Asunder responds to a growing interest in the application of AI to critical environmental challenges by situating this approach as a literal proposition, combining state of the art climate and environmental simulation technology, a 144 CPU super-computer and machine learning image-making techniques. The result is a fictional “environmental manager” that proposes and simulates future alterations to the planet to keep it safely within planetary boundaries. Asunder questions assumptions of computational neutrality, our increasingly desperate reach for techno-solutionist fixes to planetary challenges, and the broader ideological framing of the environment as a system.
The work is structured into discrete simulations for different regions, positioning ecosystem as computational surface. As cities are relocated, nations combined, coastlines straightened or rivers moved, the work shifts from humorous to preposterous, from uncannily eco-fetishistic to tediously bureaucratic.
Credit: Asunder was commissioned by the MAK for the VIENNA BIENNALE 2019. Exhibition views from the The Eternal Network, transmediale 2020.