Sam Korda's MA Project Blog

Lars Konzack’s paper “Generative AI, Simulacra, and the Transformation of Media Production” is a qualitative study of content from advertising, film, and television which was made with the heavy or exclusive use of generative AI tools. It analyzes the selected pieces of content through the framework of Baudrillard’s theory of hyperreality, and specifically as examples of simulacra – representations detached from their original referent which instead refer only to themselves. The Coca-Cola ad he analyzes is probably the most clear example of this. In November of 2024, Coca-Cola used AI to recreate their famous 1995 holiday ad. Konzack notes that the ad received a fair amount of backlash, and posits that a large amount of it stemmed from the commercial’s imagery being drawn not from any connection to real human experience but rather as a reference to the older, more fondly remembered ad (2025). The main goal of the article is to examine how the data-driven pattern recognition that characterizes AI could reshape the production process by enabling a mode of creation that is built on a foundation of repetition instead of innovation. This is reflected not just in generative AI tools creating content by reshaping old images pulled from their training data, but also by the algorithmic recommendation and personalization systems enabled by this tech reinforcing consumer behaviors to the point where they accept “synthetic content” at face value, a scenario where “consumers interact with and respond emotionally to content that lacks a direct human origin” (Konzack, 2026).

This paper provides a succinct and compelling argument for how generative AI tools in many ways epitomize Baudrillard’s theory of hyperreality. The cautionary argument Konzack lays out in the paper’s conclusion of the prospect of AI driven production leading to a creative environment that is “anticipatory rather than exploratory” is a tidy description of the setting I’m constructing for my project, where the content people enjoy on a regular basis is shaped more “by algorithmic logic than by human intent” (Konzack, 2026). This paper will probably be a key component of my explanation to the audience in the piece itself of the media environment that exists in 2057, and may even be integrated into the Department’s goals as the state of being that they’re attempting to manage and preserve. If anything, I’m surprised there aren’t more analyses out there in this vein, as generative AI’s ability to create content at an inhuman rate seems to neatly fit the description of endless image reproduction which is another key part of Baudrillard’s theory. Then again, AI is constantly improving and changing as the companies building it update and re-tool their models. The analysis and critique which human academics produce might simply be struggling to keep up with this inhuman rate of change.

This week I managed to make headway through a few of my training modules. I watched Cassie Phillipps’ talk from the 2016 Game Developer’s Conference on how to make efficiently branching narratives that offer choices to players which feel meaningful without having to construct sprawling, vastly different stories. I also saw Alex McDowell’s Linkedin Learning talk on worldbuilding and narrative, which was fascinating for offering a perspective on how worldbuilding and constructing a setting can be used in narrative and non-narrative works, as he described it as developing both context for a world and a system of interlocking, interrelated parts. While I selected this module with an eye first towards how I could apply it practically for my own worldbuilding efforts in the project, the talk also made me think about how worldbuilding could be applied as an in-universe concept, applying it specifically to the idea of the arcologies that people in my future setting live in and how a closed environment like that could be engineered. Finally, I watched the overview of how to create interactive videos with Adobe Captivate. It was a good intro to the program and to a few of the different interactivity options it offers, but I think I’ll need to start using the program to learn how to best apply it for my project. Captivate and interactive video in general is mostly discussed as a way to use content for training and e-learning. This weirdly fits with my project and prompted me to lean in during the script writing process to framing the video as a training module in form and function, with the understanding that the thing the user is interacting with is in fact an artifact from this imagined future. It also gave me the impression that Captivate will work at least for now and the proof-of-concept stage as a way of effectively and intuitively adding interactivity to my piece, and even a bit of looking around into other tools in the space leads me to believe that there’s a good chance that I’ll use the program for my final product.

