The War Game Room

The shrinking distance between media and military technologies is reduced to zero in times of war and escalating militarism: whether it be the origins of the internet in the military, the current convergence of military simulation training, digital arts, and video game culture, or the ways that the imagery of war reporting have become intimately shaped by the perspectives of embedded reporters and the point-of-view shots of cameras mounted on bombs. The War Game Room (2004) will explore the increasing collaboration and interpenetration of military technologies (particularly military simulation), the Hollywood entertainment industry, war video games, broadcast news media, and new media technologies, in what some call the MIME (Military Industrial Media Entertainment) complex - one which purposely cultivates specific visualization techniques and the wider visual vocabulary of 21st century war which shape our perceptions of military conflict.
The project seeks to further explore the incongruities and brutalities of a context in which, to paraphrase Bob Ostertag, "We now use the same tools to play, create media, and kill."