From Sun Tzu to Xbox: War and Video Games

Text and the City

At Grandtextauto, Mary Flanagan writes:

There is a great set of posts readers may wish to check out at the IDC list about situated technologies, ubiquity, games, war, and the ISEA interactive city project. Insightful stuff & worth the read.

  Quoting one post by Catherine D'Ignazio regarding ISEA 2006' s "Interactive City" theme: 

The festival's imagination of the "Interactive City" seemed to be characterized by a spirit of play which feels increasingly oriented towards middle-class consumer spectacle and the experience economy...

my questions to the artists, the organizers, the attendees and  everyone else is - is psychogeography/locative media work simply R&D  for a new generation of entertainment spectacle? Or, what are we  actually trying to do with these ideas of "play" in urban space? Who  gets to play? And what about the interactive cities in Iraq and  Lebanon and elsewhere? Why didn't we address war, security,  militarization and terrorism as aspects of the contemporary  interactive city? For me, running around making the city into a  sandbox, a playground or a playing field feels increasingly  irrelevant and irresponsible.

8 BIT

Trailer's up for Marcin Ramocki and Justin Strawhand's 8-Bit, their new documentary about art and videogames, featuring some artists who're covered in From Sun Tzu to Xbox, including Cory Arcangel, Eddo Stern, John Klima and Alex Galloway, plus the wonderful Paul Slocum (of Treewave), Mary Flanagan, Tom Moody, Bitshifter and many others. Oh yeah, and your humble author.

If you're in New York, the world premiere will be at the Museum of Modern Art on October 7th. I'll post more info as the day gets closer.

Link: 8 BIT - official website
See also: Tom Moody's post about the doc

WWV Trailer

Trailer for the documentary WWV by Mihalis Gripiotis and Pasqua Vorgia, which features bits with Michael Macedonia, Mckenzie Wark, James Der Derian and yours truly. It's an incisive look at the military use of video games and virtual reality.

Pasqua, Mihalis and I discovered that we were working on parallel projects early on, and decided to share some of our research, including taking a trip together to ICT. WWV recently premiered in Greece to great acclaim.

More info: http://www.wwvdoc.com

AA Wallpapers

Some "Community created" wallpapers from America's Army.

"Designing Pacifist Films"

From "Designing Pacifist Films" by Paul Goodman

Especially in cinema, the conditions of fantasy and the habits of the audience are so discontinuous with behavior in the waking public world that the shock of strong images is sentimentalized: the rationalizing sorrow and regret is used to insulate the experience from any possible action. The energy of revulsion turns into pity, a pornographic emotion, rather than active compassion or political indignation — not otherwise than with Christians who exhaust their neighbor-love in the sentimentality of the Cross. The next step is for the sentimentalized horror to be taken as matter-of-course in the public world, just as for those Christians the poor must always be with us, so Christians can be charitable...

Again by definition, in a work of genuine art the images of horror, etc., do not have a pornographic effect and do not incite to repetitions, for the experience is finished and cathartic: the fearful images are purged, transcended, interpreted, or otherwise integrated with the rest of life...

"United States"

"'United States' no longer connotes a federated political structure, and it only routinely refers to a nation, as in 'President of the United States.' But it comes alive as a brand-name on a commodity, 'made in the United States,' or painted on the side of a bomber."

-- Paul Goodman, Five Years (1966)

Old War-Dreams

In midnight sleep of many a face of anguish,
Of the look at first of the mortally wounded, (of that indescribable look,)
Of the dead on their backs with arms extended wide,
    I dream, I dream, I dream

Of scenes of Nature, fields and mountains,
Of skies to beauteous after a storm, and at night the moon so unearthly bright,
Shining sweetly, shining down, where we dig the trenches and gather the heaps,
    I dream, I dream, I dream

Long have they pass'd, faces and trenches and fields,
Where through the carnage I moved with a callous composure, or away from the fallen,
Onward I sped at the time--but now their of forms at night,
    I dream, I dream, I dream

--Walt Whitman, from Leaves of Grass

Army Theme Park?

