You've never seen a science fiction exhibit like Ian Cheng's 'Emissaries'

The science fiction writer Philip K. Dick, whose seminal work, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was a primary basis of the 1980s cult classic Blade Runner, once said: "each of us assumes everyone else knows what he is doing. They all assume we know what we are doing. We don't."

That the notion of ever-powerful, external entities creating an illusion of what we would normally perceive as true and real to us and have that very "being" overtake us in everything we say, think or do, is quite extraordinary. Within the current wave of global activities that are taking place before our eyes and the manner that we as humans are registering all it all in (through means of technology), plus the recent events that are taking shape in the United States, it is quite possible that a dystopian realm is not too far fetch at all. Or so they used to say in those 1950s issues of Galaxy magazine.

Emissaries, currently on view at MoMA PS1 in New York City, a unique, eye-catching installation that honestly conveys meaning into the ideas of evolution, human consciousness and the experience of being in a virtually complex and chaotic world.

2nd October 2017