Exquisite World

Life among the scavengers Oscar Nearly ∙ 27 February 2029 Reproduced with kind permission from the Associated Press In a western district of the Metaverse – once a reasonably popular corporate region catering to advertising and management consultancy companies, now a sunny ghost town, American suburban housing rubbing shoulders with cartoonish glass skyscrapers and a tropical beach – I am following FoulFlood* into an abandoned virtual Safeway. FoulFlood is a scavenger in the new Dark Document economy: a constellation of collectors and auctioneering sites selling recordings of old video meetings, technical records, and anything else that can be illegally scraped from the ruins of Mark Zuckerberg’s ill-fated virtual reality project. While FoulFlood won’t tell me exactly how lucrative her line of work is, she reveals that she was recently able to give up her IRL job. She has agreed to let me shadow her on one of her outings. I follow as she walks (or rather glides) past a cashier; as I come within five feet of it, it locks its eyes on me and stares with an uncomfortable intensity. ‘Don’t worry about that,’ FoulFlood tells me. ‘There’s nothing but bots in here.’ She’s not speaking to me through the Metaverse but on a separate, encrypted voice call; there are ways of scrambling your location so the digital world can’t track your movements out-of-bounds, but it is still prudent to avoid giving unnecessary data to the machine. FoulFlood takes me down an aisle of low polygon canned fruits, pickles and sauces, and stops by some peach halves in juice. Between two of the cans, there is an almost-imperceptibly thin line of what appear to be stuck pixels. This is what is known among scavengers as a ‘wormhole’: any glitch or gap or exploit which can be used to get you somewhere you aren’t normally supposed to be. ‘You need to force both of your arms into this line, then immediately pull them upwards,’ FoulFlood explains. ‘You’ll clip underground. Watch me.’ Her avatar thrusts out her arms, which are customised, covered in thin elongated spikes – as is her head and the rest of her body. (All the better to break physics engines with.) She then crams herself against the wall. Her body vibrates madly for a second, her neck snapping backwards at a ninety degree angle, until she falls through the floor and out of sight. It’s my turn. Bringing my VR controllers together, I try to fit my generic, rolled-sleeved arms together into the line. Suddenly, my vision is going haywire; it jitters in every direction and to face every angle. I bring my arms up. Nothing happens. I try again, more aggressively. I remain shuddering in the abandoned Safeway. ‘What the fuck are you doing? Where are you?’ I hear FoulFlood ask with genuine frustration. I don’t reply. The view through my goggles is making me feel increasingly sick. Last chance. I throw my arms up as violently as I can. I accidentally punch my (real) ceiling light, but it’s worked; I can see the supermarket shelves above me as I drop underneath the map.

The glitchy subterranean world I now find myself in is enveloped by the district’s skybox; I am surrounded by blue sky and pink clouds, even underneath my feet. There’s nothing much else down here, as far as the naked eye is concerned – a car and a couple of different tree designs, but I haven’t been paying enough attention to know whether these already exist on the surface. FoulFlood is a fair distance away from me; she’s already searching for hidden models and broken links to old data, with her own eyes and by running data mining programs she refuses to tell me about. I ask her if all her visits underground are done like this. ‘Usually you can’t see an opening,’ she replies. ‘I chose an easy one for you.’ We’re down here for about an hour; I stare at the car and the trees, increasingly bored, and FoulFlood scavenges in silence. Finally, she calls it a day. She’s found an old email from a company which left the Metaverse a couple of years ago; she doesn’t elaborate on its contents, but later I gather that it’s an internal callout for a Human Resources director. She’s excited about it though; it’s a substantial email, it has a lot of personality, and she reckons it could make a good amount of money at auction. ‘So how do we get back to the surface?’ I ask. ‘Are you kidding?’ FoulFlood replies. ‘You just log off.’ About a week later, Preecha, founder of Dark Document marketplace E911, is giving me his own, more modest appraisal of FoulFlood’s discovery, which is now up for auction. ‘Sure, it’s interesting, in a flavour text kind of way. It’s not especially confidential – it’s an informal job advert, most of it would have ended up on the company’s website after a redraft or two. And it’s just a text file. I mean, we have people bidding over recordings of private video meetings and unused model packs. What’s a single email going to get you? Some loose change?’ E911 was launched around six months ago, but it has become both the most popular and well-respected marketplace in the Dark Document subculture. This is, in part, due to Preecha’s insistence on verified metadata accompanying every item sold on his site. ‘The pioneers were sites like The Darkive and Fall of Rome,’ he explains to me. ‘Neither of them vetted uploads. Malware, ransomware, was all over the place. I think Fall of Rome sold an audio recording claiming to be Zuckerberg taking a dump. Great if you’re a scam artist, not so great if you’re trying to build a community.’ Despite putting Preecha at loggerheads with more libertarian voices in the movement, E911’s metadata requirements and the subsequent perceived trustworthiness of the marketplace has been good for business. ‘The results speak for themselves,’ Preecha says. ‘Darkive lasted a month. Fall of Rome closed shop in November. If you can’t trust somebody, how are you supposed to keep buying through them?’ Of course, the conviction of Fall of Rome’s founder on charges of money laundering, computer hacking, and attempting to procure murder also contributed to the shutting down of the website. Preecha doesn’t mention this. We’re watching the auction of FoulFlood’s document as it reaches its final half hour, me on my laptop in South London, Preecha from his phone in Chiang Mai. Bids aren’t going anywhere fast, so I take the opportunity to probe Preecha a little about his background. Unlike FoulFlood, whose reticence made her a frustrating interview subject, Preecha is extremely forthcoming.

