Our evolution towards a digital world is one of dematerialisation of all parts of our life. Richard Terrile, Director of the Centre for Evolutionary Computation and Automated Design at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, argues that our life could already be a simulation created by a superior programmer, and soon we will have the computational power to simulate entire lives.

One of the possible implications of these hypotheses is that, in the future, our material world could be sacrificed on the altar of evolution. When everything is simulated, how can we know that we ourselves are real? How can we sense our existence?

This project consists of a group of six mysterious unrecognisable artefacts that attempt to respond to these questions by replicating the physical sensations associated with ordinary objects. It is a tool for understanding our present and complex relationship between things in order to speculate on our future. The artefacts also represent the fictional narrative of a man who rediscovers his existence through tactile memories. The physical objects function as an anchor to our reality, reflecting our own very existence, and in an eventual immaterial future this will arguably be their main purpose.