In under world, JE Solo constructed a haunting, immersive underwater realm inside NEOS VR, inhabited by two ghost-like cyberwhales — twin artificial beings who exist as Non-Player Characters (NPCs).
These virtual whales are linked to a customized machine-learning software (MASOM) that transforms original compositions by Solo into soundscapes resonant with whale songs and underwater ambience. The whales generate and perform their own unique audio — singing, shifting, responding in real time to visitors’ movement and sound within the space.
The environment itself is designed as a kind of haunted metaverse: ghost entities, spectral and aquatic imagery, and sonic moods emerging from from the environment. The effect is melancholic, eerie; a blending of sorrow, memory, and the uncanny potential of digital life. More recently, JE migrated the whales into a new VR world (Resonite), when their home VR platform (NEOS) began to disintegrate.
Statement:
“under world arises from my concern for the oceans and my reverence for the beings who inhabit them. The twin whales function as both living entities and memorials, their machine-generated songs echoing the increasingly threatened communication of real whales overwhelmed by industrial noise, warming waters, and human extraction. By situating these autonomous, ghost-like creatures within NEOS VR, I create a speculative refuge that is intentionally uneasy; a digital ocean haunted by the future we risk losing.
Through this immersive, shifting environment, I invite visitors to reflect on what it means to mourn an ecosystem while it is still alive, and to consider how imagination, care, and renewed responsibility might help us sustain the natural world that remains. under world is a kind of parallel ocean that exists even as the physical one is pushed further into crisis. Yet this refuge is intentionally uneasy. The space is haunted. Visitors encounter the whales as living entities, but also as memorials to the whale species we have already lost.”
under world is a project of the BBMC made possible thanks to the support of the Canada Council for the Arts | Conseil des artes du Canada.
