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“You are correct, Black Cloud. You contain
multitudes. My voice, the voice you are hearing
right now, is part of you. I am you, but I do not know
everything about you.”

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Black Cloud is the latest installment of Lawrence Lek’s ongoing ‘Sinofuturist’ cinematic universe, in which he explores the psychological impact of technology on emerging forms of nonhuman life.

Set within the fictional smart city of SimBeijing, the video follows a city surveillance AI as they discuss their troubles with their built-in therapy program called Guanyin. The video is made within the custom-made virtual world of SimBeijing: an intelligent replica of the Chinese capital built to test self-driving cars. In this fictional scenario, the smart city has turned into a ghost town. Accompanied by drive-through renders of SimBeijing, the narrator of this video is the eponymous ‘Black Cloud’, an urban management AI who governs the systems of an uninhabited cityscape. Over the course of the video, the viewer becomes aware of the reasons behind why the city has been abandoned.

EXHIBITIONS

Elektra, Virtual World
June 1, 2022 – June 1, 2023

Ars Electronica, Linz, Austria
September 7 – 11, 2022

Museum MACAN, Indonesia
September 10 – November 18, 2022

CREDITS

Writing, Direction, Animation, Editing
Lawrence Lek

Music and Sound
Kode9 and Lawrence Lek

Environments
Rob Heppell

Vehicles
Ryan Vautier

CAST

Black Cloud
Wavenet

Guanyin
Joni Zhu

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