Third Nature: On Shu Lea Cheang’s Film <i>UKI</i> and Nature’s Infestations of Technology

Shu Lea Cheang’s film UKI (2023) presents a ‘sci-fi viral alt reality’ diagnosing the present via elaboration into a future. The film, made in a game engine, narrates cunning and desire in the interlacing of biotechnology, the state, hacking, ecology, the formation of waste and the invention of sexual practices. UKI proposes a way of thinking the interaction of technology and nature. First Nature is that given by evolution. Second Nature, as the figure of speech goes, is arrived at through training, tools and technologies shaped by abstractions, such as capital or the scientific bifurcation of nature. Third Nature is brought about when First Nature starts to overspill and inhabit, even rework, the terrain of Second Nature. This article maps this typology and works with UKI to assess the stakes of Third Nature.