The Eye of the Crosshairs

This is difficult viewing, which is prefaced by two and a half minutes of text. The video comes from the U.S. military and shows the shooting of two Reuters employees and two Iraqi children in a van that has come to rescue them.

In the Virtualpolitik book I wrote about the WikiLeaks website, which is now hosting a site exclusively devoted to the shootings, Collateral Murder. For more about the incident, see coverage here on Bag News Notes.

Shake Rattle and Roll

In the Virtualpolitik book I write about how the digital rhetoric of military videogames and virtual reality simulators is often aimed at convincing the general public of the efficacy of technological solutions to difficult cultural and political problems abroad rather than toward the stated goal of the software to improve specific coping skills for the battle readiness of individual soldiers. Often the media encourage this enthusiasm by running one-sided stories about the latest gee-whiz technologies for the military with little reflection about the agenda they are pushing.

A recent story in the New York Times, "Simulators Prepare Soldiers for Explosions of War" attempted to provide at least a fig leaf criticism, although no actual detractors are quoted or named in the article.

The effectiveness of the new technology is still being studied. But some critics warn that computer games and virtual reality systems used for training are only as effective as their software, meaning that programs that underestimate the creativity of the enemy may leave even the best-trained troops with a false sense of mastery.

After this brief disclaimer, there is no serious exploration of what some have called the "military-entertainment complex." I may not always agree with people like James Der Derian who don't necessarily reflect the complicated forms of deliberation at work in creating military media and who may also overemphasize the presence of the most simple-minded of boosters to make their point about the economic and political might of military culture.



Of course, the introduction to the RL Leaders website, which represents one of the companies described in the article, is almost a parody of itself with its deep-voiced narrator, cloudscape background, and phonetic parade of corporate inspiration speak words. (See above.) This approach to the IED problem through simulation technologies that it describes is actually not particularly new. For example, I wrote about the multi-player game Ambush! in the Virtualpolitik book. But you can see more about current initiatives here.

To check out how Hollywood some of these projects have become, check out this coverage in Variety.

Droning On

Stories from CNET and the Christian Science Monitor about the recent hacking of U.S. Predator drones over Iraq to acquire images from their video feeds explain how jihadists were able to use low-cost SkyGrabber software to gain access to unencrypted data.

Of course, the fact that the main audience for this software is composed of those who want free and uncensored television broadcasts without paying or having permission may just feed into the conflation of piracy with terrorism that I have already argued in the Virtualpolitik book is part of a general rhetoric of criminality around the Internet. More information about the technical specifics is in this YouTube video below.

Too Many Gizmos

In "The Digital Fog of War," military blogger for the New York Times Captain Tim Hsia

Instead of something akin to a smartphone, soldiers lug around several disparate pieces of equipment: GPS devices, iris and fingerprint scanners, charts for calculating collateral damage estimates related to artillery or airstrikes, hand-held radios, cameras, notepad and pen.

Hsia takes what could be called a "platform studies" approach to the problem of computational media in the military and even makes what an uncomplimentary analogy to the Atari system that is the star of Ian Bogost and Nick Montfort's book Racing the Beam: the Atari Video Computer System: "To members of the Xbox generation, however, military hardware and software seem to date from the Atari era: Too often it is bulky, confusing and impractical."

In terms of software, the main culprits for the Army’s Luddite setup here is a weak architecture and lack of interoperability between systems.

Without going into operational and technical specifics, there are multiple systems the military uses for tracking vehicles and units, but many of these systems do not speak to one another. Even within systems one unit often cannot speak or synchronize with another because a software upgrade or patch makes their equipment incompatible. This results in a confusing battlespace where units sometimes lack complete situational awareness of other units operating around them.

There are also too many platforms being tailored to specific uses, inadvertently adding to the fog of war. Command and control, intelligence, logistics, and medical systems all have a plethora of platforms with their own hardware and software requirements. These operating systems are an extreme hindrance for forward-deployed personnel operating in austere environments as they entail a greater support tail, and, more importantly, they all need power.

In contrast, Iraqi forces are content with their one-size-fits-all bomb-detecting device from Cumberland Industries, even though the Amazing Randi has directly challenged the company to prove the following advertising claims:

Simultaneous Detection of Multiple Types of Explosives or Drugs. The ADE651® incorporates electrostatic ion attraction [ESA] technology to target the specific substances. It can accommodate multiple substance detection cards to detect a broad range of explosive or drug [narcotic] substances. It can more specifically identify a substance by removing detection cards from the ADE651® after detection is received until the attraction is lost.

