7100AD, 2020-ongoing

virtual reality video game (duration variable)

Oculus Quest 2 + Link, gaming PC

7100AD is an experimental VR video game set in a post-post apocalyptic Earth. It challenges anthropocentric perceptions of the natural world - exemplified in the portrayal of nature in video games as a source of danger/infinitely exploitable resource - through the embodiment of non-human species across three levels: a wild bee on a newly-formed desert island, a phytoplankton in the surrounding sea, and a mycelial network beneath the ground.  Building off scientific research, the game opens up new perspectives on our planet through other ways of being, constructing a virtual sensorium of how these other lifeforms will experience the future we create today.

7100AD projects forward to the earliest possible date of human extinction, presenting a world transformed by climate change and ecological collapse. 7100AD illuminates unexpected links between humans and non-human species and how these are changing in the face of Earth’s sixth mass extinction. Through exploration, discovery, interspecies collaboration and cyclical reincarnation, players slowly piece together a speculative history of humankind and the planet.

INSTALLATION VIEWS

CREDITS

Yambe Tam, lead artist

Albert Barbu, software developer

Dylan Henry Price, sound designer

Supported by Arts Council England and The Prince’s Trust.

Special thanks to the University of Cambridge Department of Plant Sciences, Cambridge and Chittka Lab - The Bee Sensory and Behavioural Ecology Lab of Queen Mary University, London.

AWARDS

WASD, Curios - Official Selection (2022)

EGX Rezzed, The Leftfield Collection - Official Selection (2020)