oh, what grand megastructures shining beacons of modernity fade swiftly into naivety, they were never meant to exist to begin with, their ruins will never crumble under the dying sun, only paperclipped documents and dusty binders contain collective delusion, consider instead: software serfdom antivirus wheat field accelerated vassalage, content is generated from the past as the future empties out

MATHIAS WESTBROOK

WHEN
MACHINES
EAT THEIR TAILS

2026
PC Video game
Interactive physical installation

↑ Still image/screenshot from ingame cutscene

The interactive multimedia installation is a hybrid between video game and film, centered on the destruction of a data center. It combines pre-rendered animation with real-time 3D gameplay, allowing the visitor to navigate via a game controller.

At its core is a protagonist known as “The Luddite,” an enigmatic figure whose name references the 19th-century movement that resisted industrial automation through sabotage. In a similar spirit, the character undertakes a surreal journey to confront and dismantle its adversary, “The Serpent” — a biomechanical entity residing within the data center.

Both inhabitant and embodiment of the structure, the Serpent represents the opaque, all-consuming infrastructure of contemporary big tech and AI systems: seemingly omnipotent, yet inherently fragile. Drawing on classical heroic narratives and chaoskampf motifs such as St. George and the Dragon, the work adopts a quest-based structure defined by stark oppositions. Along the way, The Luddite, together with the visitor as a player, encounters environments, machines, and conflicts that reference historical and contemporary imaginaries of automation, capitalism, and individual agency.

While this interactivity suggests agency, the cyclical, predetermined structure reveals it as illusory. AI-generated voices appear as mechanical manifestations of the Serpent, reinforcing its systemic presence.

↑ Installation at Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Afgang 2026. Photograph: David Stjernholm

Installation materials: gaming rig, synthetic leather and mesh chairs, aluminium cast, game controller, plastic bottle, water

↑ Screenshot from live gameplay

↑ Still image/screenshot from ingame cutscene

↑ Still image/screenshot from ingame cutscene

↑ Still image/screenshot from ingame cutscene

↑ Installation at Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Afgang 2026. Photograph: Mathias Westbrook

↑ Screenshot from live gameplay

↑ Screenshot from live gameplay

↑ Screenshot from live gameplay

↑ Installation at Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Afgang 2026. Photograph: Mathias Westbrook

↑ Screenshot from live gameplay

↑ Screenshot from live gameplay

↑ Screenshot from live gameplay

↑ Still image/screenshot from ingame cutscene

↑ Screenshot from live gameplay

↑ Screenshot from live gameplay


External Links:

  • Video game created, written, programmed, modeled and animated by Mathias Westbrook
  • Work text written in collaboration with curators Elisa R. Linn & Lennart Wolff
  • Music and soundscape by Marcus Skjold Pedersen
  • "John Henry" perfomed by The Creek Brothers
  • Text to speech provided by ElevenLabs