Works Referenced: 

GDC Festival of Gaming. (2019, Dec. 12). All choice no consequence: Efficiently branching narrative [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEa9aSDHawA

Konzack, L. (2025). Generative AI, simulacra, and the transformation of media production. Athens Journal of Mass Media and Communications, 11(3), 177–196. https://doi.org/10.30958/ajmmc.11-3-3

McDowell, A. (2015, October 9). Worldbuilding and narrative [LinkedIn Learning Video]. LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/learning/alex-mcdowell-world-building-and-narrative/introduction

Your Learning Career. (2023, March 23). How to create interactive video with Adobe Captivate [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8eqmy3rfbs

As I think about where I am with my project roughly halfway through this first semester, I’m feeling both confident in my idea but still intimidated by how much I have to learn in order to make it happen on both the research and production sides. My research has given me a deeper understanding of how the theory of hyperreality manifests in our modern media environment and how it interacts with the concept of the simulation. I’m particularly proud of the wide range of perspectives I’ve managed to incorporate so far, from a look at how Disney theme parks act as the ultimate expression of the hyperreal to how cyberpunk interacts with the concept as a reaction to the erosion of different forms of media becoming subsumed into one, ever-present digital channel of communication. Going forward, I want to explore more of the theoretical underpinnings of hyperreality as these will be an important part of my project, as I want to set the viewer up with a baseline knowledge of the theory and its components in the early section. Additionally I want to conduct more research on how digital or simulated representations of reality can drive real world behaviors with an eye towards the spread of disinformation and the proliferation of AI tools and agents, as these feel like the most potent and relevant real world examples of the blurring between simulated and tangible reality.

I want to ramp up my efforts in the area of previsualization and production, as I’ve been mostly building the concept out in my head but taking relatively less time to map out what the visual style will be beyond the core aesthetic. I want to develop a better vision for how I’ll use different visual effects and what other footage I’ll need to film or source beyond just filming the instructor talking to the camera. I think pulling together my sources of inspiration for the pre-production binder will help with this so I can give myself a more focused visual toolbox. That said, filming the initial media did help to solidify the vibe and aesthetic I want for the core action of the instructor. The stripped down nature of the filming works both as a way to highlight the stark nature of reality vs. hyperreality while still allowing for the use of effects and over the top visuals that could contrast with the liminal-feeling space the instructor inhabits.

My current direction for the project is one where the creative side of it is directly in conversation with the critical aspect. The research I’m doing is meant to directly inform the material the instructor character will be delivering to the audience, and the questions that will be asked of the viewer directly relate to the implications of living in a world where the distinctions between representation and reality have started to break down. One of my goals with the project is to equip the viewer with the critical vocabulary to describe this situation and to draw their attention to how this erosion has already started to occur in our present day reality. Incorporating real world examples and evidence as part of the setting’s backstory will also help to emphasize that the concerns I’m addressing in this piece aren’t just relevant for academic debate but are increasingly more and more prominent in everyday life.

I’m most looking forward to building out more of the backstory and visual language of the piece in this second half of the semester. Both of these aspects are going to be key components of worldbuilding for this setting and to be honest that’s the component I’m most excited about because it seems like the most fun. The idea of building a sci-fi dystopia which touches on the ideas I described above but is also self-aware of the fact that it’s built on the basis of many other dystopias that have come before could be a tricky needle to thread, but I think it will be a fun and rewarding challenge.

Chapter 9 of the book Silent Wars, Smart Weapons: The Evolution and Geopolitics of Generational Warfare in the Age of AI by Saeed Ahmed makes the case that American hegemony is now based primarily on dominance of the algorithms that shape public awareness and perception as well as the technical infrastructure that enables them. The author points to how algorithms by their very nature privilege some narratives while marginalizing others, and how more and more political and economic systems rely on algorithms that determine what people know about the world around them and how they know it (Ahmed, 2026). It’s a look at governance that accounts for how public and private actors can use their control of communications platforms to shape which narratives gain prominence by determining who is allowed to create and discuss those narratives, and by doing so influence public opinion and politics. Algorithmic dominance “redefines sovereignty, deterrence, and diplomacy through the management of digital infrastructures and the modulation of collective cognition” (Ahmed, 2026).