The Washington Post reports the flap underway regarding a proposal for a military-themed amusement park on land controlled by an Army military base near DC. The proposed park would be built near a future Army museum at Fort Belvoir, and would help fund the museum through the Army's partnership with a private company.

A Florida developer has submitted an unsolicited proposal for a military theme park that would include the "Chateau Belvoir" hotel and an entertainment district with bars like the "1st Division Lounge" and several "4D" rides. "You can command the latest M-1 tank, feel the rush of a paratrooper freefall, fly a Cobra Gunship or defend your B-17 as a waist gunner," according to the proposal by Universal City Property Management III of Orlando.

Today, the Post reports that the Army is distancing itself from the proposal, though it may explore entertainment opportunities that it would consider  "appropriate and tasteful."

The comments represented a shift, coming a day after the Army declined to disavow the theme-park-like proposal it received in 2004 from Universal City Property Management. They also differed somewhat from an account of the museum discussions given yesterday by Marc A. Watson, Universal City's president, who has vast experience in the theme park industry.

Watson said Army officials approached him at Universal Studios in Orlando in 2003 for ideas on how to use simulation technology to attract more visitors to a planned museum. He continued to discuss the museum with the Army, which gave him a tour of Fort Belvoir in 2004 to inspect sites for what he was proposing, he said. Watson said he has not been told that his plan has been rejected.

"They said, 'What would you all do to the museum to make it more relevant to today's audiences? How would you breathe life into it?' " Watson said, describing the Army's visit to Orlando.

Army spokesman Dave Foster said yesterday that the Army did approach Universal Studios, but only for information about using "so-called 4-D experiences" within the museum. The subsequent proposal from Universal City was "grander in scope than what the Army thought appropriate," Foster said. Universal was welcome to submit a future proposal, but "in no event would any proposal containing what might be characterized as an 'amusement park' be . . . seriously considered," he said.

[...]

Watson, an engineer with expertise in simulation technology, objected to the "theme park" label, saying his proposal is a serious attempt to acquaint those of all ages with the experience of the U.S. soldier.

"What's important is to engage guests . . . so they can get a real feel for what the life of a soldier is like," he said.

I'm not surprised, really, that this is all linked back to Orlando. As I note in the book, there's a great deal of synergy going on there between the military simulation sector and the videogame / theme park / entertainment sector. In some cases the same companies developing simulation technologies for training are big names in the business of virtual reality rides for theme parks.

And the "real feel" for soldier life hearkens back to the mission of America's Army, ("accurate" portrayal=positive) not to mention the deals done between Hollywood studios and different branches of the military.

Link: Army Ponders Amusement Venue, Hotel At Ft. Belvoir.
Link: Army Shuns 'Theme Park' Proposal.

A Couple New Reviews

Filmmaker Magazine (not online but image here)
"Erudite and entertaining...Exploring games from Halo to Bad Dudes vs. Bin Laden--and battles from our current Iraq invasion to future combats existing now only in Pentagon simulations--Halter unveils the deep, dark ways in which our most profitable form of entertainment gets us ready for war."

Neural (in English or Italian)
"An estimable work, a milestone of research in videogame studies, that should be even more useful contributing to fill the lack of awareness in the current media-induced absence of distinction between wars appearing on the screen and wars taking place in reality."

Post-Traumatic Gaming Therapy Pt. 2

In Wired, Jay Dixit adds to the coverage of video game treatment for Iraq veterans with PTSD:

Then there’s the smell machine: a TiVo-sized box containing eight pressurized chambers loaded with small capsules. A compressor shoots air into the chambers, fans create a breeze, and the scent wafts in. Rizzo and his team licensed seven smells from perfumeries: garbage, weapons fire, cordite, Iraqi spices, diesel fuel, burning rubber, and body odor. (They’re hoping to add cooked lamb.) [...]

“Do you have the smell of burning flesh?” someone asked.

“Not yet,” Rizzo said, making a mental note.

 Link: Wired 14.08: The War on Terror.