We caught up with Igor Lilic, Mally Anderson, and Sean O’Connor from the Cellarius team, to get some more insight into the project and how it works…

What kind of world are we living in at the genesis of Cellarius?

We’re already living in it! Our first story block begins in 2009, with the mining of the genesis block of Bitcoin. The catalytic event happens in the year 2084, when an artificial intelligence called Cellarius takes control of the world, from nuclear weapons to power grids, for reasons that aren’t yet clear to humanity. In exploring that universe, we take a hard science approach. We want to explore themes like artificial intelligence, cryptocurrency, global warming, and what happens as the lines between humankind and machine begin to blur. That said, a guiding principle of the Cellarius project is that our view on the future is a little more optimistic than most science fiction tends to be.

What are the media through which you foresee people telling the Cellarius story?

We see the Cellarius Universe taking form — in the short term — through short stories, illustration, and other user-generated content. We’ve been producing a series of short animated clips. We’re really interested in the idea of transmedia, and how we can use principles of decentralization to create an emergent, collaborative media franchise. That’s one of the big technological challenges we want to take on: how can we track the provenance of the works that get contributed to the universe and ensure that creators are properly attributed as the platform continues to grow?

There are a lot of multimedia projects that are similar to Cellarius in some aspects of the project, but have there been any open, collaborative transmedia project like this before?

We haven’t seen the idea of transmedia truly come to life outside of a core franchise that takes its own storyline and creates derivative works around it. It’s a new and unexplored medium. The other thing we’re really excited about is the potential to create global storylines. We’re already working with artists creating renditions of how they believe their cities would look in this version of the future. For example, we’re working with the non-profit Code to Inspire, based in Afghanistan, to source sketches from the young women in the program — sketches of what they think their hometown of Herat might look like in the future. We’re trying to make this a global and inclusive platform that enables people to tell the stories of their individual cities and cultures and weave them into the fabric of the Cellarius Universe.