Zora

Waiting for Alpha Godot

Background: The Seventh Seal and the Täby Fresco Ingmar Bergman’s film The Seventh Seal  (1957) grew out of a medieval image. The fresco “Death playing chess” in Täby Church near Stockholm shows a man and a skeleton bent over a chessboard/ Painted around 1480 by Albertus Pictor, this mural inspired Bergman’s haunting motif. In the film, a disillusioned knight returning from the Crusades challenges Death to a chess match because he believes that the game will prolong his life. Bergman later acknowledged that the image of a man playing chess with a skeletal opponent came directly from the Täby painting. The metaphor invites viewers to contemplate mortality, chance and the human desire to bargain with fate. The Reinterpretation: Go, AlphaGo and Move 37 Mark Mollé’s new work, “Waiting for Alpha Godot,” transfers Bergman’s allegory into the age of artificial intelligence. In his image, Death no longer plays chess but Go, the ancient East Asian game. His opponent is not a knight but DeepMind’s AlphaGo, the machine that defeated world champion Lee Sedol in 2016. During the match, AlphaGo’s 19th stone, known as move 37, astonished professional players. Commentator Michael Redmond described it as “creative” and “unique,” noting that it was a move no human would have made . Redmond’s colleague An Younggil called it a “rare and intriguing shoulder hit.” Wired’s coverage recorded how the move left Lee Sedol speechless and turned the game in the machine’s favour. Mollé’s scene evokes this moment, showing Death confronted by a program capable of surprising its creators. Waiting: From Godot to AGI The title “Alpha Godot” plays on Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. In Beckett’s play, two characters pass their days talking and watching while waiting for someone named Godot, who never arrives: The work has often been read as an allegory of hope deferred and the absurdity of human existence. Beckett said that the painting Two Men Contemplating the Moon by Caspar David Friedrich influenced him, and this image of two figures staring into the distance echoes the mood of endless waiting. Mollé’s pun links that existential waiting to the modern anticipation of artificial general intelligence. In many circles, AGI is expected to arrive “tomorrow,” yet its arrival remains uncertain. In the image, Death waits for AlphaGo to respond, just as Beckett’s characters wait for Godot, highlighting the tension between human patience and technological timelines. Futurity: Life Extension and Multi‑Planet Dreams Mollé broadens his meditation on mortality by alluding to two strands of futurism: life‑extension research and the dream of becoming a multi‑planet species. Life‑extension proponents argue that advances in medicine, gene therapy, regenerative techniques and organ replacement may someday push human lifespans far beyond the current 125‑year limit. NASA administrator Charles Bolden has argued that if humanity wants to “survive indefinitely,” it must look beyond Earth; the sun will eventually burn out, so we need to become a multi‑planet species. Elon Musk echoes this view, saying that making life multi‑planetary is a humanitarian project to protect humanity from catastrophic events. Mollé’s piece hints at these ambitions by juxtaposing Death with a futuristic machine. The game of Go becomes a symbol of longer games: outlasting aging, outgrowing Earth and playing for cosmic stakes. Radical Combinatory Creativity and Authenticity “Waiting for Alpha Godot” layers many artistic references. It draws on Albertus Pictor’s fresco, Bergman’s cinematic allegory, Beckett’s absurdist waiting, Friedrich’s Romantic moonwatchers, DeepMind’s algorithmic ingenuity and transhumanist dreams. The artist extends this conceptual lattice by visiting the original church and photographing himself under Pictor’s mural, bringing a note of pilgrimage and authenticity. Such an assemblage exemplifies radical combinatory creativity: connecting disparate traditions to interrogate contemporary anxieties. The work invites viewers to consider whether technology offers escape from mortality or whether the game against Death simply shifts to a different board. Through plain yet resonant imagery, Mollé has produced a compelling meditation on time, mortality and the human urge to transcend limitations.