False Mirror

If future humans (or post-humans) ever live in completely virtual worlds, what would their lives look like? Ali Eslami attempts to answer this by simply beginning to construct those worlds. Originally from Iran, this VR artist and winner of the 2016 IDFA DocLab Award for DeathTolls Experience started his work in the basement, and is now building floor after floor of an infinite virtual city.

The result is a unique VR project that uses speculative design to imagine possible futures. False Mirror is a vibrant and boundless virtual space that’s continually growing and reshaping itself. This is no faithful representation of an existing place, but it’s also not completely disconnected from our reality. It’s an extension of our own world, in which the virtual sometimes turns out to be material after all.

False Mirror is an ongoing research project conducted by the artist and his audience—reason why Eslami sees live demonstration as the ideal manifestation of the work.