Raphael Brunk, Captures, 2016 – 2018

Raphael Brunk’s Captures redefines aesthetic engagement with virtual landscapes, extracting a peculiar kind of aesthetic value from GTA V. Rather than hyper-realism, Brunk employs a radically different approach. He collaborated with two programmers to create a bespoke tool that circumvents the preset camera perspectives of the game. This alternative camera can penetrate otherwise solid structures like walls and floors, revealing hidden elements of the simulation’s architecture, and capture images from vantage points not envisioned by the developers.

Brunk’s subversive approach challenges the intended player experience and the illusion of a seamless, immersive game world. By exposing underlying structures and glitches, he draws attention to the constructed nature of virtual environments and the limitations of player agency within them. This interrogation of the game’s design raises questions about the politics of representation and the power dynamics between game creators and players.

Brunk targets specific elements within the simulated landscape to collect up to four hundred high-resolution screenshots. These images are then processed through another custom-made digital tool, assembling them into a single, gigapixel-sized, printable image. The files produced are sometimes digitally refined before they are transformed into Lambda prints with a matte finish, utilising the Diasec process for durability and display quality.

The resulting large-scale prints blur the line between digital and physical art, challenging traditional notions of materiality and authenticity in the age of digital reproduction. The highly detailed, composite images reveal the intricacy and complexity of the GTA V’s design, inviting viewers to consider the artistry and labour involved in creating virtual worlds. At the same time, the glitches and inconsistencies exposed by Brunk’s process serve as reminders of the inherent instability, and mutability of digital spaces.

In other words, unlike traditional photography – which captures the visible outer surfaces within tangible, three-dimensional spaces – Brunk’s method reveals the underlying logic and design principles of synthetic worlds, transforming malfunctioning software into a sublime aesthetic experience. This technique not only illuminates generally invisible aspects of the game structure – following Harun Farocki’s modus operandi in Parallel I-IV (2012-2014) – but also reimagines them as intricate, impossible architectural models or digital collages.

By referencing Farocki’s work, which explores the evolution of video game graphics and their relationship to cinematic representation, Brunk situates his own practice within a broader context of artistic engagement with digital media, challenging conventional views of both photography and game design. Ultimately, Brunks demonstrates the creative role that hacking plays in the artistic process.

More by Raphael Brunk: raphaelbrunk.com