Ignores All Known Concealment Methods. By programming the detection cards to specifically target a particular substance, (through the proprietary process of electro-static matching of the ionic charge and structure of the substance), the ADE651® will “by-pass” all known attempts to conceal the target substance. It has been shown to penetrate Lead, other metals, concrete, and other matter (including hiding in the body) used in attempts to block the attraction.

No Consumables nor Maintenance Contracts Required. Unlike Trace Detectors that require the supply of sample traps, the ADE651® does not utilize any consumables (exceptions include: cotton-gloves and cleanser) thereby reducing the operational costs of the equipment. The equipment is Operator maintained and requires no ongoing maintenance service contracts. It comes with a hardware three year warranty. Since the equipment is powered electro statically, there are no batteries or conventional power supplies to change or maintain.

High Explosives or Detonable Explosives Trinitrotoluene (TNT), DNT, Nitro Esters (PETN, nitroglycerine, ethylene glycol dinitrate), Ammonium nitrate, Dynamite, RDX/Hexogen/Octogan, Black Powder, ammunition & Propellants, Tetryl, Narcotics, Cocaine/Heroin/Morphine, THC/Marijuana/Cannabis, LSD/Ketamine/Midazolam, Amphetamine / D-methamphetamine, Ecstasy, Opium/Opiates, Chloro-Methyl & Benzodiazepine drugs, Ivory, Human Recognition (Detection).

For more about this device, read "Iraq Swears by Bomb Detector U.S. Sees as Useless."

GI Game

CNN reports in "Army hopes interactive videos make smarter soldiers" that military planners continue to invest in serious games designed to teach cultural sensitivity to U.S. soldiers, such as Army 360: Immersive Cultural Simulation from InVisM, based on the expectation that games and simulations designed for the theater of war in Iraq and Afghanistan could minimize the number of offensive acts by soldiers who offend Muslim sensibilities and compound the problems of occupation. A company web page touts the benefits of their product:

Fusing together a combination of 360º video with HD live-action supported by eight channels of dimensional binaural audio, users are placed inside the scene. When supported by a Head Mounted Display (HMD) and motion tracker, users maintain intuitive control of the environmental perspective as they turn their head providing various points of view of their surroundings. Additionally, the scenarios use character actors and is based on documented real-world scenarios. At the end of each scenario learning point, the video pauses and the user must make limited time-allotted decisions. Depending on their answers, ICS branches to a consequence-based outcome related to the decision made and maintains a score of the player's performance. Additionally, the culmination of decisions made throughout the training results in multiple endings

The company also takes a dig at those who use videogame engines on their website: "Unlike conventional serious game technology, the training methodology effectively reveals the micro expressions and subtle body language of the scenario's characters." CNN also helps the company make their argument against the competition as a government contractor in the actual article:

Robinson believes the simulator program is more effective then a traditional video game because soldiers relate more to human characters than virtual avatars.

"Nobody cares about an avatar that gets killed. You just get another avatar," he said.

Although the use of computational media may be different from the military videogames that I describe in the Virtualpolitik book, CNN indulges in the same uncritical reporting that I describe coming from other news outlets when it comes to stories about the military's use of proprietary technologies.

It is also worth noting that the CNN story opens with a "staff sergeant in Iraq" who "decided to practice his shooting skills" by taking aim at "the Quran, Islam's holiest book."

In the 21st century, the Army was sending younger soldiers into an arena they had little cultural experience in, and at the same time, new social networking sites were poised to broadcast their mistakes to the world.

Although the original incident is no longer accessible on YouTube, there have been scores of imitators, including a person firing pork bullets into a Koran, a Koran being riddled with bullets to the tune of "God Save the Queen" while photographs of terrorist violence are intercut with the video, and a "Christian Apology" in which the Bible gets similar treatment.

One wonders about the efficacy of a few sessions with a computer game, given the hardened ideological stances and groupthink described in "Jesus Killed Mohammed: The Crusade for a Christian Military" by Jeff Sharlet in a recent issue of Harper's. In other words, what if cultural insensitivity is intentional and part of a larger geopolitical theological strategy?

