D&AD advertising tomfoolery

(click image to enlarge)

D&AD Student Awards. Army Recruitment Brief.

We decided to do the Army recruitment brief as there is simply not enough killing and suffering in the world. What better way to hook the nations youngsters into the army than with a language they are familiar with, computer games. We didn't actually make the game itself, there was no need as there are plenty of computer games available already that glamourise war, as mentioned in a previous post - but instead we just made the advertising campaign in the graphic styling of a computer game. Screenshots on the back showed various stages of army life, and plenty of warnings of the graphic and violent content of army life were given.

This was a great project to do, though at times difficult to stomach when the horrors of war and injustices of army life were uncovered again and again, but in many ways these things just made it all the more important to complete the project and deliver something a little different from normal army recruitment campaigns. We just wanted to show some of the things that someone joining the army could experience - the things that they don't usually show potential recruits. This week saw the army in the news again for going into schools to recruit children, and reading some of the comments that the public had responded with, shows that this issue polarizes peoples opinion, I don't think I've seen such heated comments in reply to a news item before.
We were very satisfied with the results of our project, we believe we made an important point in way that still managed to fulfill the brief,- I would love to be a fly on the wall at the D&AD judging process, to see what the reaction is of the advertising agency that set the brief, though we have as much chance of wining as having the British Army withdraw from Iraq tomorrow morning. But as George Bush Jr might say, it's not the winning, it's the taking part that's counts.

Micheál's Feedback Loop

I went twice to Micheál's piece 'Feedback Loop' as part of the Digiville, once to the lighthouse venue in the real world, and once to the digital plot in Second Life. I've only a limited experience of Second Life, past attempts have been hampered by technical problems, and it was the first time id ever been to an organised event in LindenLand. It was a strange experience really, going somewhere where the other participants were potentially people i knew, and i spent some time seeing if there were any clues in the avatars that might reveal who was controlling them in the real world. It felt in some small way like some kind of freaky masquerade party, lots of outlandish attired folk who could be strangers or could be friends, your were never really sure. The two identical avatars of Micheál only added to the confusion, does Micheál have an identical twin in the real world he's not mentioned? or was it an obsessed fan?
One of them was talking (typing) seemingly random statements that was even more confusing, without the visual clues of real conversation with real people it was unclear who was talking to who, and as the digital audience posted comments, it seemed like there was several conversations going on at once, none of them making much sense. This talking virtual Micheál turned out to be controlled by Dan, who was at the lighthouse reporting snippets of the goings on in the real world.
The Lighthouse was dominated by a huge screen in the middle of the room showing the virtual Micheál in SL, with a clown repeating the movements of the avatar on screen -Dan controlling the avatar, the avatar controlling the clown while the audience looked on. It seemed as random in the real world as it did in the digital, except this time the audience didn't consist of people with the heads of bunny rabbits, or nor was anyone dressed as if they were off to a fetish party afterwards, which was a shame. The two other video installations were somehow lost in the room, the main screen so dominated the room that the other work soon was obscured by the audience, and unfortunately lost some of their impact.
The discussion afterwards was also interesting, some of the comments from the audience seemed to be getting a little heated - i wonder if Micheál hadn't have finished when he did whether it would have kicked off! Its interesting to see such strong opinions, we are only just beginning to explore virtual life, and as it becomes more a part of our everyday life it will certainly raise important issues of our relationship with technology, and with each other.
I'm interested to know what Micheáls conclusion is after the work, as he seemed to approach the project without a fixed agenda of what would take place, to see where it went of its own accord. I'm not sure what conclusions i drew from the evening, but it was certainly good food for thought.

Seraphina Samet (or Anderson)

Today's guest speaker showed a selection of her screen based work, short films made using super8 cameras and montage effects. It seemed as if she was using the digital medium as a therapeutic process, all the work is about herself, filmed, edited and starring herself, and by displaying it to the audience, its gives her the opportunity to exorcise her demons. Whether or not the audience are willing to play counsellor is debatable, i found the images presented on screen lacked substance, there was nothing engaging about the work, and she had nothing interesting or important to say. There were some nice ideas in there, but it did seem way to self indulgent for my tastes, its all very well making films about yourself if your have an interesting story to tell, but if the content is dull and uninspiring, then i wonder if it worth the time and effort. I accept that all experience is personal, and everything you experience in life shapes how you are and what you produce, but there's a whole would out there that can be explored and commented on, to base all your work totally on yourself seems to be self obsessed- you can produce work and develop your take on the world without you being the total focus of attention.

