The Abode of Grand Master Deep Ruby
An image by Veijo Vilva
The future isn't what it used to be, the world today is not what I in my late teens some forty odd years ago thought it would be, we are not there yet and we are far beyond it in many respects. So I think an image of the future ought to contain both familiar objects and objects the purpose of which we cannot perhaps even begin to guess. And so it is with this image.
I have tried to depict the abode of Chess master Deep Ruby as she herself might "see" it. It isn't entirely clear which parts of the image reflect a physical reality - if any. Everything may be virtual or a mixture of real and virtual or even just symbolic. The thingies with eyes may be real images of physical perimeter sentinels or some arbitrary representations of them or perhaps icons of antiviral agents roaming within the memory space of the AI. The harpsichord may be an operational music instrument or a nostalgic piece of furniture or an input device with the transparent sheet of music serving as a display device, or it might be just a part of 3D wallpaper. The visualization in the sense of both physical and virtual design is a matter of purely aesthetic choice as is the nature of the presence of objects.
The future has many aspects: there is the hope, and there is the everyday, and there are the more sinister undercurrents requiring constant vigilance. I have tried to include all these moods in a single image, intentionally making the relationships between objects somewhat vague and fluid in this 2D snapshot.