The Five Lifetimes of Cicero and Jerome
What if you wanted something so badly that your desire punched a hole through the universe?
The Five Lifetimes of Cicero and Jerome is a multimedia sci-fi video game exploring the potential impacts of artificial intelligence on human creativity. An alternate version of St Jerome, spurred on by his obsession with the Roman orator Cicero, abandons his faith in pursuit of knowledge and meets a horrific fate. But that’s not the end of him. 1600 years later, a strangely familiar young lawyer attends an art show…
The entire soundtrack of the game was generated by ChatGPT based on the writings of Cicero and St Jerome. See Field Notes from the Voorwerp for more on the soundtrack.
The game was originally developed in Oxford between 2022 and 2023, and is currently being re-edited to expand its scope.
With thanks to Chris Lintott and to The Ashmolean Museum.
Above: an accurate representation of the sky as it would have looked for Cicero in Rome (left) and Jerome in Stridon (right). These two “star maps” are overlaid to form the image in the title card of the game.
The shift in background stars is subtle, but noticeable; this isn’t entirely a result of seasons and geography, as the constellations themselves are slowly moving in relation to Earth.
