Web Biennial 2012 - Josh Bricker - Post Newtonianism (War Footage/ Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare)

Post Newtonianism (War Footage/Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare Footage)
This piece is a two channel video with sound. The video on the left consists of a loop of actual war footage taken from cameras mounted on American military aircraft, from both airplanes and helicopters. Taken during the first Gulf War in 1991, and the current occupation of Iraq the footage shows the bombing of vehicles, military targets as well as the shooting of insurgents and oppositional forces. In contrast the footage on the right is from the popular video game "Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare". The sound track is a mixture of audio taken from the video game and the footage released by Wikileaks approximately two months ago in which the US military killed two reporters working for Reuters as well as a number of unarmed civilians.
Read from left to right the video acts as a timeline, showing the ways in which war has been presented to my generation. First as surreal black and white (sometimes green from night vision) grainy video, to the hyperrealist, slightly less grainy representation in the video games many Americans have grow up playing . As the first true, real time, television war the first Gulf War was experienced by many as grainy, soundless video, devoid of people, clear representations of devastation or human loss. Instead we were confronted with this amazing, surreal, real time footage that was disembodying. Instantly and for the first time the reality of war was primetime entertainment merging both reality and simulacrum. Each step in this binary timeline desensitized us further from the horrors of war. Through hearing the audio we experience the result of our collective desensitization in the brutally insensitive, numbed and distant language used by American soldiers in Iraq. Additionally as the audio plays we become aware of the encroachment upon reality by the media driven simulacrum. At the start of the piece we hear the audio taken from the Wikileaks video, gradually as the video plays the audio becomes entwined and merged with audio pulled from the video game. The end result is an approximately equal mix of sound from real and unreal sources, blurring the line of reality a little further.
Additionally this piece is about the power of the internet, as both a political and artistic tool. Every piece of footage and sound in this video was intentionally harvested from the internet for that purpose. My intention was to make something "high Art" using the internet and youtube, creating a work both political in content and form. Constructed using the "mash up" technique familiar to anyone watching youtube videos it looks and sounds like a youtube video and is made on one of the two platforms most if not all youtube video's are constructed on (final cut/premiere) .
My inspiration for making this piece comes from three sources; one the conversation we had as a class revolving around the Wikileaks video, two from reading Edward Said's "Orientalism" and three from reading Alan Lightman's "Reunion" . The title "Post Newtonianism", references Henry Kissinger's essay "Domestic Structure and Foreign Policy" in which he surmised that the inferiority and backwardness of the east lay in its refusal to acknowledge the Newtonian (read scientific) revolution.
This video has been short listed for You Tube Play. See the short list at youtube.com/play

• Category

  Gaming

[jcjochristian]

is this the orignial vid from Youtube play?

[sqosh12]

yes

[jcjochristian]

its amazing, how'd you get the real footage from the left, im really curious

[sqosh12]

dude, all the answers you seek are there if you read my statement. if you want to know more than what I wrote about I will gladly respond as best i can

[xDGiulianoxD]

Congratz 4 the appearance in Youtube PLAY!

[sqosh12]

Thanks, I appreciate that

[xLTAVx]

It's strange how killing humans can be done with such little regard to their humanity. I guess we all deal with death differently. I both respect and pity our armed forces and other countries armed forces as well for what they see and hear on the battlefield.

[tjnholmes]

Amazing comparison between real footage and Call of Duty 4. Really thought provoking - nice work.

[Orthodoxcrusader]

The thin line between entertainment and war!

The frontline is everywhere, there be no shelter here!

[Faroskalin]

Mostly because they were 10,000 feet up in the air on an AC-130, relying on thermal cameras to pick out civilians from infidels. But yes, it doesn't make sense killing innocent civilians, and that judgement error cost some of the people involved their jobs and lives.

[blegukutuk]

1:50 look at the left one.i wish i could say "stop!we dont need more blood!"

[crocacrola]

Good Work

[almadaa11]

There's no "Good Kill" !! never ...just blood.

[orlandothx]

12 people died. 2 reuters journalist COUSE THE FUCKING SOLDIER CAN'T MATCH THE DIFERENCE BETWEEN AN RPG AND A VIDEO CAMERA. & A CELL PHONE AND A AK-47... AND THIS IS THE "AMERICAN HERO"

[rebelliouspixels]

- Good to know, this is definitely a powerful mix!

[BlinkingBulbStudios]

Then it might be that I'm giving too much credit to the American educational system. I could also be the fact that living in Québec, we simply have a different mentality about war. See, as a nation that was conquered and colonized by the English, for every war England was involved in, we had to fight for them, whether we wanted or not. So, we're kind of more aware of the horrors of war because we're more inclined to be weary when our country goes to war.

[TiberiusCelsus1]

I'm not sure. A lot of my friends are really getting a video game mentality to war, even the ones who know people over there. One of my friends cheered during the sniper scene in Hurt Locker (and any news story involving a sniper shooting). Another talks about how wonderful it must be to get /paid/ to kill "Muslim terrorist sons of bitches".

I hope this changes soon. There's something disturbing about the thought of future leaders and servicemen enjoying war too much.

[BlinkingBulbStudios]

"this is no big deal killing each other in the name of ANYTHING that makes you believe they MUST DIE" --- People think that it's easy to kill another human being. It's not. It's never easy. The only way to be able to do it is detach yourself from the situation. Those gunners aren't killing human beings, they're killing "targets", otherwise they would never be able to cope with it. Only some mentally unstable soldiers actually "enjoy" killing.