John Gilhooly

Dissertation feedback

The feedback from John on my dissertation proposal was positive and encouraging, with some useful recommendations on both refining by plan and books for research material. I plan to write about the photographic image, and how new technology has changed the way we acquire and consume those images, from image capture and development through to distribution and public display. John suggested i focus the idea to discussing it form either the practitioners point of view, highlighting the differences in digital capture and manipulation, or write it with regard to the viewers/consumers point of view, which could cover issues of image quality and distribution, display format, mobile phone cameras etc. I'll probably use this latter line of approach, as it relates to a more cultural use of the medium and less technical aspects of it. It also has direct parallels to the issues we've recently been discussing about the advent of digital cinema and how it has effected both the film industry and how we watch movies.

John recommended reading 'Moving Image Technology - from Zeotrope to Digital' by Leo Enticknap., a theory and history of moving images .

'Suspension of Perception' and 'Techniques of the Observer' by Jonathan Crary

and 'Stillness and Time: Photography and the Moving Image.' a collection of essays by photography and film theorists.

Life in the Army

Bullying, Torture, Killology, and shoot to miss.

the science of creating killers discusses how the human desire not to kill can be trained and conditioned out of the soldier, by a method called 'killology'. During the heat of battle, normal responses and decision making has changed and a more animal instinct takes over. The basic animal instinct is not to kill another - animals in the wild will rarely kill another animal they are in a confrontation with - disputes are usually resolved by displays intended to intimidate the opponent so he will back down. Fighting can be very costly to both parties, so actual fights to the death are extremely rare. Exact figures are difficult to calculate, but the amount of combatants who actually shoot to kill are low, during the second world war, men would consistently 'shoot to miss' and the number of soldiers who shoot to kill was thought to be very low, with a low percentage of soldiers doing a majority of the killing.

so just when your faith in humanity has started to be restored, some files on abu ghrarib are published, with a collection of images collected from the cameras of soldiers posted at the infamous prison. Some of the image require a strong stomach

wired article about the abuse and torture of prisoners, and what turns ordinary people to commit acts of evil. Psychologist Philip Zimardo conducted an experiment for the Stanford University in 1971, which involved students who posed as prisoners and guards. The experiment was was stopped after five days when the student guards began abusing the prisoners, forcing them to strip naked and simulate sex acts.

43% of soldiers questioned say bullying is a problem in the army in this article Battling Bullying in the British Army 1987 – 2004 which shows incidents of bullying are not isolated cases, but that there is an extreme culture of bullying,casual violence and sexual harassment, epically with newer recruits. figures of the number of victims could be wildly underestimated from the reluctance of victims to report incidents.

Another article in the telegraph about the suicide rate of returning servicemen after conflict. Many cannot cope afterwards from all the experiences of violence, and life in a constant state of alertness. Here is an official report into suicide rates of those in the forces

First Person Shooter

RPGs.
from Role Playing Games to Rocket Propelled Grenades

The idea for the D&AD project is coming along well. We've been developing the concept of the video game aesthetic for army recruitment posters. Heres what we've been working on so far.

Andreas made the figures in 'Poser', and i photoshopped them to look like computer game packaging. The idea is to also produce a 'back cover', with screen shots of army life -also created in 3d, covering various aspects of army life, from initiation ceremonies, the torture of locals in the countries the army 'visit', to being denied help or compensation for P.S.T.D you'll get after witnessing all the violence and death. The age 7 ranking relates to a news story from earlier in the year about the army targeting youngsters as young as 7 in recruitment campaigns. (maybe this too).

Here's one of Andreas's 3d rendering of the initiation fun mentioned in an earlier post.

I mentioned several other propaganda computer games in an earlier post, and I've also been looking at other forms of propaganda with children as a primary target audience, in the war there was quite a lot of animations and cartoons used as public (mis)information films. Walt Disney made many , like this 'education for death', with it anti German theme.

Suicide rate for veterans and sevicemen

The number of veterans who have died from suicide after the Falklands War is greater than the number of servicemen killed during the conflict.

Returning U.S and British soldiers from Iraq have high suicide rate





Troops used as guinea pigs in 1950s, and60s, testing protective clothing for radiation after nuclear weapons testing.

Found a great resource for official reports and papers, covering arts, sciences and humanities, at 'Intute'. A selection of military publications and external sites offer a wide variety of resource information and governmental papers and inquiries, including this pdf by the National Audit Office on military recruitment and retention, with statistics on why people left the army etc.