[-empyre-] mediation & videogames / the screen as a place of activity in the battlefield

[Pall Thayer]

Another very good example of exploiting the "thickness of the screen" 
related to surveillance cameras would be Rachel Baker's and Heath 
Bunting's "Fixed Viewpoint".

http://www.irational.org/heath/cctv_sabotage/



On Mon, 7 Sep 2009, Gabriel Menotti wrote:

> Dear all:
> 
> Since we are approaching the end of this first week, we should start
> pondering about the thickness of the screen from the other
> perspective: as referring not to the technical space that produces the
> image, but to the real space contained within it. In what measure the
> process of mediation is an abstraction of the world, as much as an
> abstraction of technologies?
> 
> Of course, it is precisely in the balance between both aspects that
> the thickness of the screen shows its highest political implications.
> It seems to me that Jonathon Kirk illustrates this very well in his
> video 'I've Got a Guy Running',[1] using graphic filters to create
> (further) distance from surveillance images (originally intended to
> get things closer - literally under scope).
> 
> A recent article in salon.com also brings about the suble cultural
> dimension involved in  adopting screens as places of activity /in the
> world/. In an (expected?) reversal of the old "videogames makes people
> violent" polemics, the military forces are using the apparently
> non-violent interface of hi-tech weaponry as an appeal to convince
> people to enlist. "Join the armed forces, the ads suggest, and you
> don't have to experience the blood-and-guts consequences of combat.
> Instead, you get to hang out stateside, entertaining yourself with a
> glorified PlayStation." [1]
> 
> Baudrillard aside, what is exactly being abstracted (i.e. supressed)
> in all these situations?
> 
> Best!
> Menotti
> 
> [1] http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/08/29/military_marketing/
> [2] http://www.ux1.eiu.edu/~jjkirk/running_excerpt2.mov
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-- 
Pall Thayer
artist/teacher
http://www.this.is/pallit
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