SPACE RACE #1 in LISBOA20 gallery

This is what I saw yesterday in Lisbon:

I visited LISBOA20, a very beautiful commercial gallery and met with Luis Silva, the production director there. He explained to me that although the gallery is an independent commercial space, they like to do their best to foster the development of the Portuguese contemporary art scene and specifically the digital art scene here. In order to do this the gallery hosts 2 major projects : The Upgrade! Lisbon [ a regular gathering of young and old digital and media artists, curators and other interested in art and technology] and the LX 2.0 web art commissioning project [support, display and archive initiative].
I saw the most recent project, just launched in March 2008, SPACE RACE #1 by Portuguese artist André Sier.

SPACE RACE #1 is a generative work a bit similar to the problematics in MadMax. The piece consists of a 3D simulation of a space ship that travels to various mystery locations. In order to continue in its mission, the ship much fight for a green substance that is needs for fuel. In each new environment the ship competes with the "local" inhabitants [ teams of flying objets ] who of course wan to keep their fuel.

Each local team that the nomadic ship encounters has its own unique characteristics and so the traveling ship much adapt its competition tactics. This intelligent generative art work is a kind of abstract computer game.

I found it to be both aesthetically beautiful and narratively engaging. The symbols and shapes that represent the various ships move in lively and personalized ways between patterned and random interactions with one another. The game has no visible end and no way for me to interact with it. These aspects gave me the sense of having a birds-eye view on the daily life of a semi-natural and semi--disturbing society.

info and links to the project and the artist can be found on the LISBOA20 website and on his personal website.
http://www.lisboa20.pt/lx20
http://www.s373.net