While this chapter is primarily concerned with geopolitics and international conflicts, the assertions it makes about the outsize power platforms wield in shaping public perception are directly related to the concerns I want to address in my project. As I’ve started to build out the future history of my setting and play with how exactly the world arrived at the state it did by the time my piece is set, one of the main considerations is how the media ecosystem collapsed and then was rebuilt in the intervening years to reflect a heightened level of control. This isn’t a secret: the Department of Hyperreality directly acknowledges the role they play in promoting some narratives and marginalizing others, though they present it more through the lens of public service than manipulation. They refer to the state they’re trying to achieve as “managed hyperreality”, in contrast to the chaotic mess that allowed disinformation and misinformation to proliferate to such a degree that it drastically exacerbated all the other crises of the 2030s and ‘40s. This article provides very real examples for how such a state could be achieved by consolidating control of the algorithms and technical infrastructure that enable mass communication, providing both conceptual justifications for why governments would do this as well as practical examples from Iraq, Ukraine, and Venezuela as conflicts where the US was just as concerned with controlling the narrative and orchestrating a spectacle as they were with controlling the actual battlespace (Ahmed, 2026).

This past week I’ve managed to secure confirmation from three of my committee members that they’re interested in serving on my committee, and I’m still waiting on the fourth person I approached to see if they’re available to be on the committee. This puts me in the position of having to decide if I want three or four people giving feedback on my project as well as determining who would be best suited to serve as chair, which is ultimately a good problem to have. I’ve also started on my project pitch which is helping to clarify the scope of what I want to accomplish and on the side I’ve started building out the timeline of events in the fictional setting, which is helping to clarify what information I’ll communicate to the audience and establish a chain of events which will make my setting feel plausible enough for the audience to suspend their disbelief.

Margaret J. King’s article “Themeatics: The art of hyperreality” (2025) is an examination of how hyperreality can be a positive expression of human creativity and communication, and it uses Disneyland as its principal example. Essentially, King argues that the schemes originally devised by Walt Disney Imagineers to entertain guests and keep them immersed in the park produced a novel full brain-body experience that “has since become the standard expectation of virtual reality (VR) in gaming, sports, spectacle, signage, retail, dining, and, in cognitive science, research into the brain dynamics that drive all these” (2025). They define hyperreality not as an alternative reality but an irreversibly merged hybrid of fictional constructs and tangible experience which serves to elevate human experience and bypasses the analytical, rational mind in favor of engaging with emotional response. Theming and “themeatics” as the article defines it is the unification of multiple forms of media under one consistent theme in order to reduce contradictions in the guest or viewer’s experience and “…make sense of a disconnected, asynchronous, conflicted reality by transmuting memory, meaning, category, ideal, and archetype into a three-dimensional model (King, 2025).” 

Main Street, USA gets special attention as the prime illustration of how this model of hyperreality functions. It exists not as a recreation or preservation of a real main street but instead an original work which draws equally from real memories of Walt Disney’s hometown, authentic architectural styles and flourishes from the late nineteenth-century, and the collective historic imagination’s vision of an idealized small town. Its effect on the cultural imagination was so profound that the National Trust’s “Main Street America” project was informed by the park, with the preservation effort geared towards preserving real life examples of what the park attempts to create and revitalization efforts of main streets across America using the fictional creation at Disneyland as their North Star (King, 2025). Main Street, USA – as King explains it – functions not as a replacement of culture or tangible reality but in conversation with them. In this view, the world of symbols and signs which characterizes hyperreality serves to enhance human communication, existing as an evolution of centuries of art and thought and allowing for more full expression and easier communication across cultural borders.

This article presented an interesting counterpoint to much of the work I’ve found discussing hyperreality. For one thing, it offers a useful set of examples for explaining the concept and how people encounter it in daily life, But more than that, by taking a positive view of the concept and the modes of communication it enables, the author offers a strong foundation for the point of view of the “instructor” character in my project, and for the Department of Hyperreality as a whole. I’m almost tempted to have the Department quote part or all of King’s definition of hyperreality in their mission statement, as it’s one of the few takes on Baudrillard’s much cited concept which doesn’t use it as a means of criticizing modern society and digital culture, but instead can position it as a different or even elevated form of culture. They even make the point that personal memory itself is unreliable, shifting with every recall and subject to our own biases, and so shouldn’t necessarily be held up as some sacrosanct thing when compared to fabricated reconstructions (King, 2025). The Department could simply take that reasoning and expand it to culture and history at large – even before the advent of digital technology and the information overload that followed, historical records were unreliable and prone to editing by people seeking to control the narrative. So why not just take that as a given and acknowledge that we’re crafting a narrative, not in an effort to consciously falsify things but in order to admit that whatever we create will inevitably come up short? For the Department, the truthfulness of a given narrative doesn’t matter. What matters is that it’s internally consistent. King’s “themeatics” offers a way to accomplish that in both the virtual and physical world, engaging the full sensory human experience in a concerted effort to create a cohesive experience which fully immerses the individual in a fabricated – but no less real – reality.

