This History is Auto-Generated is a manifestation of alternative histories and how to embody them. Our current reality is structured through simulated narratives. Slices of what makes sense come to inform how we work, live, and act usually mediated through a world of images and representation. Written by machines which feed on our needs and desires and output algorithms feasted on our memories.
This project is a gesture onto embodying these generated narratives, re-inserting ourselves back into a position of agency within a history we feel sometimes is passing us by. When alternative futures are so hard to come, usually arriving as conjectures, this project encourages taking a driver’s seat in it.
Nanut has created an interactive narrative from GPT-3 based on various historical turning points in Thailand, society, economical, and political. Dropped into a world in which we retain agency, the audience navigates these turning points to create and build a world of their own, a history of their choosing. These narratives are then created into a series of videos, possible alternative universes of this country. It is a wish to return to a certain point, not with nostalgic sentimentality but an empowerment of engendering that which is different. Where time flows at the tips of your keyboard and a mediated world, if only temporary is at your decision. Weaving through an ai-generated historical scenario based on our collective subconscious, the very stuff of our unknown dreams and into the grasps of our hands.
＊This series includes four videos:
History Bureau Agent
Dawn of 1932
Payback of 2010
A Tale of Two Thailands
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. He graduated in Journalism and Mass Communication (majored in photography and filmmaking), at Thammasat University. Previous work includes No man’s land,2018 which portrays and collaborates with Nu Muhummad, a Rohingya individual who has lived in Thailand for 30 years, and his narrative of diaspora. N01SE.jpg,2019 a series of digital photography that explores the memories of digital cameras through noise and pixels. Recently participated with Baan Noorg Collaborative Arts and Culture to create HAWIWI: I Wish I Wrote a History,2021 which experiments on meta-narrative by writing a history of Ratchaburi via card game and participatory with locals including high schooler and elementary students. This History is Auto-Generated,2022 is a reenactment of history by using AI. In 2022 he received the Prince Claus Seed Awards and participated in a mobile lab program at Documenta Fifteen.
