Codex Virtualis. Courtesy of Codex Virtualis. Aliens, art, and artificial intelligence are about to collide at the Search for Extraterrestrial Life Institute (SETI) in Mountain View, California, which has awarded Mexico City artistic research studio Interspecifics its first artists’ residency. Selected from an open call announced last September, Interspecifics plans to use A.I. to generate a lifelike organism in a project named Codex Virtualis. The idea is to simulate the ways in which life might arise on other planets, creating speculative symbiotic relationships between microorganisms and algorithms. “The Interspecifics collective is a fantastic choice; we could not have asked of a better fit for the residency,” Bettina Forget, director of the SETI Artists in Residence program, said in a statement. “The