Stories and imaginary worlds, as we traditionally imagine them, are hand-crafted, populated painstakingly by authors or designers. What happens if, instead, we observe narrative agents in a persistent virtual space? Can happy accidents arrive through emergent systems?

My intent with Ecosystem was to explore and study these techniques and associated algorithms in order to create and populate a "generative world." My goal was that I could combine procedural content, algorithmically simulated behavior, and programmatic world-building to create something that is both like and entirely unlike a game. There's a sense of place and users may infer their own story, but it resists conventional narrative readings.

With Ecosystem, I felt it was important to see if I could effectively “back” into storytelling from the bottom up, by setting up a lightweight framework of space and character and letting the story emerge organically out of multiple systems interacting in unexpected ways.

Ecosystem was the first time I executed a large-scale project within the context of an art or design school. I worked within a framework established by Parsons' MFA in Design in Technology, within the studio course Major Studio I.