WWWUNDERKAMMER: The Prequel and the Sequel is an exhibition that explores both the origins and the future of Carla Gannis seven-year, multi-reality archive project.
Over the summer, NYU IDM students collaborated with Gannis at NYU Tandon @ The Yard to imagine C.A.S.S.A.N.D.R.A.—the Compassionate and Altruistic Semi-Sentient Assistant and Negotiator of Dreams, Rationality, and Aspiration. Conceived as a speculative fiction language model, CASSANDRA provides the prequel to the wwwunderkammer narrative. According to this origin story, the wwwunderkammer was first imagined by an AI in digital exile—a sanctuary of myth, memory, and resistance.
The sequel emerges through the preservation and migration of the wwwunderkammer archive itself. With older VR and metaverse applications no longer supported, the team transitioned the project to new platforms, including Unity and MONAverse, a decentralized Web3 social experience. This current phase of work reimagines the archive through XR environments and reactivates its cabinets as spaces for storytelling, poetics, and expansive world imagination—inviting reflection on the interwoven futures of human, non-human, and machine intelligences.
The exhibition is a layered hybrid experience, combining virtual worlds with physical artifacts. As part of the research initiative, Gannis and her team designed and fabricated speculative VR headsets—sculptural prototypes that challenge the standardized aesthetics of immersive hardware. These devices propose alternative design languages grounded in cultural identity, material experimentation, and absurdist critique.
This phase of the wwwunderkammer project was supported by a New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) grant and the Tandon Undergraduate Summer Research Program (UGSRP), with consulting support from TRANSFER Data Trust.
