HOW TO RECORD A FUNERAL
➼ short film
2022
NON-PLACE SIMULATOR
Compelled to document this space, Ratajczyk synthesized various kinds of field work—recording ambient sounds, manually modeling the environment using his own photographs and Google Maps, and filming people passing through, transforming them into flat, NPC-like figures. This synthesis created a synthetic, interactive post-documentary environment, blending real-world data with digital abstraction.
The piece was presented as an interactive experience where viewers took on the role of photographers. As they navigated the simulated space, they captured images of people or abstract compositions, which were instantly printed by a hidden machine, producing a tangible output from the digital scene.
This structure allowed for a form of observation, where the subjects were unaware of being photographed. The project raises ethical questions about documenting people without their consent, reflecting Ratajczyk’s reflections on the ethics of public observation and the blurry boundary between documentation and intrusion.
➼ video game / installation
unreal engine 4
2022
work exhibited in Curators’LAB
AN ANGRY AUTOETHNOGRAPHY
Notably, the essay makes early narrative use of Photoshop’s generative AI, employing it to illustrate Ratajczyk’s text in a deliberately flawed manner. The banal visual content generated from fragments of his field research notes mirrors the flat, reductive way algorithms “see” and manage workers, further underscoring the depersonalization of gig economy labor.
➼ video essay
duration:
5 minutes
format:
16:9
2023
“A black square appeared on the google map instead of streets. I looked at it in awe as if it were THE original. As I was approaching its edge I wondered what will happen once I step on it. (...) the map refreshed.”
“In ads aimed at customers, employees are often absent altogether, with food seemingly appearing on the doorstep immediately and spontaneously. Sometimes, a bike or backpack symbolically takes the place of the worker.”
GRID LOGIC
2023-24
exhibited at Schauraum, Museums Quartier
digitalekunst.click/schauraum/2_s1e0/
An autofictional account told from the vantage point of a distant future.
11 minutes, 3d animation, 4k, 16:9
“Grindr characters come in and out and only the narrators persist. (...) The most significant variable influencing the texture of one’s experience seems to be their desirability in the given network. Those deemed more desirable must learn to deal with an abundance of propositions and outright requests - one has to somehow “manage” the flow. Conversely, those considered less desirable must become better marketers and negotiators and learn to deal with rejection.”
- EXPLICIT RELIEF
the grid as a relief
15x7 cm
the grid as shower curtain
275x50 cm
the user as a water fountain
➋ documentation with ai style transfer
“the apparatus is trying to make me more agreeable - mould me into a better commodity”
- EXPLICIT RELIEF
SOLID FLESH
solidflesh.com
medium.com/@solidflesh
www.instagram.com/solid_flesh/
ongoing project
We used an open-source motion model to process Muybridge’s images because the closed-source models, with their superior quality and ‘realism,’ rejected the images, deeming them pornographic.
We tasked the animDiff model with creating perfect 16-frame loops of motion based on the provided inputs—much like a human animator performing the basic exercise of creating a walk cycle. The model reanimated the photographic traces of long-perished bodies in a wonderfully clumsy, inhuman way, as if it were an animator who had never seen an actual person move and had to imagine it.
We believe there’s a poetic justice in this process. Over 200 years ago, Muybridge classified and froze bodies against a grid to study their movements, but through our efforts and the model’s interpretation, we have made them mysterious and fluid once again.