In the last post I finally decided on a name for the 2nd project under the [VR]Ography umbrella… and that’s about it (and there was a little bit of fiddling about with presentation too). This time we’re refining the concept of the work and its presentation… so more of the same really.
After taking what I had made so far into my next tutorial and discussing the state of things with my tutor and peers, I decided that I needed to shift my presentation. What I needed was a more interactive setting for a potential exhibition. I played with several ideas on what could be done and as it turns out, there was a lot of options. The ideal situation would have been to have the work situated within a darkened room with a mechanism for illuminating the individual pieces of work. An idealised version of this might be having the images hung in a grid formation on a wall with a lighting scheme that illuminated and darkened individual images in synchronisation with the playing of sound effects appropriate to the scenes (possibly taken from the game itself or sampled from real world events). The lighting pattern could be made to limit the viewing time to further obstruct the discerning of the image’s origins, perhaps flickering to obstruct the viewer from proper examination. This would work well with an image that contains imagery of gunfire – in this instance the flickering could match the beats of the audio to enhance the effect. Conversely, images depicting explosions, or the droning of machinery could be lit for a longer period.
As much as I would have liked to present the work in such a way, it was, at the time (and now), beyond my means. Space as well as funds were at a premium during my time at university, and so another, somewhat simpler solution was required. I decided to draw up plans to construct an interactive display device on a much smaller scale. Using a shelf constructed from wood with LED lights imbedded in a recess behind the work I could display the negatives one by one by having the viewer press a button below the piece to illuminate the work while they examined it – thus making the audience’s participation with the work directly linked to its display. This idea was to be shelved for the time being however, having to alter the display of the work for our end of project review. I decided then to proceed with the use of a lightbox as I felt it would suit best for the small presentation with an audience of ten or so people. Rather than having the lightbox overwhelm the work, I decided to black out the majority of it, concentrating the light output to a smaller circular area in the centre of the box. This, I felt, lead to a more considered approach by the viewer, and hopefully a more connected experience with less distraction.
As this work continued in the background, I pushed on with my research, looking for more references to bolster the academic side of my work and to enhance both my understanding of work in a similar vain and to improve my conceptual basis. The ideas around war and play intertwining are crucial to the project, and the blurred lines between them led me to the work of David Levinthal. Within his project titled ‘Hitler Moves East’, Levinthal utilises toys (specifically toy soldiers) to create scenarios and scenes of battle, and his work touches upon even the most serious of themes such at the Holocaust. His project isn’t just about the fighting and the process of war, the grandeur of the imagery, or the sceptical of it all, it’s also about death.
“That’s the sub-subtext here. It’s a point that’s all too easy to forget in a culture in which video games like “Call of Duty” let you hit reset after you’ve been killed”. - Michael O'Sullivan
After looking at Levinthal’s work, I decided to create a first draft of a formal proposal for my project. This would inform the details of the museum label that would be displayed alongside my work in the upcoming exhibition and would highlight the aims, processes, and intentions of my work in a more concise manner than my sprawling and bloated development file would (albeit in a lot less detail).
Proposal for: A Phony War
The purpose of this project is to explore the ideas between the virtual world and the real, to highlight the blurring line between video games and war. Along with this, I am exploring ideas of propaganda and the possible deceit in photography initiated by the artist. I hope to have accomplished this by forming a project around these ideas on war journalism and more specifically war photography and video games as simulacrums for war.
The work consists of a series of virtual images transformed via analogue techniques with the intention to showcase a fictional conflict that has been brought into reality via its presentation. The process in which I created the work is relatively simple - using digital game engine software, I created scenes from a war that never occurred. I then recaptured these scenes using analogue equipment, bringing the images from the virtual into the real. It will be presented using 120 film negatives and this along with the process of image creation serves to obfuscate the origins and muddy the waters as to the authenticity of the work, thus enabling the viewer to be drawn into the created fiction.
The conceptual base of this project comes from the ever-blurring lines between video games and war. As technology advances, the realism in videogames becomes ever truer to life and at the same time real life conflicts are resolved using more videogame-like processes. Combined with the over dramatized nature of modern media coverage of conflicts and its often morally unscrupulous exaggeration, propaganda, and bias, a viewer can often feel disconnected to the events on show, both from televisual reporting and from the virtual wars represented in video games. My images are born from fictitious origins and presented in a way that takes them from fictional state and into a reality where we’re disassociated from even the bloodiest of conflicts.
DYKSTRA, J. (no date) David Levinthal: War Games. Available at: https://photographmag.com/reviews/david-levinthal-war-games/ (Accessed: 20 November 2023).
O’Sullivan, M. (2023) Art review: ‘David Levinthal: War Games’ at the corcoran gallery of art, The Washington Post. Available at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/art-review-david-levinthal-war-games-at-the-corcoran-gallery-of-art/2013/05/16/995ef8f2-bbe5-11e2-89c9-3be8095fe767_story.html (Accessed: 20 November 2023).
So, there we go. The project at this point was slowly taking shape, crystallising into a set of work that had a firm purpose and conceptual basis. More still had to be done however, and much work laid ahead with the continuing research and the development of the presentation. In the next post we’ll look a bit more at these two elements and see how the work was presented during my final group crit before the exhibition. In the meantime let me know if you have any thoughts on the project so far! As always, lots more to come. While you’re here, why not check out some previous posts!
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