unlikeness

A colleague pointed me towards Robbie Cooper's work with teenagers playing on-screen games. He filmed them with a camera directly behind the screen. My first interest went towards the facial expressions in the video. The faces are all very well lit and embody high-res frontal portraits. Then of course something else takes over...

Familiar teenager faces but strangely alienating experiences. Experiences showing strong visual feedback with so little physical engagement. What kind of engagement world are we evolving into? The video and stills were on show at the National Media Museum in Bradford earlier this year.

This brings me onto something else. In modern warfare more and more systems involve screens to aim with. Where physical distance increases, how easy is it to mix real and virtual killing? If your stomach permits, relate these thoughts to Wikileak's Colletaral Murder Video. Make yourself sit through it. Taunts and words of encouragement are identical to the teenagers murmurings. Horrifying. Good shoot'n.