The Analogy of Space
digital video, color, sound, 12’, 2022, Ukraine
created by Oleksandr Hoisan
The Analogy of Space (2022) is a 12-minute machinima made with/in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (Rockstar Games, 2004), utilizing the CamHunt plugin to enable articulate, fluid cinematography more reminiscent of steadicam or dolly work than in-game animations. Originating as a student project at the Kyiv National University of Culture and Arts, in Ukraine, this work marks Oleksandr Hoisan’s inaugural foray into machinima, positioning itself at the intersection of procedural aesthetics and ethnographic drift. Composed as a non-linear sequence of ambient vignettes, the film methodically tracks the repetitive, robotic behaviors of NPCs across the algorithmically generated topographies of San Fierro, Los Santos, Las Venturas, and the interstitial rural zones of San Andreas. It forgoes voiceover, soundtrack, or narrative causality, instead operating within the sonic ecology of the gameworld itself, a compositional strategy that reframes the sandbox environment as a site of ambient documentary practice. The outcome can be described as ambient phenomenology: a durational encounter with systemic inertia, where violence, routine, and glitch are not dramatic events but structural conditions. Through protracted tracking shots and continual camera motion – an approach the filmmaker calls in-game space animadoc –The Analogy of Space accentuates the uncanny banality of simulated life, which unfolds not through intention, but through looped code and ambient indifference. The machinima resists closure; its motion is not teleological but contingent, offering temporary kinesthetic relief from street-level opacity. In Hoisan’s hands, the camera becomes both observer and drifter, traversing a dynamic world that resists intelligibility.
Oleksandr Hoisan is a Ukrainian filmmaker and visual artist whose work engages with digital environments, contemporary cinema, and machinima. He holds both a bachelor’s (2022) and master’s degree (2024) in film and television directing from the Kyiv National University of Culture and Arts. His early student films have been selected for over 100 national and international film festivals, including Oberhausen, FIDMarseille, Sarajevo Film Festival, BRNO16, and Molodist, earning multiple awards. A member of Contemporary Ukrainian Cinema, the Ukrainian Guild of Directors, and the National Filmmakers Association of Ukraine, Hoisan is also the founder and program director of the Ivano-Frankivsk International Short Film Festival 4:3. His recent work explores non-narrative forms, virtual cities, and the documentary potential of video games.