As far as other progress on my project, I’ve now emailed the other prospective members of my committee and am going to start up conversations to get feedback on my concept and refine it further. I’m also going to start in on my training modules and the initial project pitch, as those could help me to define the scope of the project and show me what else I still need to learn. Also, while I haven’t yet taken the Temple equipment workshop (I’m scheduled for the 2nd), I do have access to a camera which can film in 4k and am going to start planning some test footage, as I don’t want it to be too time consuming but still provide a good sense of the tone and vibe I’m thinking for the finished project.

Work cited: King, M. J. (2025). Themeatics: The art of hyperreality. The Journal of Popular Culture, 58(1–2), 7–25. https://doi.org/10.1111/jpcu.13383

This week I found the article “From Reality to the Hyperreality of Simulation” by Paulo Barroso (2022). It explores how hyperreality relates to the concepts of virtual reality and simulation, detailing the distinctions between the concepts and how they combine with modern communications technology to reshape how we live our lives and perceive reality. Barroso makes the point that hyperreality is both a function of the technology which allows for the endless reproduction of images and the technological communication infrastructure itself, and that these same technological advances have now progressed to where communication is no longer just a human-to-human phenomenon, but frequently involves humans communicating with technology itself in the form of chatbots and other computer programs (2022).

The article argues that the end result is a society conditioned to exist in a constant state of augmented or virtual reality, as digital communications technology is not only pervasive but increasingly comprises the space where many people spend most of their time, resulting in a state where reality as a shared concept becomes less and less tied to objective physicality and is more dependent on the interactions between the sets of signs and symbols which characterize the digital space (Barroso, 2022). In short: when the majority of human experience becomes filtered through technology which can effectively blur the lines between what’s real and what’s virtual, “reality” becomes untethered from tangible experience of the world. Hyperreality takes its place, and truth becomes rooted in what is potential or possible instead of what is actual.

This article effectively lays out the philosophical underpinnings for my project. My goal is to use tropes from dystopian science fiction settings in a context which directly implicates the viewer through the use of interactive video. One of the characteristics of effective media from this genre is taking an aspect of contemporary life and exaggerating it to a degree which gets the audience to critically consider the world in which they live in now. Barroso’s arguments give me a theoretical basis for arguing why my work’s take on hyperreality could exist as a plausible possibility while reflecting back something the viewer/participant could recognize in their own lives.

I was wondering for a bit if straight up calling the organization in my project “The Department of Hyperreality” was taking things a bit too far, but now I think it’s the right move. The question isn’t whether the prospect of a society organized mostly around images and digital communication would read as too ridiculous, as you could make the argument we’re basically already there in 2026. Then the question becomes what could happen to make a society champion that fact to the point where it becomes one of their central organizing principles? What would it feel like to live somewhere that long ago discarded the notion that objective truth was worth upholding?

This week has been slow in terms of progress on my project, mostly due to me coming down with a nasty cold last Saturday. It feels frustrating because now that I’ve decided on a workable direction for my project I’ve become more excited about building out more of the idea but my energy levels and ability to focus have been hampered by my body trying to get well again. I’m trying to balance rest with staying on top of my commitments, and now that I’m rounding the bend on getting over the cold (knock on wood) I want to step up my efforts in expanding the world as well as starting in on the project pitch and initial media, which should also help to clarify where my thinking is in the project and what next steps I should take. That said, I have emailed one of my prospective committee members, and he’s agreed to serve on the committee, so that’s good! I plan to email the other prospects in the next couple of days so that this portion of the project can be over and done with. 

