Player of Cosmic ༄ؘ ° Realms

The exhibition contemplates the future of gaming environments and human relationships through CGI (computer generated imagery) film and hands-on experiences. Keiken, taking their name from the Japanese word for experience, are a collective of artists from mixed diasporic backgrounds (Mexican/Japanese/European/Jewish) based in London and Berlin, who have been collaborating since 2015. Their work traverses media including moving image, installation, gaming, performance and more recently NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens), to test-drive alternative futures and reflect on how we currently live in the real and digital realms. Many of Keiken’s recent works are created inside a fictional Metaverse, an imagined world built with gaming software, where digital avatars explore extraordinary ‘natural’ and built environments, and contemplate their existence. In Player of Cosmic ༄ؘ ° Realms Keiken present two works, The Life Game, an interactive CGI film series; and Bet(a) Bodies, a wearable technology designed to stimulate empathy and a physical simulation of the experience of pregnancy. Keiken’s exhibition follows on from an extended residency with Aspex at the beginning of 2020, during which they also ran a six week course in creating Augmented Reality filters. Find out more about the Collective Futures course by watching this video on the PONToon exhibition website.