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Anything Anywhere is an interactive experience that uses Artificial Intelligence to explore the environmental devastation of lithium mining, a mineral essential to modern technology.
In southern Australia, Greenbushes is the largest lithium mine on earth, creating dust emissions that impact the neighbouring environment. In the experience, the player becomes and communicates with artificially intelligent animals, machinery, or even dust, experiencing firsthand how mining can alter ecosystems. While the narrative focuses on the negative environmental impact of AI, the title derives from its infinite variability, which the player can use to access ecologies anywhere in the world. The use of AI means that the level of player autonomy and gameplay variability is near infinite. Players can ask the AI animals anything and generate visual representations of anything within the dataset, creating endlessly evolving and unique gameplay. The experience continues by giving the player freedom to choose their next destination.
The player ‘Alice’ engages with the artificially intelligent NPCs as she learns about the ecological devastation caused by mining. She explores relevant infrastructure, from service roads to tailing dams and mining pits.
Near the end, Alice generates anything she imagines, her amazement marking a highlight for me as developer. The ending proposes using AI’s endless variability to tell ecological stories worldwide.
Game precedent studies and research findings specific to the Australian site, with the end of the positing a diagrammatic proposal for using procedural content generation and artificial intelligence to expand the project scope to include anywhere.
The adaptability of generative AI creates endlessly evolving and unique gameplay. Due to the use of AI, nothing is fixed ahead of time in Anything Anywhere, meaning that the possible interactions are limitless.
The player speaks to and becomes animals, microorganisms, and machinery throughout the experience, with tasks like waiting for real-world rainfall. Non-human perspectives and real weather work in concert to entangle the player within our ecosystem.