By speaker > Amaral Mateo

“We were humanity” is a project in which I imagine future post-physical evolutions of life in nature from the perspective of science fiction and psychedelia. I am interested in thinking in a future beyond the human, where our legacy - in the form of language, thought, subcultures and technology - is assimilated and resignified by nature to build an ecosystem inhabited by new forms of consciousness that are incomprehensible to us.

The heart of the project is the simulation of a virtual world that I created in collaboration with a computer cientist and programer, using a video game engine. That world is inhabited by the Entes, creatures that evolved from human thought and hybridized with technology, fungi, plants and other animals. The world that the Entities inhabit is a cyberspace in which different times and spaces that arise in the infinite flow of nature are superimposed.

The simulation uses generative systems and artificial intelligence to decide the characters' actions and recombine different elements, 3D models, animations and sounds. The result are mutant scenes,  real time  theatrical pieces  improvised by virtual actors that explore various themes related to human thought, technology and nature.

I show this simulation in different formats such as installations, video shorts, VR experiences, live AV shows and videogames.

In the different instances of We were humanity, entities - from a perspective that is alien to us - relate to different topics that in one way or another define the idea of what is human. Thus, in each new exhibition of the project I feed the simulation with information about humanity and nature, which the Entities assimilate and process in their own incomprehensible languages.