Reference: Barroso, P. (2022). From reality to the hyperreality of simulation. Texto Livre. https://doi.org/10.35699/1983-3652.2022.37426

The SCP Foundation is an ongoing collaborative work of fiction which began in 2008. It’s a wiki with presents itself as the archive of a secretive extra-governmental organization which has charged itself with protecting the world from anomalies – objects, beings, and even concepts which defy the laws of physics and conventional understanding, from a lizard which is practically impossible to kill to a previously undiscovered integer which causes math to break down. The entries which form the bulk of the site take the form of articles detailing the procedures used to contain and study these items, and the site’s community tends to be exacting when it comes to the language and style of these entries, stressing rigor and the need to impart a believable atmosphere. The result is a vast collection of short stories which mostly conform to a well-defined style, and for those willing to dig into the wiki and read between the lines more details of the setting and how the Foundation operates and sees itself can be found. It’s an experience akin to watching a “puzzle” movie like Memento as you have to work to unravel what exactly the object you’re reading about is and what it does to people. The orientation for their Memetics division is a great example of this, rewarding both close reading and interaction with the text itself (try highlighting the whole page).

One of the most common themes across the Site’s many disparate canons and stories is the idea of the control of information. Unsurprisingly for a perhaps centuries-old secret organization, censorship and redaction are common practices in the Foundation, and there’s always more going on underneath the surface of what you’re reading. Early on in the wiki’s existence, the site’s authors decided that there would be no one true canon. There is no definitive explanation for neither how the Foundation came to be nor the source of the anomalies it contains, with several possibilities being put forward with the in-universe explanation that they all exist simultaneously for purposes of disinformation and because reality itself may have been altered multiple times, so they could all potentially be true. 

As far as my project goes, the SCP wiki serves as a key point of inspiration. It represents a massive undertaking of worldbuilding and a blueprint for how to use a well-defined format to both structure a story and reveal information about the setting in a way which rewards close reading and prompts the viewer to question some of the assumptions they may have brought with them into the work. It’s also written in a way that encourages the audience to regard themselves as something closer to an active participant in decoding the work rather than just a passive receiver of information and story.

This relates to my project as this week I’ve zeroed in on what feels like a tangible direction for it. The working title is Bringing You Yesterday’s Tomorrows, Today! It will be an interactive video that takes the form of an interactive training module for the viewer/participant’s first day on the job in the Department of Hyperreality. It is 2056, and thanks to both ecological and context collapse brought about by climate change and AI respectively large swathes of the world are functionally uninhabitable. Most people live their lives in sealed habitats and conduct much of their business and social lives and leisure time via screens. The content on these screens is fully under the jurisdiction of the Department, and this training module’s content will give the viewer a glimpse into a society that has fully and shamelessly given itself over to living in a world oriented primarily around mediated signs and symbols. In order to function effectively in their job, the trainee needs to understand the importance of preserving a shared, cohesive narrative and how to keep it intact while still offering citizens the chance to exercise their imaginations – just so long as they don’t exercise them in the wrong ways.

 The interactive nature of the piece is intended to make the viewer question their own relation to the media environment we live in now and also what it would mean to try and reassert the real in a world which doesn’t much care for it. Naturally, this means I’m going to have to learn how to design interactive videos as well as bone up on principles of game design and choice in narratives, and next week I want to start building out the full future history and details of the setting I want to create, then start working to decide how much I reveal to the viewer/participant, as well as how to get them to push for confirmation of whether that information is even true. After all, if practically all the information you receive in your daily life is curated and distributed by a Department whose mission statement is predicated on eliminating competing narratives so as to avoid chaos, doesn’t that imply that there’s a lot they aren’t telling you? And what does it do to culture and imagination when those forces are contained in a walled garden?

Site referenced: Rounzie. (2015, July 18). Memetics and Infohazards Division Orientation. https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/memetics-and-infohazards-division-orientation

This week I came across the article “On the Apocalypse that No One Noticed” (Krevel, 2018), an introduction to an issue of the journal ELOPE: English Language Overseas Perspectives and Enquiries. This issue featured articles concerning speculative fiction and science fiction in particular, and this introduction examines the specific subgenre of cyberpunk and its interaction with the concept of hyperreality. The apocalypse referred to in the title is in this case the erosion of both genre boundaries and of different mediums of communication thanks to the rise of digital communications. The author argues that the digitization of all media means people are effectively receiving all communications through just a single channel which is capable of endlessly reproducing signs and symbols which become substitutes for objective, lived experience. The result is that what people think of as “reality” or “truth” becomes dependent on these media-transmitted signs and how they align with other configurations of signs, and because of the many possible configurations of signs “in the paradigm of the hyperreal all realities exist simultaneously as a potentiality” (Krevel, 2018). They extend this reasoning to both the then-recent emergence of “fake news” and “alternative facts” as symptoms of this hyperreal environment, and to literature’s existence as a medium in this environment imbuing it with “a reality building potential” (Krevel, 2018). Essentially, because we live in a present moment which is so volatile due to the rapid and constant flow of information and signs, it becomes impossible to imagine a collective future which is both distant and significantly different from the times we live in now, and we thus end up hovering in a state of constant potentiality. Cyberpunk speaks to this by positing a future which is inevitable because of the grip the present has on it, so it’s less about what the future might be and more what it can’t fail to become.