He started in speedrunning, competing against other players to finish games as quickly as possible, often utilising glitches and software limitations to cut corners and gain an advantage. Preecha specialised in 3D Mario games, Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Odyssey particularly. ‘I loved the community,’ he tells me – ‘community’ is one of Preecha’s key concerns, along with ‘trust’ – ‘but I got frustrated with the lack of, I don’t know, stuff. I didn’t discover much. I guess that’s on me, for joining in so late.’ As evacuation of the Metaverse started, and media outlets Vice and Wired reported on the masses of data that had been left behind, Preecha shifted his focus and became one of the first Dark Document scavengers. There is a substantial overlap between the techniques of speedrunners and scavengers, such as the manipulation of physics engines and virtual world architectures, and precise movements requiring hours of practice. And Preecha was good. It was Preecha, for instance, who discovered the so-called ‘Guantanamo assets’ which led to the resignation of Philipp Volkova as managing director of Sibyl Tech last year. (Preecha is keen to emphasise that he ‘didn’t make much of a profit’ from this particular find.) After a couple of close calls, however, and fed up with con artists decimating the scene, he moved from foraging to facilitating sales. FoulFlood’s listing ends with whimper. After a couple of bids, it sells for the equivalent of £14.07; Preecha takes 12.5% of that as commission. Preecha sighs. ‘Yeah, I thought around that much,’ he says. ‘But FoulFlood is a good scavenger. She’s found interesting stuff before, really lucrative stuff. Maybe as you were tailing her, she didn’t want to show you the good stuff.’ He pauses, and his demeanour awkwardly shifts. It’s the only moment in our conversation when he seems uncertain. ‘I don’t want to come across as someone who is only interested in money,’ he says. ‘I like making money. I think it’s important that we are paid for our efforts, all of us. But I’m not driven by it, you know? I love data. I got into this world because I love data, you know, remnants, wreckage. Odds and ends. Does that make sense?’ After a fortnight of virtual interviews – in the remains of the Metaverse, over video calls and encrypted voice messages – there’s something surreal about taking a train and meeting somebody in person. Mary lives in Oxfordshire, and has been working in the computer security industry for over a decade. In December, however, a document from her former job was scavenged and sold on E911. The document described, in exhaustive detail, the technical security arrangements of the entire company, and it was signed with her name. News spread around the internet quickly, and her new boss let her go due to ‘security concerns’. Mary greets me cheerfully at the door of her cottage just north of Oxford; even when she’s relaxing, apparently, she opts to wear an austere trouser suit. We have tea in her pseudo-rustic dining room. ‘Do you want to know the greatest irony to all this?’ she asks me, peering over the rims of tortoiseshell glasses. ‘I’ve never stepped foot in the Metaverse. I never even had Facebook. As far as I can gather, some bright spark uploaded all the unencrypted company documents onto the Metaverse so it could act as a shared workspace. Then they left them there. So much for a security company.’ She is deep in the middle of legal action against her last employer and can’t comment on specifics, but is happy to discuss the Dark Document culture more generally.

