“A conversation with artist Raphael Brunk” By Ruth Polleit Riechert
Did you reprogram the computer games for that purpose?
Three years ago, there was no software that could be used in computer games to generate images with a native resolution in the three-digit megapixel range, to go beyond a typical screenshot. My idea was: I want to take photos in computer games, but the work must have a certain quality in terms of sharpness and resolution, and it must be printable as very large formats without compromising the quality. Two of my friends who happen to be software developers “wrote” a camera we developed together: it’s a camera simulation. It works like a digital camera, and I can use it to shoot “ingame”.
And later you even reprogrammed computer games, so that the camera could take photos of things, that you usually don’t see in the game.
Exactly. We found a way to get into some kind of meta-level within the game, in which certain elements of the game structure are invisible. Therefore, the images look like architectural models or collages. For example, there is a lantern hovering somewhere, but it has no foundation. This is how the pictures in the “Captures” series were created. During the editing process, each image is rasterised into at least 400 individual image sections, which, based on a particular algorithm, are subsequently reassembled to become one picture.
in-game photography 