As part of Realities in Transition 2 – Unwritten Worlds, V2_ (Netherlands) invite artists and designers to co-create a shared artwork during a residency, called The Reciprocal Trap, that explores the hidden loop between human labour and machine world-building.
In the age of agentic AI, Extended Reality shifts from a space of immersion into a system of extraction. What was once seen as a means of accessing virtual experiences now continually captures our interactions to use as training data. Drawing inspiration from Greg Egan’s Permutation City, the project explores how human behaviour can serve as data to train autonomous AI agents, generating dynamic, shifting simulated worlds in real time.
The hybrid production residency is designed as a communal creation process of one joint artwork, with all residents contributing according to their individual expertise and vision. The residency is hybrid and involves online gatherings (June–July and October–November 2026) and a residency at V2_, Rotterdam (August–September 2026).
A total of three artists will be selected and they will be joined by a creative technologist.
Support includes:
- Three 15,000 EUR grants, one for each artist (which covers the artist’s fee, travel, accommodation, and subsistence costs for the duration of the residency).
- Production costs of up to 5,000 EUR.
- The costs of the Test Lab and the first showcase (covered by the host).
- A 6-month hybrid residency hosted by V2_
- A 2-month in-person period (at the host institution premises), including a public Test Lab, an event to present the artwork in production to the local artistic and professional community.
- Support for the artwork distribution after the end of the residency.
- A mentoring programme to support artists in their creative process, from production to mediation, from narration to distribution.
The cultural organisations issuing this open call are encouraging diversity, inclusion and gender equality.
