“Block H and Reality Jamming: Conflict Reporting via the FPS Game” presented by Denham and Joyce
Symposium:
Session Title:
- Hyperreality
Presentation Title:
- Block H and Reality Jamming: Conflict Reporting via the FPS Game
Presenter(s):
Venue(s):
Abstract:
Using the examples of murals within Northern Ireland and the genre of First Person Shooter (FPS) games this paper examines how communities and the media define cultural and social memory.
The subjective perceptions we possess are determined our experiences and recollections of the past and the societies in which we exist. Drawing on theorists including Flusser and Deleuze the role of memory in constructing our communities is discussed. The temporality of our existence leads us to memorialise the past in a more concrete forms which then ensures a continuation of the realities we exist within.
The dominance of the Military Industrial Entertainment Complex, combined with an analysis of propaganda, is examined through Virilio and Baudrillard. The virtualising of war and the establishment of perpetual fear ensure little or no resistance to the domineering ideologies of the military.
KumaWar is used to illustration the convergence of the real with the hyper-real, the shorting of distance with the past and the present and how new tools of persuasion can be utilised to convert a global community.
A discussion of Alan Clarke’s Elephant and the broadcast ban demonstrates the mute irrefutability of violence and how it is ones own perspective, motivated by both memory and desires, which determines the moralistic standpoint that is taken on conflict.
By exploring these examples and theories it is the author’s intention to provide understanding behind the motivations of Block H, the factors that have influenced its production and execution.