Thanks to Michael Zyda for the link to the CNN story.

Just Put Your Lips Together and Blow

Whistle blowers who expose government corruption produce a number of digital genres in the Web 2.0 era. In the forthcoming Virtualpolitik book I write about how waste, abuse, corruption, and incompetence are exposed in YouTube videos, digital maps, and widely circulated e-mails.

As a case in point, the blog Ms Sparky's Mishaps & Misadventures is devoted to publicizing the incompetence of mega-contractor KBR in doing electrical work for the military in mobile encampments set up inside the Iraq warzone. Here she appears in the Rachel Maddow show in conjunction with her domain name.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Letting the Other Shoe Drop

The most replayed video clip today on the web is probably the footage of President Bush twice ducking shoes thrown at him at a press conference by an Iraqi reporter. A number of digital content creators have also created animated gifs that present the incident as an infinite loop. See, for example, this message board for a number of samples that include one in which the lobbed shoe runs backwards.

Update: Mosaic at Link TV has an interesting round-up of coverage of the incident in Middle Eastern news stations. Ian Bogost has posted a list of a half-dozen shoe-wielding online games at Water Cooler Games.

Street-Wise

Performance art traditionally has had somewhat limited audiences, by virtue of the fact that ephemeral performances can only be experienced first-hand by few. However, with YouTube, a body piercing artist protesting the slaughter of sharks in a London store window or a group of veterans in Times Square leading patrols and battle maneuvers that represent the brutality of interactions with civilians in Iraq.





Thanks to Marc Van Gurp for the street theatre links.

Virtual Training Ground

Today I visited the amazingly detailed installation of an Iraqi village built by Jacquelyn Ford Morie in Second Life. Video of the original project as it was designed for training purposes for the U.S. armed forces is here. The space includes a checkpoint, a market, a mosque, and a variety of other public and private spaces. Coming into the area there is a "healing wall" where Iraq war veterans can post images that they associate with the conflict, its physical and psychic aftermath, and their fraternity with their fellow soldiers. A careful observer can see that there is apparently even a "trophy photo" in the group of images.

The village had an extremely articulated soundscape as well. Details included a radio in a market that could play stations with Arabic songs and the burbling cadences of a fountain. Without live participants, there was an eerie sense of vacancy to the exploration, however, although there were computer-generated dummies of a beggar and a pair of veiled women in the square.
Morie is proposing several interesting uses for the virtual environment that include 1) a "social space" for veterans, 2) an area for "cathartic art", 3) a gallery for her own work, which is known for its ghostly aesthetic and its engagement with themes of memory and transience. Morie showed me some of her piece "Remains" in the virtual schoolyard of the area, which shows haunting groups of children.

Morie herself guided me through the installation dressed as Commander ChingALing Bling in a male avatar, and I became a Sergeant for the morning. Morie also showed me a backlot area with rigs and pipes, which she may use as a production area for her game design students.

(For more about computer-generated versions of the Iraqi landscape, built environment, and inhabitants, see the third chapter in the forthcoming Virtualpolitik book.)

The Outside Scoop

This week's story in The New Yorker about "Virtual Iraq," the virtual reality simulation designed to treat soldiers with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder who are returning from the Iraq War, doesn't add much to previous news accounts of the program, some of which I discuss in the chapter about military videogame technology in the forthcoming Virtualpolitik book. To me as a researcher, it's a familiar cast of characters, although these people may seem exotic to readers who are perusing this magazine article in their doctor's waiting room.

I certainly thought Skip Rizzo had the best laugh line, when he described USC's Institute for Creative Technologies as "an unholy alliance between academia, Hollywood, and the military," but there were too many oversimplifications in an article that didn't get much beyond similar coverage on the local news. In particular, there were some obviously important narratives in this specific game development milieu that the writer missed while occupied with recording her wonder at the whiz-bang technology. For starters, there are all the complicated attitudes about the war expressed by the staff of the ICT, many of whom opposed the invasion but believe that their work can be rationalized if it will reduce civilian casualties. Then, there is the sensitive media ecology of commercial games and serious games at USC and the fact that Full Spectrum Warrior has a much more complicated genealogy and reception history than the article makes out.