‘I’m not really worried about my own position,’ Mary admits, nonchalantly pouring more tea from the pot. ‘I’m well respected in my line of work, I have a foothold already. I’ll be fine. But all these hackers and journalists seem to forget that it wasn’t just companies using the Metaverse. Didn’t they sell a teenager’s diary a couple of months ago?’ It’s true. In January, a series of overwrought poems and diary entries was put up for auction on E911. Though the documents didn’t contain any specific identifiable information, and the metadata only confirmed that they had, in fact, been found in the Metaverse, commentators noted the possibility of its author being recognised or even tracked down. The auction broke records in the Dark Document space for the most expensive text-only document ever sold, at the equivalent of £33,600. ‘That sort of thing is devastating to me,’ Mary says. ‘The number of users I’ve talked to who think that their confidential files disappear with obsolete software, or didn’t realise they had them backed up, or plain forgot that they existed. What’s especially sad, of course, is that most people don’t even realise they have anything to hide until they can no longer hide it.’ She sighs, ‘Petty things like that can ruin your life.’ I persuade FoulFlood to meet me one final time in the Metaverse. She chooses the venue, a recreation of the ruins of Sawley Abbey in Lancashire. There’s something reassuring about the fact that, even in Zuckerberg’s über-corporate domain, there was space for eccentric hobbyists and niche construction projects, like virtual worlds LambdaMOO and Second Life before it. That said, the über-corporate is never far away; my visit still took place during one of the Metaverse’s eternal summer days. FoulFlood is already waiting for me in her spiked avatar when I arrive, and she sets up another encrypted voice call. Why did she choose this place? I ask once we connect. ‘It’s good for wormholes,’ she replies. ‘Lots of rocks sticking out, shit coding. Easy to exploit. And I don’t want you following me this time.’ I express condolences about her email not selling well the other day, but her barbed shoulders shrug it off. ‘I sold five other things that day,’ she tells me. I say I must have missed those sales, and she grumbles that E911 isn’t the only auction site. Then, carefully, I start talking about Mary and the technical document that got her fired. In a roundabout way, I try to explain how the files scavengers hunt for aren’t natural occurrences or ancient scrolls, how there are real people suffering real consequences for decisions that they didn’t make… in short, that perhaps scavenging is, you know, a more ethically dubious enterprise than it first appears. To begin with, FoulFlood either doesn’t understand or deliberately misinterprets me; all she says is that she wasn’t the one who found or sold Mary’s document, so why am I asking her? I press her a little more, and she sighs. ‘The files are there already,’ she replies. ‘I’m just finding them. Why are you getting mad at me? Why not the people at the companies or the Metaverse? I’m sorry that people are getting hurt. Bosses will always find ways to hurt people, but I don’t want people to get hurt. ‘Actually, I don’t know why I’m saying all this. I don’t know. And I don’t care. I just want to make enough money to eat. I’m just finding files. Files aren’t responsible for the people who use them. Or abuse them.’ FoulFlood’s avatar scratches her neck. She’s bored, she says. Do I have any other questions? I do, actually, but maybe I forgot them in the moment or I felt something could go wrong, so I just say, No, no, thank you. She ends the phone call. Her avatar wanders to the corner of a waist-high wall, hands together like a diver – and she pings off into the sun, her arms and neck stretched from sky to ground as if she’s been caught in a black hole. She disappears. I move to the same spot and examine the wall. The ruins are crudely modelled and sharp edged, but I can’t see any line of glitching pixels. Nevertheless, I put my hands together and try to force them into the brick, like back in the supermarket. And nothing happens. * Names and usernames have been changed to maintain confidentiality.

NDELAP

NDELAP

EXIT

ENTER

A.n0nE

A.n0nE

Oscar Nearly

A.n0nE Solar Machina

Clxo Sound Installation Enter!

-Clxo- -Green.Plane- -Uncompressed-

-Clxo- -Wet.Land- -Heavy Compression-

Exquisite World. Since the creation of virtual worlds, the digital has been recognised as a versatile and accessible tool for world building practices. Many artists since then have used these tools to speculate on ideas around building new and alternative realities, whether through a holistic, melancholic, or otherworldly lens. Conversations around world building have exploded over the past few years and become endemic to the art world amongst other sectors. With current world events taking yet another dark turn, we return to this conversation, asking what and how artists can imagine for a future world. In Exquisite World we have worked with digital artists, sound artists and curators whose speculative and generative practices contribute to and extend this discussion. The show maps out visions and dreams for a future world; it is a cartographic tool to consider what aspects of contemporary living could continue to be important moving forward: ecology, sex, technology, culture, history, and data are all recurring themes in public conversation right now. How will they be embodied in future worlding practices? What should change, and what should remain the same?  Exquisite World takes its premise from the iconic game of the Surrealists, Exquisite Corpse, aligning with the idea that world building be a collaborative process consistently adapting and evolving from what has come before. The work is never finished, and we are perpetually pushed forward in our desire for things being otherwise. The exhibition is built on this desire, as Lola Olufemi writes in her seminal book, ‘Experiments in imagining otherwise’, “the imagination is understood as the process of conjuring that which does not exist - presently or subjectively.” The work in this show is part of that process of conjuring. The first work encountered upon entering the exhibition is Kumbirai Makumbe’s ‘The Gate’, which acts as a portal to another world. The digitally sculpted work points to a transformation and alteration of one’s space, a visual metaphor for change. Taking a more cynical look at future change and adaptation to virtual life, Oscar Nearly’s text fills the rooms of the office in the main Corsica building, hacking into the computer and typing out its dark story in a continuous loop: Zuckerberg’s virtual reality project has taken an unfortunate turn, and we’re all complicit in digital space and digital language. Up the hall sit the psychedelic works of anonymous artist A.n0nE, whose use of digital tools draw on natural elements, distorting and displacing them, considering their position in a digital universe. Whilst hidden just beyond, NDelap’s mythopoetic sculpture also expands on digital representations of the natural, examining the place of myth in our world, along with its universal and timeless potential. In Room 2, Samuel Capp’s video installation continues along this current, looking at nature as technology, in its constantly evolving state and its relationship with the synthetic. Gerard Carson’s work dominates the central hallway of the building, moving away from the organic, to centre another threshold between this world and other ‘slipstreams’ that bodies can cross into. In the left entrance to the building, his images evoke what objects future archaeologists may uncover as they dig up technologies of the past.  Leading away from this forward-looking nostalgia, are Hannah Corrie’s images depicting the intimate side of virtual spaces, projecting an imaginary around relationships between digital bodies. But just outside the building, moving away from soft relations between bodies, Alejandro’s Zhang’s work (curated by Output Field) wants to break apart this world, rejecting and destroying it, in order to make space for a flourishing of queer bodies. Through sound and text, they explore the club as a potential site for this. Taking over the digital rendering of the Faraday Monument, an Elephant and Castle icon, clxo’s 3D sonic environments explore the ways in which sound builds depth in virtual worlding practices. Also spread throughout the exhibition are the commissioned soundscapes created by Aerside, which draw the world of the show together. Slowing down the club music that would normally be pulsing through the venue, and adding moody synthesisers with drums that zoom in and out of the space. Waves of organic sounds mix with melancholic chords that give a soft and nostalgic feel to the show. Finally, encased in a giant spherical body of water, is the work of Felix Ashford, curated by Underground Flower with 3D support from Jenn Leung. Three stations make up the work ‘The Spiromancer’, each holding 3D amulets that contain panels unfolding a story of concrete fiction, weaving together magic and data in a mythical, visual tale.

