Emissaries Guide to Worlding
Language: English
Published by Cosmogenesis, 2026
- Hardcover
- New

Seller: California Books, Miami, FL, U.S.A.California Books
AbeBooks seller since October 27, 2023
Condition: New
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Add to basketSeller Inventory # I-9781068765735
- Title
- Emissaries Guide to Worlding
- Author
- Cheng, Ian
- Publisher
- Cosmogenesis
- Publication year
- 2026
- Condition
- New
- Binding
- Hardcover
- Language
- English
- ISBN 10
- 1068765739
- ISBN 13
- 9781068765735
- Edition
- 2nd Edition
What is a World? And how does one bring it to life?
Emissaries Guide to Worlding is both a behind-the-scenes chronicle and a philosophical companion to one of the most ambitious experiments in simulation art of the 21st century.
This richly illustrated, full-colour hardback brings readers into the conceptual and technical process of creating Emissaries (2015 – 2017) — a trilogy of simulations about cognitive evolution and ecological emergence. As Cheng built his agentic beings, he also began a theory of Worlding: the unnatural art of designing systems that grow, change, and take on a life of their own.
Now returning in a revised collector’s edition with a new preface and updated materials, this is the foundational artifact of Cheng’s thinking on Worlding—where theory and practice emerge side by side. Released alongside WORLDING: A Guide for Creators in Changing Times, its distilled and expanded successor, this edition offers the origin: a record of Worlding as lived process.
"Synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author
Ian Cheng is an artist and founder based in New York. He has exhibited at museums internationally including MoMA, Serpentine Galleries, Venice Biennale, Whitney Museum of American Art.
Since 2012, Cheng has produced a series of simulations exploring an agent’s capacity to deal with an ever-changing environment, culminating in the Emissaries trilogy. He is the creator of BOB (Bag of Beliefs), an AI-driven creature whose personality, body, and life story evolve across exhibitions. In 2024 Cheng founded Opponent, a new company building animal-level AI agents for kids.
Hans Ulrich Obrist (b. 1968, Zurich, Switzerland) is Artistic Director of Serpentine in London, and Senior Advisor at LUMA Arles. Prior to this, he was the Curator of the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Since his first show ‘ World Soup (The Kitchen Show)’ in 1991, he has curated more than 350 exhibitions.
In 2011 Obrist received the CCS Bard Award for Curatorial Excellence, in 2015 he was awarded the International Folkwang Prize, and in 2025 he received the Prix François Morellet. Obrist’s recent publications include 140 Ideas for Planet Earth (2021), Edouard Glissant: Archipelago (2021), James Lovelock: Ever Gaia 2023) Remember to Dream (2023), Worldbuilding: Gaming and Art in The Digital Age (2024) and A Life In Progress (2025).
"About the title" may belong to another edition of this title.
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