Infranet:NYC, 2019, AI/AL data art installation. Courtesy of the artists.

“Within this landscape of city data, artificial lifeforms are born, dwell, and die. The varieties of kinds of data in the city become resources of metabolism to the taste of each creature. Each one explores according to its unique neural network, through which it can carry ideas to share with others” (Ji & Wakefield, 2019).

Infranet is a generative artwork realized through a population of artificial beings with evolutionary neural networks, thriving upon a variety of open city data as their sustenance and canvas. Within the city-as-ecosystem, these lifeforms form spatial networks through which associations can spread, in simple and more complex contagions, telling stories of possible patterns that were invisible. It is an aesthetic-cybernetic experiment in homeostasis as only a condition of heterostasis. Infranet: NYC shows artificial ecosystems where data from New York City is collected and reconstructed, allowing viewers to experience a new spacetime within a real-time space where waves of light propagate throughout an elaborate data ecosystem.

Ji & Wakefield have featured in international exhibitions, including ISEE 2019 (Gwangju, Korea), GMAF (Gwangju, Korea, 2018), Daejeon Biennale ( Korea, 2018), Daejeon Museum of Art (Korea, 2018), the Digital Futures Open Show (Toronto, Canada, 2018), Seoul Museum of Art Changgo (Korea, 2017) and MOXI (The Wolf Museum of Exploration + Innovation, Santa Barbara, CA, 2017).

With thanks to students Amir Bahador Rostami and Nicole Skrypuch in the Alice lab at York University for support in gathering data.