All of the soundscapes in Exquisite World were created and produced by Aerside. [Excluding the sonic environment in the Faraday memorial, made by sound artist clxo.]

All of the soundscapes in Exquisite World were created and produced by Aerside. [Excluding the sonic environment in the Faraday memorial, made by sound artist clxo.]

All of the soundscapes in Exquisite World were created and produced by Aerside. [Excluding the sonic environment in the Faraday memorial, made by sound artist clxo.]

The Spiromancer by Felix Ashford curated by Underground Flower with 3D support by Jenn Leung Doom scroll ad inifitimum you’re never caught up For only now do you see that foul beast wretched from its tail and wrangled like a churn stick ‘round the milky waters Stirring the yugas and the ages and the microtrends and the equinoxes; the financial years, the great years. One spiral widens towards its apex, and the other nears its centre. Soon the gyres shall begin to coil in reverse. Anastrophe summons lunar epoch. Neo-Bethlehem 2100. Yet who descends the turnpyke stair? A fragmented theory-fiction or a gnostic download from the void, The Spiromancer enters unsorted time to follow the undercurrents of data and magic in the construction of real and speculative worlds. In the New Art City adaptation of The Spiromancer, visitors are invited to rummage through the mysterious artifacts on three floating stations to reveal parts of the story.

INTRODUCING THE PERFORMERS: 4NOTE, Four Noiseiceni of the Eppocalypse Members: (Iceni Names) Boudica II: Electric Buddugloo Aesu Death Maschina Antedios War Slaughter Saenu Pestilent Brutality General (Real Names) Tim Drage Lisa McKendrick Calum F. Kerr Phillip Raymond Goodman Isn'tses (Lisa McKendrick & Tim Drage) are doing a series of performances where we collaborate with other artists in forests or areas of naturalness. We have performed in Epping Forest, Borth Beach Wales, Supernormal and Wansted Park. Recently we teamed up with Calum F. Kerr and Phillip Raymond Goodman in Epping Forest to explore the legend of Boudicca and the Iceni Tribe final battle. We are exploring the "folk horror" aspect of our performance through Noise.

NOW SHOWING!! 4NOTE Four Noiseiceni of the Eppocalypse

By physically being present in the forest we question our place in the digital world, we open our curiosity towards our own symbiotic relationship to what is “natural”. By recording ourselves using digital formats we add a layer of interpretation, to inspire an exploration into the connection between nature and noise, chaos and natural systems. The presence of the machine amongst complex eco systems allows us to explore human interference and also the nature of our naturalness as transmitters of sound, as physical beings of chaos. Here we embody all these things and we adopt our own language and modes of communication with each other through sound. The transition between the natural world and that of the digital is complex and fascinating and by experiencing this through a digital format we acknowledge the temporal dimensions that we have created. There is a distinct layer of experience that is denied in the digital but when the performance is experienced on this layer it opens a dialogue that can influence our experience and connection to the great forest and we can contribute our physical presence somehow down the line.