Even though it was just a short intro to present the work of other authors, this article offered a new and really interesting theoretical take on how science fiction interacts with the idea of hyperreality and the role speculative fiction plays in contemporary culture. It feels like it’s articulating some of the ideas I’ve been floating around in a helpful way. In particular, the notion of all communication coming through one digital channel resulting in the blurring of lines between different media and genres feels central to what I want to explore. For instance, it feels weird and kinda gross that more and more people are using the video game term NPC (non-player character) to refer to other people as basically non-entities or not full individuals, and it’s an open question how many of these people who use the term have actually played a video game. This author would probably argue that distinction ultimately doesn’t matter, since the NPC meme has been so thoroughly propagated through social media that its initial relation to video games is now beside the point, and what matters is just that the concept itself (and the sense of alienation from others it implies) has become so widespread. Overall, this article provides a strong theoretical basis and vocabulary for relating hyperreality to science fiction and our digital culture, and honestly it also feels heartening to see people in 2018 were already thinking of how these things connected to our current lives in real and tangible ways. Not to mention the latter half of the intro outlined the work of other authors in the space which could also be helpful for my project, so I have a bunch of possible avenues for further research already.

As for what I’ve done this past week to work on my project, unfortunately I wasn’t able to make any progress beyond finding and reading this article. But next week, on top of picking prospective committee members, I hope to further refine what exactly my idea is going to be. At the very least I want to zero in on a topic, either by combining the two I have or deeply considering which of them is stronger and going with that one. I want to also have more discussions with more people about these ideas to figure this out because I find that more helpful than just thinking about this stuff (and potentially just endlessly ruminating on it) on my own.

…that said, a couple weeks ago on the Philly Book Crawl I picked up We Are Legion (We Are Bob) by Dennis E. Taylor, and then in the article I shared on our workshop slack for the first week of class I learned that Sam Altman actually mentioned being a fan of the book. That big time colored my reading of it, and I just finished it yesterday. It’s a fun book, very in the mold of The Martian and Project Hail Mary (to the point the author of those contributed a quote to the cover), and it’s really interesting to see how the book’s vision of life after death via cryogenic freezing could appeal to someone like Altman and the mental gymnastics he probably undertook to rationalize away all of the many elements the author includes that undercut the notion that cryogenic life after death would be a good idea that would work as intended. It’s sort of like how I played through Cyberpunk 2077 and came away convinced that the only thing Elon Musk probably took away from the game – aside from a love for angular, militarized looking designs – was that it would probably be really cool to run one of the setting’s giant megacorporations which are unequivocally unethical and actively making life worse for basically everybody. They both point to the unfortunately continuing prevalence of Herbert Marcuse’s “technological rationality” as the mindset driving so much of society today. The technology in these works might seem amazing and look really cool, but even within the works themselves they speak to systems built on exploitation and efficiency at the expense of individual freedoms and environmental responsibility.

But I digress. Happy Labor Day!

Works Referenced:

Cyberpunk 2077 (PlayStation 5 version) [Video game]. (2020). CD Projekt Red.

Krevel, M. (2018). On the Apocalypse that No One Noticed. ELOPE: English Language Overseas Perspectives and Enquiries, 15(1), 9–16.https://doi.org/10.4312/elope.15.1.9-16

Lepore, J. (2026, Aug. 11). Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and the Misreading of Science Fiction. Wired. https://www.wired.com/story/book-excerpt-rise-and-fall-of-the-artificial-state-jill-lepore-silicon-valley-sci-fi/

Taylor, D.E. (2016). We Are Legion (We Are Bob). Saga Press.