Mark Fisher

ARTICLE: HAUNTOLOGICAL OBSESSIONS: ON BRAM RUITER’S PERPETUAL SPAWNING

Bram Ruiter, Perpetual Spawning, digital video, color, sound, 5' 41", The Netherlands, Sound design and mix by Tom ‘Silkersoft’ Schley, made with Grand Theft Auto IV (Rockstar Games, 2013)

“Shot in Grand Theft Auto IV, Perpetual Spawning is an hallucinogenic, delirious take on repetition and reiteration. An obsessive hauntological quality pervades this eerie montage of glitches, while Tom ‘Silkersoft’ Schley’s ominous beats lead the viewer in a downward spiral into modern catacombs”. 

As the 2019 Critics’ Choice Award from the Milan Machinima Festival suggests, Ruiter’s film lingers with viewers through its hypnotic sense of unease.

As the Dutch filmmaker explained in a recent interview, Perpetual Spawning emerged organically from his ongoing fascination with Philip Solomon. Specifically, Ruiter was intrigued by how the late American avant-garde filmmaker utilized Grand Theft Auto’s open game architecture to explore the empty yet visually vibrant textures of violence within. Inspired by Solomon’s experimental approach, Ruiter began his own boundary-pushing interventions using available mods to alter GTA IV’s environment and camera positioning. Detaching the first-person camera view to float freely, Ruiter entered one of Liberty City’s subway stations and discovered the game glitching in compelling, unexpected ways. As random non-player character models began perpetually spawning in and out of frame, Ruiter leaned into the surreal effect and structured his footage around the rhythmic arrival of subway trains.

Through this appropriative process aligned with avant-garde figures like Stan Brakhage and the aforementioned Solomon, Ruiter’s machinima interrogation joins a lineage of experimental works utilizing emerging technologies to expose and reshape restrictive media formats. Perpetual Spawning was constructed through Ruiter’s distinctive intuitive approach during a period of confinement and constraint. First introduced in 2018 while temporarily living with parents due to financial limitations, the machinima parallels thematic sensations of entrapment and liminal stasis with its formally inventive passages through a glitched, destabilized gamespace. Though leveraging GTA IV rather than San Andreas – the setting for Ruiter’s 2015 work Endless Sea –, both poetic non-narrative pieces emerge from the artist’s urge to discover beauty and cathartic release through “screwing around” with commercial game assets in abnormal ways.

So, what does Ruiter’s tinkering achieve?

(continues)

Matteo Bittanti

Works cited 

Bram Ruiter, Perpetual Spawning, digital video, color, sound, 5’ 41”, The Netherlands, Sound design and mix by Tom “Silkersoft” Schley, made with Grand Theft Auto IV (Rockstar Games, 2013)

Bram Ruiter, Endless Sea, digital video, color, sound, 6’ 59”, 2015 (2023), The Netherlands, made with Grand Theft Auto San Andreas (Rockstar Games, 2004)

Perpetual Spawning is officially distributed by Collectif Jeune Cinema

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MMF MMXXIII UPDATE: INTRODUCING NANUT THANAPORNRAPEE'S TRANSMEDIA PROJECT this history is auto-generated

Ludic revisionism or historical playfulness?

Nanut Thanapornrapee ambitious transmedia project, The History is Auto-Generated (2022), is a remarkable exploration of alternate histories and their capacity to be appropriated, molded, reimagined, and even embodied across an array of mediums, including experimental film, animation, machinima, and AI-generated texts. The project is underpinned by Thanapornrapee’s epistemological quest to decode reality, which acknowledges that we are continuously bombarded with simulated narratives that shape our perceptions and understanding of the world. In this sense, Thanapornrapee’s project is a bold attempt to reclaim some kind of agency in these narratives and empower viewers to chart their own course of history.

In his first solo show The History is Auto-Generated (2022), staged at WTF Gallery in Bangkok, Thailand, viewers could engage with an interactive online platform showcasing historical turning points in Thailand’s society, economy, and politics, temporarily inhabit different personas and make choices that could determine the course of the narrative. The result is a unique, personalize, co-generated history, where the lines between simulation and reality become blurred. The History is Auto-Generated showcases a series of these narratives, brought to life through a collection of short machinima that offer a glimpse into possible alternative universes. During the exhibition, visitors were also invited to participate in a workshop where they could embed 3D personas and engage in dialogue with one another through the prompts of these alternative histories.

Thanapornrapee’s project of ludic revisionism and historical playfulness is not just a trivial pursuit. It invites us to explore the power of imagination and the potential for change in an era marked by a bleak sense of foreboding. By weaving together AI-generated scenarios based on the collective subconscious, Thanapornrapee has created a context where time flows at the tips of our keyboards, and dreams appear within reach, perhaps the ultimate form of delusion.

