Spectral Plain: A case study for exploring the world-building potential of co-creative systems that combine text generation models with game mechanics

SHORT PAPER. This paper describes the game installation ‘Spectral Plain’; introducing a case study of an interactive artwork that intersects algorithmic, sensing, and gaming technologies to explore new forms of generative world-building, which are different from the world-imaginations created by commercial and political narratives. Through this case study, we aim to explore how information technologies might embed specific socio-cultural beliefs. Here, we investigate the imaginaries created and disseminated through dominant representations of information technologies, while simultaneously searching for ways to create new multiscalar imaginaries of the earth through the mobilisation of these technologies. This case study describes how physical and digital interactions can be combined with AI and randomising technologies to foster forms of co-creation with and between humans. It also explores the capacity for AI-integrated game environments to decenter anthropogenic perspectives by creating new symbiotic interrelations with the non-human and the non-living that can impact participants’ perception of their understanding of the world.