Concept Drift is an interactive video artwork presented in the form of a videogame, offering a profound reflection on the entanglement between knowledge production, colonial exploitation, and technological power within the South African context.
The title draws from the technical term “drift” in machine learning, which refers to the moment when a predictive model, trained on historical data, becomes ineffective in interpreting and responding to changing real-world conditions. Here, the concept becomes a critical lens through which to interrogate the limitations of computational approaches to the world’s complexity. Through a sophisticated assemblage of AI-generated 3D models, analogue collages, game-engine-built environments, archival materials, and sculptural costumes, the work constructs a visual archive of the infrastructures and material networks that sustain and embody algorithmic logic. What emerges is a counter-model, a critical representation of the intersections between South African territory and the global computational order. Traversing different temporalities and geographies, from heavily surveilled mining compounds to industrial zones and suburban landscapes, the game-world reveals how algorithmic logics have become embedded in every dimension of lived experience: from material infrastructures to bodies, from land to systems of memory and representation.