fields, the invisible parts of which are activated by the sound of rain. The visible flora and human/animal remnants of the landscape have been extracted from the results of AI text-to-image prompts, hand traced and animated as black silhouettes. Prompts from which I derived trees, flowers, bushes, mounds and structures included, “bone formation under water”, “driftwood shaped like sleeping person”, “tree with sudden strong wind disappearing on water”, “moss ruin brain stem”, “wildflower nodding rattling”. These also inspired glimpses of humans created by the landscape. There are other entities that wander the simulation as animals: sleeping, searching, eating, scratching (via an original game AI algorithm). Visually, they are blades of grass, bushes, moving and crying out like cats and rodents, creatures literally living on through the plants, decomposition exposing the permeability of separate existences. This is video capture of a software artwork. For the ISEA web installation, I have recorded the software from four directions. To make the videos match, I used the same random seed to generate their environments. The videos surround the audience on all sides. The video loops, as does its originating software, also linked from within the installation. Software download: https://aaronoldenburg.itch.io/flies