Feral File  WETWARE

This is not love. This is sex. Shu Lea Cheangs feature-length cyberpunk sci-fi porn film I.K.U. (2000) tells the story of the internet porn enterprise Genom Corporation that dispatches I.K.U. coders to collect orgasm data, developing the ability to sell profitable and addictive on-demand orgasms. I.K.U. is a phenomenon that wants to refuse definition . As much trans-genre as it is trans-gender, I.K.U. also wants to merge video and film into a fresh digital universe large-scale enough to overwhelm the viewer. In conjunction with the film release, Cheang created an interactive website called Expand, an interface (2001) with stills from I.K.U. Using horizontally expanding and glitching panels to reveal I.K.U. coders such as Reiko or Tokyo Rose, Expand, an interface challenges the censorship in cinema versus online. The website is no longer online, and this screen recording was recaptured by Shu Lea Cheang in 2022, alongside stills from the film as well as the interface.