Ian Cheng (American, b. 1984) makes live simulations: self-running virtual ecosystems populated by characters and creatures that evolve without a fixed script, exploring mutation and how living agents cope with change. Drawing on cognitive science, video game design and improvisation, he develops each simulation from simple rules and lets it run in public rather than steering it toward a planned outcome.
Cheng studied cognitive science at UC Berkeley, earned an MFA from Columbia University,and worked at Industrial Light & Magic.In 2015, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin presented Emissary in the Squat of Gods, the first Emissaries episode,followed that year by Emissary Forks at Perfection at Pilar Corrias in London.The trilogy was complete by 2017, when the Museum of Modern Art acquired it. Cheng called each episode “a habitat for stories”, a computer-generated simulation whose flora and fauna recombine in open-ended narratives. At the Serpentine Galleries in London in 2018, Cheng introduced BOB (Bag of Beliefs), an evolving lifeform whose behavior and beliefs viewers could permanently influence.A more developed version appeared at Gladstone Gallery in New York the next year, while the Emissaries trilogy appeared at the Venice Biennale that summer.
Cheng's next project, Life After BOB, is an anime series he has described as being about mental health and “the existential pain of rewriting one's life path”.Its episode Life After BOB: The Chalice Study (2021-22) appeared in HEK's “Collective Worldbuilding — Art in the Metaverse” in Basel.In 2022, its episode was staged at Halle am Berghain in Berlin by LAS (Light Art Space),paired with an immersive room that Cheng said was intended “to talk directly to a viewer's unconscious”.In 2022, Cheng released 3FACE through Outland, an adaptive artwork that reads a wallet's transaction history to render a portrait, released under a custom, CC0-inspired license granting broad reuse rights.The Whitney Museum of American Art collected the work and connects it to a hot wallet so it can continue to read and respond to the museum's on-chain activity.
The New Museum's expanded building in New York reopened in March 2026,with an interactive work by Cheng commissioned for its restaurant alongside long-term commissions by Tschabalala Self, Klára Hosnedlová and Sarah Lucas.Cheng has founded Opponent Systems, a company building AI products for families across generations, saying “I bring all the muscles I've developed as an artist to being a founder”.
