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INSECURE TERRITORIES: Morgandad or Baghtown
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Multimedia writing and art - creativity and expression on the net - will be everyday and engaged or will be nothing.
goto engl303:multimedia writing
Three large premises:
- the net connects and captures us to every point on the earth - but also mediates every point through protocols
- the net stages events and interventions in the real and everyday - but also relativizes the distinction of virtual and real
- the net documents and preserves the representations of the real - but also inserts the event into the virtual
We are in a continuous mediated space that touches the world at all points. Nothing brings this home more than the ongoing wars which are felt so deeply yet hidden so well in their impact at home. It is important to remember because we too easily forget: the USA is the only country on earth currently engaged in two invasions and wars in foreign territories. And yet, after years of war, the average American knows little of what happens and continues to happen in Iraq and Afghanistan.
- Consideration: how do you know the war? How do you experience it (at all)? In what ways do space, distance, technology and media apparatuses converge or conspire to influence this experience? Look at Baghdad in Google Earth or Google Maps.
We are at war and the war zone is everywhere - as the USA Patriot Act shows - but also invisible. It is ubiquitous but we remain unaware of it. How can we imagine everyday life in Baghdad, a city of millions? This project combines Multimedia Writing and Creative Arts to explore this question. The project starts from the premise that we are in a security space, a public space, an organizational space, by default and so one can't simply be an individual or a group or neutral or without identity, one must have some affiliation and a sense of the political valence of that association (e.g. Special Ops unit, embedded news gathering organization, insurgency group, local ethnic associations (tribal groups), private security corporation, NGA organizations/UN affiliation, etc.) or perhaps a Department of Hometown Security.
This is a group project. A fundamental assumption of this project is that our affiliations determine our world view and representations - determine quite literally what we see and experience. It is too easy to rest assured in our American identity as the sole perspective on the world, but what happens when you must be aware of your affiliation at all times? (As if you could be asked to present identity papers at any moment.) Your affiliation or orientation will mediate and frame the representations your group produce (texts, website, video or photographic journals, or other diverse project outcomes, etc.). A simple example: your final "product" will not simply be a website (etc.) but a website from a particular perspective... Compare Fox News and Al Jazeera. The point is not which is more true but the way commitments and affiliations structure the truth of events.
- Consideration: what are the details and intel for your group? What is your rank? What do you know? How do you see? What do you disregard? What are the limits of your knowing, and why?
View Larger Map
Google Maps images of oil fields burning near Basra, Iraq
Three specific goals:
- Week 1. April 1 & 3. First, creating the map. To re-vision Morgantown by multiple re-mappings of Baghdad onto it. Here's a map of Baghdad. Make the Tigris = the Mon river and you're away. Here's another Baghdad image. So, create a multimedia representation of this map. To move around Morgantown and its environs and experience it as Baghdad. If this were occupied security territory, what would we see? What specific events happened in re-mapped locations around Morgantown? What daily events would we see? To consider questions of scale, transformation, and replication. To consider question of timeline/history and documentation. Each group will create a re-mappped map of Baghdad/Morgantown.*
- Week 2 & 3. April 8 & 10 and April 15 and 17. Second, coordinating sites/events in Morgantown/Baghdad. Research. Assigning groups to sectors of map. Create a list of events - how it can happen in their sector + what typically happens in their sector. Write a re-mapping of event in Morgantown - what would happen here? e.g. hangings from Star City Bridge. To stage events and interventions or representations in Morgantown that emerge from the 5+ years of war. Examples might include the Jessica Lynch capture and rescue or toppling of Saddam statue, but also less specific events that embody the everyday flavor of the war and the cultural/political space of Baghdad/Morgantown. Examples might include security checkpoints, sweeping for insurgents, or urban transformation by Halliburton, etc. Events and interventions should be specific to the sector and scale, where scale = translation or transformation of Baghdad > Morgantown and vice versa. Also, consider the range of affect involved, i.e. are these events absurd/comic or deadly serious? Consider nature of the action: is it theatrical, and if so is it premeditated, choreographed and rehearsed? Or is it impromptu and contingent – like a happening? Or perhaps it’s nature more cinematic, optical and narrative, emphasizing formal and aesthetic considerations over content? Consider also the degree to which the public is involved, i.e. the event or intervention is very different if it happens at Dorsey's Knob vs. in front of Mountainlair. Finally, determine how your audience is meant to understand your actions and portrayals: truthful, satirical, symbolic…etc. All aspects of the project need to consider this question... What documentation is needed?
- Week 3 & 4. April 22 &24 and April 29 & May 1. Finally, presentation. To document on web, to capture, document and represent the events and interventions. Consider what groups are represented i.e. are you an official US military group, an embedded journalist, members of the insurgency, or what? Create press releases, videos, stills, websites, maps...
Final project due May 6
Important links (to read prior to April 1)
- Bush War Timeline, Baghdad: Mapping the Violence, Iraqi Body Count, Baghdad Zones, Excess Iraqi Deaths, compare ICasualities
and the following brief articles:
Detournement
Derive
Psychogeography
Readings and Resources for April 1 & 3. Topic: Interventions / Detournement
Tuesdays are workdays. You do not need to come to class but you must meet with your group. For Thursday 4/3, everyone must read Debord, User's Guide to Detournement, as well as refresh on the articles above. Also, Group 1 will present selected / significant sites from the following lists.
Group 1: Gothacked Urban Interventions, Bureau of Inverse Technology, Spacehijackers, Institute for Applied Autonomy, Surveillance Camera Players, http://0100101110101101.org/, I Could Tell You But Then You Would Have to be Destroyed by Me
Recommended: Robotic Feral Public Authoring, The Seed Project / Virtual Field, Critical Art Ensemble Tactical Projects,
Readings and Resources for April 8 & 10, Topic: Take Back the Streets / Derive
Tuesdays are workdays. You do not need to come to class but you must meet with your group. For Thursday 4/10, everyone must read Debord on derive and Debord on Psychogeography. Also, Group 2 will present selected / significant sites from the following lists.
Group 2: Walkscore, 34n118w Interpretive Engine, Narrative Archeology, One Block Radius, Degree Confluence, Panama-Pacific, Realtime Amsterdam, Murmur, NY Songlines, Areas of oustanding banality, Street Bubble Project
Readings and Resources for April 15 & 17, Flashmob / Alternative Reality Gaming
Tuesdays are workdays. You do not need to come to class but you must meet with your group. For Thursday 4/17, everyone must read Flashmob (wikipedia) and Alternative Reality Gaming. Also, Group 3 will present selected / significant sites from the following lists.
Group 3: Flashmob, PacManhattan, World Without Oil, Live Action Scotland Yard, Uncle Roy (Blast Theory), Black Cloud Game, Alternative Reality Gaming
Recommended: Rheingold articles, Flash Mobs in the age of mobile connectivity, Cloudmakers, Vanishing Point Game, Perplex City, Mind Candy
April 22 & 24. Mapping the Spectrum
Tuesdays are workdays. You do not need to come to class but you must meet with your group. For Thursday 4/24, everyone must read Jereminjenko, "If Things Can Talk" FP. Also, Group 4 will present selected / significant sites from the following lists.
Group 4: Vopos, Stage your own surveillance camera theater, Camera Zapper, World Sousveillance Day, Tracking Transience.
Recommended: Echelon
April 29 & May 1
There will be class both days of the final week. These classes will combine workshop sessions with presentations on the project.