The Legacy of Combat

As I contact digital content-creators about their work to get permission to reproduce it for the Virtualpolitik book, some of these conversations can be difficult. As I note in the subheading of the book's title, stories about political media-making can involve "war, scandal, disaster, miscommunication, and mistakes." However, no conversation is more difficult than speaking with the loved ones of a deceased person about the legacy of their electronic rhetoric.

Yesterday I spoke in depth to Gary Patriquin and gained even more respect for his son, Captain Travis Patriquin, who died as a result of an IED in Iraq. Patriquin is probably best known for the "How to Win in Anbar" PowerPoint presentation, which in the book I argue is a far more effective use of Microsoft's slide show software than the PowerPoints that illustrated talks by Colin Powell or General Petraeus about the Iraq War. Patriquin's presentation has since become a YouTube video. Unlike other PowerPoint presentations featured by military bloggers, Patriquin's PowerPoint puts forward a detailed argument for a policy change that was ultimately implemented during "The Surge."

Mr. Patriquin told me that his son Travis initially designed the slides to explain the issues in the conflict to his own young daughter. Although Mark Bernstein criticized what he saw as the infantalization of the other depicted in Patriquin's rhetorical appeals, the actual story of how this military officer used the medium to clarify a message rather than obfuscate with chartjunk like his superiors merits some examination. See the photograph above, which was sent to me by the senior Patriquin, for another representation of sheiks and soldiers.

The Dogs of War

This month's controversy about a video that appears to show a U.S. soldier throwing a puppy off a cliff has generated an enormous online debate. Even though Gawker and YouTube were pressured to remove the video earlier, it continues to resurface as a document of seeming brutality among members of the military. There are three obviously interesting things about this video: 1) the debates taking place among "spoilers" in online communities who claim that the video cannot be authentic, which also take place in relation to other digital rhetoric stories, 2) the ways that this video can be seen as part of a larger genre of callous soldier brutality videos that have spurred military brass to forbid unauthorized online video sharing with sites like YouTube because of the outcry in response to footage of soldiers laughing while blowing up a mosque or taunting a child with a water bottle proffered from a moving truck, and 3) the outrage related to online video that shows cruelty to animals, whether depicted in so-called "crush" videos produced for sexual gratification or undercover video of mainstream industrial animal husbandry practices.

Fear Mongers

The big story about digital politics this month is the suspension of the Virtual Jihadi exhibition by Iraqi-American artist Wafaa Bilal at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. This is particularly surprising news, given that I know several people at RPI from the game studies conference circuit, and it certainly never sounded like a reactionary environment. But as I pointed out in an article in a recent volume of media/culture, the very idea of "terrorist videogames" excites the cultural imagination of regulatory forces.



The seventh chapter of the forthcoming Virtualpolitik book, which is about satires of surveillance and authentication, will include analysis of an installation by Bilal, whose work I also saw at last year's SIGGRAPH.

Update: Inside Higher Ed has written about the controversy here. The Sanctuary for Independent Media also hosted another version of Bilal's show, but apparently pressures to shut it down have come into play in the new location as well.

Army Men are from Mars

Under Mars: an online archive of soldiers' photos comes with a justifiable warning about graphic content, although it also documents the mundane aspects of tours of duty in country that include humorously misspelled signs and the beauty of the institutionally banal. Many of the pages show the effects of roadside bombs.

A disclaimer says that this photo-sharing site is "apolitical" and is "not run by a member of the US military, nor is it run by a US citizen or resident." About the webmaster's identity, the home page only says that "who runs it, while not particularly secret, is also not particularly relevant." The choice of name for the website is explained as "an homage both to Mars, the Roman God of War, and to the otherworldly nature of the experience" of combat in the Middle East.

(Thanks to Mel Horan, creator of Garbage Island, for the link.)

Raising the Bar

As Siva Vaidhyanathan points out on Sivacracy, the Center for Public Integrity has produced The War Card, which provides an information graphic that represents "False Statements by Month" from White House sources about allegedly Iraqi involvement in Al Qaeda and the production of weapons of mass destruction. This quantitative representation of information is presented in a PowerPoint-style bar chart, a genre from corporate rhetoric that also played a part in making a case for war to begin with.

The group also offers a database of false statements with a handy search engine here.

Chain Gang

There is a chain letter going around with yellow-ribbon images and several pictures of soldiers interacting with children and animals in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some of the images here, although the image of the soldier with the kitten is notably misssing.