Among Thanapornrapee’s main inspirations for the project is Mark Fisher’s notion of capitalism realism, the hegemonic ideology of our times — the belief that capitalism is the only viable economic system, and that any alternative is either impossible or impractical. This ideology is so pervasive that it appears to be a form of common sense, an inherent and natural part of our reality. It is, as Fisher notes citing Franco “bio” Berardi, a sort of “slow cancellation of the future” — a sense that there is no alternative to the present system, and that any hope of a better world is illusory. And yet, by recognizing the limitations and failures of the current system, we can begin to imagine and create alternatives that might lead to a more just and equitable world. However, one may question how AI can generate novel kinds of history since algorithms are trained on existing datasets, that is, past information. If anything, AI “content generation” seems to be doomed to repeat the same mistakes and thus reinforce “capital realism”, but it also true that algorithms can be trained differently. That is, another AI-world is possible (?).

As Thanapornrapee explains:

The History is Auto-Generated is “a manifestation of Thailand’s alternative history which was written by artificial intelligence in order to help us imagine the possibility of our reality apart from military governance and monopolized economics. The work contains an animation film about simulated history, interactive novel and artifact from the generated narratives. The aim of the project also lets the audience have their agency and interact with the history and rewrite their own narratives. Therefore I would like to continue to explore the possibility of a future where present day we live in capital realism and the consequent downfall of neoliberalism. The ability to create and visualize the projection of tomorrow with the help of artificial intelligence and participatory for imagining the alternatives. 

Thanapornrapee’s series The History is Auto-Generated features four episodes, with History Bureau Agent being the most recent addition. In this film, the protagonist uncovers a clandestine operation room used by the Thai Military to manipulate reality. Viewers are privy to a conversation between a history simulator machine and an enigmatic character, both of which were created by the AI. The machinima offers a glimpse into alternative possibilities for the present world, beyond the confines of military dictatorship and capitalism. History Bureau Agent’s seven minutes and forty-eight seconds of digital video and machinima are sure to leave a lasting impression on audiences.

A Tale of Two Thailands takes place in an alternative future where Thailand has been divided into two states, one being an anarchist state, and the other a military shogunate. The visual components of the film were created using a screen record of video games, following the story and dialogue written by the AI. This machinima is featured in the Counter-narratives program of the Milan Machinima Festival MMXXIII alongside works by Martin Bell, Colin Stagner, and Rhett Tsai.

Dawn of 1932 is a stand-out example of Thanapornrapee’s project, taking viewers on a journey to the revolutionary day of Siam (Thailand), where democracy was on the horizon. The protagonist, a government officer, must confront a corrupt leader and make a difficult decision that will shape the future of Thailand. Through a combination of gripping storytelling and stunning animation, viewers are transported to a world where anything is possible.

Finally, Payback of 2010 is a gripping tale set during the mass protests that rocked Bangkok in 2010. The protagonist travels back in time to seek revenge for an innocent citizen killed by the government. The result is a thrilling and thought-provoking exploration of justice, power, and the enduring legacy of political violence. Thanapornrapee’s The History is Auto-Generated is a timely and thought-provoking work that invites us to imagine different futures and explore the potential for social change.

VRAL supporters on Patreon will have access to exclusive content related to The History is Auto-Generated, including an in-depth conversation between Thanapornrapee and Gemma Fantacci.

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Matteo Bittanti


Artist bio

Nanut Thanapornrapee is a visual artist who uses essay images and a participatory approach to explore the meta-narrative and history of people and technology. Thanapornrapee graduated in Journalism and Mass Communication (with a major in photography and filmmaking) at Thammasat University. In 2021 he participated with Baan Norg Collaborative Art and Culture to create HAWIWI: I Wish I Wrote a History which experiments on meta-narrative by writing a history of Ratchabur, a city in Western Thailand, via card game and participatory with locals including high schooler and elementary students. In 2021 he received the Prince Claus Seed Award and participated in a mobile lab program at Documenta 15.

Works cited

Nanut Thanapornrapee

The History is Auto-Generated: History Bureau Agent, digital video/machinima, color, sound, 7’ 49’’, Thailand, 2022

The History is Auto-Generated: A Tale of Two Thailands, digital video/machinima, color, sound, 9’ 57’’, Thailand, 2022

The History is Auto-Generated: Dawn of 1932, digital video/machinima, color, sound, 5’ 18’’, Thailand, 2022

The History is Auto-Generated: Payback of 2010, digital video/machinima, color, sound, 5’ 19’’, Thailand, 2022

All images courtesy of the Artist and WFT Gallery

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