Geraint Owen

Bio

My PhD title:

Using Generative AI to Overcome the Problem of Cultural Stasis and the Slow
Cancellation of the future 

My PhD summary:

In the contemporary digital landscape, culture appears increasingly trapped in a self-referential cycle - a phenomenon late theorist Mark Fisher famously characterized as the “slow cancellation of the future.” This research posits that Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) has fundamentally weaponized this stagnation. By training on the vast, finite archives of human history, GenAI transforms cultural production into a closed latent space: a mathematical enclosure where the "new" is merely a statistical recombination of the "old."

This study investigates the hauntological implications of GenAI, arguing that these systems do not merely reflect digital nostalgia but actively automate it. As algorithmic outputs begin to populate the data pools of future models, we face a "model collapse" that is as much cultural as it is technical - a recursive loop that precludes genuine innovation. However, rather than viewing this closure as inevitable, this research explores the potential for adversarial "weirdness" to serve as a subversive toolkit.

By employing techniques that deliberately introduce noise, ontological glitches, and "the weird" into the model’s predictive logic, we can destabilize the internal consistency of the latent space. The core of this inquiry focuses on whether these systems can be forced to malfunction in productive ways that bypass their probabilistic constraints. Through a synthesis of media theory, hauntology, and algorithmic experimentation, the research seeks to move beyond the aesthetic of the pastiche toward a genuine future.

Ultimately, this work asks: can AI be repurposed from a tool of cultural recycling into an engine for the "unthinkable"? By hacking the boundaries of the latent space, we aim to reclaim a sense of temporal progression and rediscover a cultural horizon that exists outside the archive.

For years, I was part of the machine, working in advertising to automate nostalgia and accelerate what Mark Fisher called the “slow cancellation of the future.” I didn’t just observe culture getting stuck on repeat; I helped build the recursive loops and weaponized latent spaces that keep it there. My current research is an act of reclamation. I am exploring how to redirect these systems from the inside through adversarial “weirdness.” By hacking the digital hauntology I once helped create, I’m searching for a way to force AI beyond its own archive and finally reopen a path toward a genuine future.