Aleena Chia: Capturing Reality, Dis/assembling Worlds

Photogrammetry is a ‘reality capture’ technique positioned by game engines as enabling scalable worldbuilding that automates labours of modelling and rigging. Tracing the legacies of racial classification and extractivism in biometric and environmental capture, this lecture contends that the base unit of worldbuilding is not content but assets. Assets are valued not primarily for their tradability in marketplaces or usability in pipelines, but for their embedding within tools as infrastructure. Assets are made to keep – this components-first approach consolidates value for platforms not by building, but by disaggregating worlds and dissolving labour into their constituent components for speculative forms of reassembly. 

Dr. Aleena Chia is a lecturer in Media, Communications and Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London. She researches video game production cultures and digital wellness practices to understand how technologies of automation and ideologies of self-optimisation impact inequalities in cultural production. Website: aleenachia.org 

The Virtual Realisms public lecture series critically investigates the evolving forms of reality created through algorithmic worldbuilding, where advanced digital technologies give rise to new and diverse interpretations of what is considered ‘real.’ As virtual spaces reach unprecedented levels of fidelity, this seemingly contradictory term suggests that, rather than a unified representation of our reality, we are now enmeshed within multiple new artificial realisms shaped by the proliferation of immersive technologies, CGI, and intelligent automation across all sectors. Spanning both technical and speculative practices, the series of lectures will explore how real-time virtual environments, and the technologies that underpin them, are redefining the logics of cultural production, creativity, and power in our increasingly rendered world.

Virtual Realisms is a monthly series of public lectures taking place throughout the 2024-25 academic year at the University of Westminster in London, UK. For more information about the series, please visit www.virtualrealisms.com.

Virtual Realisms is curated by Tadej Vindis, Lecturer in Creative Technologies, and Teodora Sinziana Alata, Lecturer in Creative Computing and Algorithmic Cultures, at the University of Westminster.

The series is organized as part of the Quintin Hogg Trust funded project, "Emerging Technologies and Advanced Technological Literacies for Creative Disciplines", led by Dr. Elizabeth Allen and Tadej Vindis, and is part of a wider CreaTech initiative of the College of Design, Creative and Digital Industries at the University of Westminster. Graphic design by Andrew Mallinson.

Host or Publisher Virtual Realisms