Recipients of the e-mailed letter are urged to sent it to thirteen people in fifteen minutes and are instructed to "hurry." It has apparently been circulating for over a year and has even created some controversy on atheist message boards, where would-be chain links complain about the religiosity of the first image. It's hard to figure out much about the letter's origin, since there are few clues other than a corporate disclaimer from a British food and pet products company.

(Thanks to Maiya Williams Verrone for passing it on to me.)

Noses against the Window

In "Teleconference a holiday treat for Marine families," an LA Times article describes how the U.C. San Diego supercomputing center is making facilities available to families of those in the armed services based in Camp Pendleton to aid them in communicating with loved ones stationed in Iraq. Having used similar facilities in teaching this year, I know that the experience of telepresence afforded by the technology is surprisingly strong.

Trend Spotting

It's interesting to me that some of the same people who dismiss elevated planetary temperatures associated with Global Warming as temporary cyclic phenomena are the same ones who are eager to sort data about the security situation in Iraq in ways that indicated that the United States is winning the war. As Information Aesthetics points out, this month's speech by General Petraeus about the status of the violence in Iraq used much of the same PowerPoint politics that have been criticized in this blog and by others who write about information design. For example, one of the things I immediately noticed about these four charts at World Politics Review that seemed to show a decrease in violence and an increase in social stability was that all four data representations used different time slices and increments (10/04-9/07, 5/06-8/07, 11/05-9/07, and 9/07 to the present) that may falsely suggest correlations between the information shown. In this fuller set at Townhall, I thought the fact that there was only one mash-up of data with a map of the region was interesting, given the fact that when violence in one area may be quelled, it may simultaneously be flaring up in another. And, as the Washington Monthly notices, the chart about withdrawal is entirely undefined at a certain point on its temporal axis.

Shooting Range

In reviewing footage from the news media about the Blackwater shoot-out, I've noticed the role that surprisingly crude computer simulations play in depicting the events in which Iraqi civilians died as a result of the trigger-happy U.S. security contractor. Although Reuters showed footage of the charred, bloodstained cars in the real-life urban landscape, NBC's clip on "Blackwater Under Fire" relied on a mix of 3D computer animation, stock footage, and info-graphical maps to depict the incident. (See this posting for more about computer re-enactment graphics in the case of school shootings.) To the credit of this Los Angeles local news channel, they also had original investigative reporting about the firm's planned expansion into Southern California.

For those interested in a more subversive take on the carnage, see how Mark Fiore's War for Profit uses animation to mock the embattled security firm.

Fifty-Five Yahoos with Shareware

Mark Bernstein of Eastgate systems closed out the conference with an evening presentation called "Unlinked and Entangled" about the authorities' failures at "recording everyday information" after the invasion of Iraq. Although as a producer of Tinderbox, which uses the model of the book but also that of the calendar and the ledger, he has an obvious commercial interest in electronic notebooks being used for collective record-keeping, Bernstein was remarkably agnostic, given the failures of "groupware coming from management" that had been observed in the field and the dismissive remarks of one officer about "fifty-five yahoos with shareware" as being the best that the Coalition Provisional Authority could produce. Bernstein also pointed out the was that looting targeted the information infrastructureof the country (the Ministry of Information, computers, archives, records offices, museums, etc.) because the native population could see it as valuable while the occupiers couldn't. He argued that the "information processing community" should share in some of the blame for the Iraq catastrophe.

The other part of his talk was perhaps more predictable, with oft-rehearsed observations about the role that the overly simplistic electronic slideshow program from Microsoft, PowerPoint, played in a "Beautiful Dream" about the country's future made up of "simple talking points and simple beliefs." For example, Bernstein showed a laughable flowchart that went direct to a "legal system" and "joint administration" and an embarrassing stick-figure presentation called "How to Win in Anbar" that showed a stick figure sheik saying "I own a construction company" in a speech balloon. Such presentations, Bernstein argues, infantalizes both "subjects" and "audiences." He also pointed out the propaganda value of the PowerPoint coming from the assumed enemy in the much disseminated "7 Duties of a Sniper."

He closed his talk by pointing out that all of the images and data had been supplied by social media sources that were free of proprietary copyrights. Perhaps now that the military is cracking down on the use of Web 2.0 by soldiers, such windows on the war will no longer be possible.