About this project

ACTIVE SPIRIT is a webdocumentary dedicated to the work of Ian Cheng, an American artist born in 1984 who has been creating living simulations since 2012.

At the crossroads of art, technology, and game design, Cheng builds autonomous digital worlds that evolve, learn, and surprise — questioning our relationship to life, authorship, and the systems we build.

This webdoc is built around a single question :
If art could be alive, would the artist still be its author?

Through texts, archives, interviews, and interactive experiences, it invites viewers to explore Cheng's evolving universe and the ideas that animate his practice.

The experience is designed as a simulation itself. Three chapters unlock one after another, mirroring the logic of Cheng's worlds : emergence, transformation, and resonance.

The system records your journey, generating new events and revealing different paths with each visit.

Bringing together editorial writing, interface design, and interactive narration, ACTIVE SPIRIT is both a portrait and an exploration — an invitation to think with living systems and to imagine new ways of telling stories online.