Emissaries Guide to Worlding

From internationally renowned artist Ian Cheng, the original guide to his groundbreaking trilogy and creative philosophy.

The collector's edition of Ian Cheng's cult worldbook: a behind-the-scenes chronicle of the Emissaries trilogy — landmark AI simulations now held by MoMA, the Whitney and MOCA — with a new preface, an interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist, and hundreds of drawings, character sheets and simulation stills. Part production bible, part manifesto.

What is a World? And how does one bring it to life?

Emissaries Guide to Worlding is both a behind-the-scenes chronicle and a philosophical companion to one of the most ambitious experiments in simulation art of the 21st century.

This richly illustrated, full-colour hardback brings readers into the conceptual and technical process of creating Emissaries (2015 – 2017) — a trilogy of simulations about cognitive evolution and ecological emergence. As Cheng built his agentic beings, he also began a theory of Worlding: the unnatural art of designing systems that grow, change, and take on a life of their own.

Now returning in a revised collector’s edition with a new preface and updated materials, this is the foundational artifact of Cheng’s thinking on Worlding—where theory and practice emerge side by side. Released alongside WORLDING: A Guide for Creators in Changing Times, its distilled and expanded successor, this edition offers the origin: a record of Worlding as lived process.