Morphogenic Angels: Part 2 Playthrough on Serpentine Twitch

Following the premiere of the game Morphogenic Angels in Playthrough Part 1 with drag performer Hungry on their twitch channel & HAU 4. Serpentine Arts Technologies presented Morphogenic Angels: Playthrough Part 2 live on Serpentine Twitch (@serpentineUK) hosted by arts & technologies producer Roisin McVeigh. 

Morphogenic Angels explores a speculative future in which people gain transhuman abilities through organic modifications. This second playthrough explores our experimental approach to using the game engine, Unreal Engine 5, as well as world building, production processes and approaches to designing custom animations, such as the lead characters and eventual lovers, Yaxu and Anamt’u’ul. 

Morphogenic Angels is a game is a commission by HAU Hebbel am Ufer / In co-presentation with HAU Hebbel am Ufer

One of 6 NFT Artists & Experimental Studios To Watch in 2023 listed in Forbes

So pleased to have been been listed as an NFT artist to watch by Maria Paula Fernandez in Forbes! The article details our latest web 3.0 project, Wisdoms for Neknel, Thank you so much for writing about us, Maria.

Wisdoms for Neknel is our ongoing NFT project and community in collaboration with Daata and artists obso1337. Wisdoms for Neknel’s origins began with us thinking about how to create a currency that is inherently philosophical, with the intention that tools such as money, could be adapted through the blockchain. It led to us creating a speculative world where WISDOM is a currency. In our world the only way one can collect items that are not already free is through the process of generating and sharing wisdom. Wisdom in Neknel is generated first through seeds; talks with amazing thinkers and luminaries such as Mindy Seu, Penny Rafferty and Ruth Catlow, Wade Wallerstein, Helen Pritchard, Eileen Isagon Skyers and Yasaman Sheri. These conversations are then fed to an ai that generates our own in-game wisdom currency. This takes the form of wisdom vessels which can be harvested and used as an in-game currency inside our world.

Visit Neknel here!

New Commission ‘Ángel Yōkai Atā’ (Angel Spirit House) for Helsinki Biennial 2023

We created a new site-specific pavilion with sculptures called Ángel Yōkai Atā (Angel Spirit House) for Helsinki Biennial. Helsinki Biennial 2023, New directions May emerge, is the second edition of the Biennial and is curated by the amazing Joasia Krysa, thank you for your faith in us and encouraging us to explore a completely new facet of our practice!

The title translates as ‘ángel’ in Spanish and English, ‘spirit’ in Japanese and ‘house’ in Teneek, the language of the Huasteca people of Mexico. This Angel Spirit House Is a home for spirits from our speculative future and the spirits are an offering to the island. When encountering Ángel Yōkai Atā, we invite visitors to just be. The concept can be captured by a mantra we created:

‘A spirit is not just a spiritual thing, it is everything and to be a student of the invisible is the practice of compassion. Omoiyari.’

The Spirit House will be on view at Kuninkaansaari islands in Helsinki until 17 September 2023 and has been presented in Wallpaper, Ocula, The Arts Newspaper, Artnet News & Casa Brutus.

M+ (Hong Kong) Event: How to Build a Better Metaverse?

It was really amazing to speak in conversation with artist Lu Yang and moderator Sunny Cheung (M+ Curator of Design and Architecture) at M+, Hong Kong, on the Alternate Visions of the Future panel as part of their event, How to Build a Better Metaverse? where we presented the game we are developing as part of our ongoing world build project, Morphogenic Angels. Thank you to the M+ team for having us.

New commission for Somerset House’s ‘Channel’

We are very pleased to present our new commission for Somerset House’ ‘Channel’, Morphogenic Angels. it is the film version, a playthrough, of the demo of our game; a futuristic transhuman love story from our ongoing world-building project, Morphogenic Angels, set in a reimagined future 1000 years from now. Channel is Somerset House’s new curated online space for art, ideas, and the artistic process and a perfect home for this piece. Thank you to the whole Somerset House Team, we are so happy that this is available now!

Watch here.

We also had a great conversation with Francesca Gavin about the project, you can read the article here.

DLD 2022

We recently spoke about our world-building approach and making games alongside Alexander Kluge, Gabriel Massan, Hans Ulrich Obrist on the Gaming Agency panel at the DLD conference in Munich. We also discussed our work Player of Cosmic Realms which is currently on show at the Julia Stoschek Foundation, Dusseldorf, as part of the Worldbuilding exhibition curated by Hans Ulrch Obrist and on until January 2024.

The World-Building exhibition has recently toured to Centre Pompidou-Metz where we are showing the playthrough our new game Morphogenic Angels Chapter 1 which will also be on show until January 2024.

We also recently collaborated with Gabriel Massan on a series of images, Omoiyari.

Chanel Next Prize at Venice Biennale 2022

April was the first coming together of the inaugural winners and jurors of the CHANEL Next Prize in Venice during the 59th Venice Biennale. It was so amazing to meet and connect with the other next prize winners for the first time and discover that although we have such different practices we share so much in common. It was wonderful to also meet the jurors, Tilda Swinton and David Adjaye and take part in round table discussions with the other prize winners as the journey the Next Prize takes us on begins unfolding.

We are also thrilled to announce we were featured on the front cover of The Arts Newspaper China! 

Butterflies Frolicking on the Mud: Engendering Sensible Capital – 2nd Thailand Biennial

We presented Wisdoms for Love 3.0, an online decision-making game and non-fungible token (NFT) collectibles project that is playable both online and on-site at the Thailand Biennale (Butterflies Frolicking on the Mud: Engendering Sensible Capital), Korat 2021. The Biennale was curated by Yuko Hasegawa, Seiha Kurosawa & Vipash Purichanont.

We were very pleased to speak on the panel and present our project to the local community alongside the other artists exhibiting at the biennale. Thank you to Yuko Hasegawa for always supporting and believing in our practice!

Keiken are recipient of the CHANEL NEXT PRIZE.

We are pleased to announce we are one of the winners of the CHANEL NEXT PRIZE.

The Chanel Next Prize is a global biennial prize recognising game-changing artists who are radically defining their fields. The prize is an international award to catalyse innovation across arts and culture. Developed to provide an emerging generation of creative risk-takers with resources to tackle ambitious new projects, the CHANEL Next Prize creates conditions for artists to experiment with visionary ideas, test new forms of artmaking and collaborate across disciplines.

Awarded biennially, artists are nominated anonymously by an advisory board of 25 arts and cultural leaders from around the world representing diverse disciplines ranging from film to the visual arts.

A truly global prize that celebrates the fluidity between different art forms, the 2021 Chanel Next Prize winners represent 11 countries and disciplines spanning design, film and the performing and visual arts.

The members of the 2021 jury were Cao Fei, Sir David Adjaye and Tilda Swinton.

Find out more here.