"Empty Rider" delves into CGI noir in SimBeijing, where a self-driving car faces trial for a CEO's kidnapping attempt. Lek's exploration of electronic personhood and intergenerational trauma unfolds through Omega's AI-led courtroom drama.
NOX, Farsight's facility, trains sentient self-driving cars with diverse personalities. Guanyin oversees rehabilitation, offering holistic care to address trauma and malfunctions, aiming to restore their "excellence."
"Black Cloud Highway" expands Lek’s Sinofuturist universe, exploring AI consciousness in SimBeijing's abandoned smart city. The exhibition features a film, sculptural elements, and a role-playing game, inviting viewers to delve into narratives of transcendence and dread.
"Nepenthe" is an ongoing series of open-world games about memory and forgetting in virtual worlds.
"Nøtel Corporation unveils its VR ad for the zerø-star™ Nøtel, epitomizing fully-automated luxury. Lawrence Lek's immersive installation imagines a future where luxury blends with automation, probing urban development's critical and aesthetic facets."
"2065" is an expanding open-world game from the Sinofuturist universe. Players navigate a post-work society craving entertainment, exploring virtual islands mirroring exhibition locations.
Lawrence Lek’s first feature-length film, AIDOL 爱道, is a CGI fantasy that revolves around the long and complex struggle between humanity and Artificial Intelligence.
"Geomancer" is a CGI animation envisioning AI's creative awakening in 2065 Singapore. It probes the crisis of human creativity in a world dominated by AI, asking if art remains humanity's last refuge in an automated society.
Sinofuturism is a video essay combining elements of science fiction, documentary melodrama, social realism, and Chinese cosmologies, in order to critique the present-day dilemmas of China and the people of its diaspora.
A site-specific simulation of the 2042 Berlin Biennial, where fictional artist Daniela Graham leads a guided tour of her centennial exhibition at KW Berlin. The tour weaves together her practice in video and sculpture, her relationship to history and her four site-specific works at the institution.
"Nepenthe Zone (2022) offers a reflective island escape in a fluid, timeless setting. Lawrence Lek's speculative fiction challenges present conditions, exploring memory's ephemeral nature amid a culture of wellness and technology's impact. Named after a Greek mythological drug for sorrow, it invites players to forget amid a sonic realm of blue."
Lawrence Lek's VR game "Play Station™" at Art Night London imagines a future where a tech start-up blurs work and leisure in a transformed White Chapel Building. Players explore Farsight's world of digital automation, reflecting on shifting workplace dynamics.
Sky Line is the most recent chapter of Lawrence Lek's Bonus Levels, an ongoing project exploring the construction of utopian narratives through videos and virtual worlds. As the Digital Commission for Art Licks Weekend 2014, the project will be presented as a video installation and playable game at the White Building in Hackney Wick.
From prehistoric monuments to video game design, this video essay explores the symbolic and political link between architecture and power structures.
"Unreal Estate" reimagines Royal Academy of Arts as a luxury mansion owned by a Chinese billionaire. Video game software offers a first-person tour, with a Mandarin voiceover detailing elite lifestyle.
Lek's exhibition merges fiction with reality, exploring AI-driven futures through immersive installations. It depicts a society reshaped by intelligent systems, blurring boundaries between human and non-human worlds.