The books

Text

Galleys of both books on request.

Images

Click any image to enlarge it. Click download for the reproduction file — all are 300dpi at trim or better, and pages from the books are supplied as complete double-page spreads. Covers and pages from the books need no caption. The studio material does — it carries other people's credits.

Covers

Front, back and full wrap at 300dpi, plus product shots. Cover art for WORLDING is by Ian Cheng and Eden Rose Cheng.

From the books

Double-page spreads from Emissaries Guide to Worlding and WORLDING, rendered at 300dpi from the print files. A further 21 spreads are available on request.

Simulation stills and process

From Ian Cheng's studio. Fifteen images spanning Emissary in the Squat of Gods (2015) to Shrine Oberon (2026). Caption required: reproduce it in full, including the photographer.

Installation photography

Six venues, 2017 to 2023. Every photographer is named. Caption required: reproduce it in full, including the photographer.

Portrait

From Ian Cheng's studio. Caption required: reproduce it in full, including the photographer.

Rights and credit

Biographies

Ian Cheng

Ian Cheng is an artist living and working in New York. He has exhibited widely, including solo presentations at MoMA PS1, New York; Serpentine, London; Leeum Museum of Art, Seoul; The Shed, New York; LUMA Foundation, Arles; Light Art Space, Berlin; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin; Julia Stoschek Collection, Berlin; and group presentations at the Venice Biennale, Venice; Museum of Modern Art, New York; de Young Museum, San Francisco; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC; Tate Modern, London; Louisiana Museum, Copenhagen; Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris; Sculpture Center, New York. Since 2012, he has produced a series of simulations that explored an agent's capacity to deal with an ever-changing environment. These works culminated in the Emissaries trilogy, which introduced a narrative agent whose motivation to enact a story was set into conflict with the open-ended chaos of the simulation. In 2018, he developed BOB (Bag of Beliefs), an AI creature whose personality, body, and life story evolve across exhibitions, what Cheng calls “art with a nervous system.” In 2021, Cheng directed Life After BOB, a real-time anime exploring human-AI symbiosis. Cheng is the founder of Opponent Systems, a company building SAGA, a super-observant detective that understands you and who you're becoming. iancheng.com

Venkatesh Rao

Venkatesh Rao is a writer and consultant. He writes the popular Contraptions newsletter. Between 2007-24, he wrote the popular Ribbonfarm blog (now archived). He is the author of Tempo, a book on timing and decision-making, and is currently working on his second book, on the foundations of temporality. He has been an independent consultant since 2011, supporting senior executives in the technology industry. His work in recent years has focused on AI, semiconductor, sustainability, and protocol technology sectors. He holds a PhD in control theory (2003) from the University of Michigan. He is currently based in the Seattle area, and enjoys dabbling in robotics in his spare time. venkateshrao.com

COSMOGENESIS

cosmogenesis is an experimental publishing studio. Its titles include WORLDING, Emissaries Guide to Worlding, Ursula K. Le Guin's The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, K Allado-McDowell's Pharmako-AI and Air Age Blueprint, the Atlas of Anomalous AI, Unknown Language, The White Paper, Suzanne Treister's Prophetic Dreaming, and the HEXEN 2.0 Tarot and HEXEN 5.0 Tarot. cosmogenesis.world

Press enquiries ben@interkingdom.net  ·  cosmogenesis.world

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