The digital realm was always supposed to be a place of radical inclusion: a limitless and unmediated reality where the isolated were connected and the landscape could change – in colour and shape – at the touch of a button. “We are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth,” wrote John Perry Barlow in his 1996 Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace. “We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity.”

For Arca, whose Untitled takes over CIRCA this month, such hopes are not lost. Digital technologies have allowed an artist in chrysalis — emerging from musician/performer to far-reaching world-builder — to write mythology, carve out refugia, and transcend physical form.