Aura, Decay and the Simulation of Ghosts: A practice research examination of changing media spectrality and AI

Abstract

This paper builds on the author’s ongoing practice-led examination of the changing nature of spectrality in various media, including film and photography, and their recent simulations within generative AI models. As part of his original thesis ("Aura and Trace: The Hauntology of the Rephotographic Image", published 2018), Schofield explored the role decay and decaying materiality play in signifying the inherent (and often hidden) spectral qualities of lens-based media, and the relationship between that and notions of authenticity in the digital age. More recent creative practice involved training models on the rephotographic results of this work, to examine to what degree this spectrality is still constitutive of these strange new forms. The result of these experiments was a projected video piece called "/imagine Ronsack", created in collaboration with hauntological artist Swansither, and originally exhibited at the "Fragmentation: Layering of Space and Time" group show, in Serbia (2024). The work is presented again here, alongside the academic paper, for your consideration.

In both the original source rephotographs, used in the thesis, and their simulations and reanimations within the models, decay played a vital and creative role, but these roles were very different in the two cases. In the original rephotographic montages, decay revealed the spectrality of the trace being carried into new forms and times, its authenticity as a time-travelling message from the past, and a clear indicator of the temporal disjunctures communicated in the work. In their simulation in "/imagine Ronsack", decay played almost the opposite role, destroying the veracity of the traces and reconstituting them into entirely new and alien forms - a new materiality that the author calls "vectorplasm". While this could be seen as an erasure of history and the aura of the original works, the introduction of profound digital decay into the story of these artefacts, granted them a new afterlife, as the key source material for genuinely novel entities – but ones that were nevertheless still haunted by poignant echos from the past.