Catalogue > At random

Grand Ape town is a realtime animation movie based on a conducted research about human-animal relations in videogames. Within the movie half of the population of the videogame Grand Theft Auto V is swapped with the 3d-model of a chimpanzee. Through this modification the city of Los Santos is transformed into a hybrid playground of human and animal agency. It invites the viewer to perform Donna Haraways response-ability as a test-action in digital worlds.

Thomas Hawranke is artist and researcher. He received a diploma in audiovisual media from the Academy of Media Arts Cologne and a Ph.D. in media art from the Bauhaus-University in Weimar. In 2005 he joined the artist group susigames, was an artist in residence at the Center for Art and Media (ZKM) Karlsruhe and held a scholarship for artistic research in video games. In 2009 he co-founded Paidia Institute, an interdisciplinary research group operating between art, technology, and science.