Ian Cheng wanted an artwork whose development continued while its audience was elsewhere. BOB first appeared at London’s Serpentine in 2018 as a group of artificial creatures evolving day and night. Returning visitors encountered a continuing simulation, with a history that extended beyond their own visit.[1]
Cheng brought cognitive-science training and experience at Industrial Light & Magic to the work. The Serpentine describes his simulations as environments with programmed behavioural drives whose interactions can exceed the artist’s control. That makes authorship partly a matter of choosing the conditions in which something happens.[1]
Several impulses, one body
For the 2019 Gladstone presentation, BOB took the form of a branching serpent. Its architecture combined an engine for learning rules from experience with competing internal agents. One sought food, another escaped threats, another explored unfamiliar things. Cheng called these agents demons. Each pursued its own small story while competing to control the same body.[2]
The gallery’s account describes surprise as a gap between expectation and perception. Large discrepancies could prompt a revision of BOB’s beliefs. Its learned picture of the world therefore mattered alongside whichever impulse currently had control.[2]
Our reading of the arrangement starts with a question: which desire is organising the scene? The same object can invite eating, exploration or escape, depending on which impulse currently governs the creature.[2]
Visitors could become unreliable tutors
In a published conversation with Charlotte Burns, Cheng explained how visitors used the BOB Shrine app to supply virtual offerings and attach instructions. He described these parental messages as another set of influences competing with the creature’s internal drives. Advice could be mistaken or deliberately misleading; contributing to the work meant making a choice about how to influence it.[3]
Asked what he had observed, Cheng mentioned BOB’s attraction to mushrooms. He offered two possibilities: visitors might be supplying appealing, harmless mushrooms, or a preference might be developing within the system. He did not claim to have settled which explanation was right.[3]
That uncertainty gives the small observation its interest. A preference can emerge from the interaction between what is repeatedly offered and what the creature is inclined to choose. Watching only its final action leaves both contributions out of sight.[3]
BOB gives the audience a character to follow across those interactions. Its changing behaviour invites attention to an unfinished history—one in which the viewer can also become a participant.[1]
Sources & further reading
- Ian Cheng: BOB Serpentine Galleries · Accessed 20 Oct 2026
- Ian Cheng presents BOB, an artificial lifeform series, at Gladstone Gladstone Gallery · Accessed 20 Oct 2026
- Transcript #54: Artist Ian Cheng Charlotte Burns / In Other Words, published by Sotheby’s · Accessed 20 Oct 2026