Final Project: Trapped

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Construction: For the second phase of the project, I twisted two wires to reinforce its strength before taking a third wire and twisting it around the wire loops. The result is a slightly more rigid, yet flexible piece of metal that can be readjusted often to change the path, and hence the difficulty level of the game.

I tested the overall conductivity and found that it was acceptable, so I begun daisy chaining the wire circuit with a 9 volt battery. After testing the circuit again, I begun soldering everything together. I also added a piezo board to give players a feedback in the event that the wire loop made contact with the wire maze. I added a switch just as safety so that players can wear the suit and link with the maze before someone else switches it on.

The rationale behind the project became clear as soon as I was halfway involved in the construction. I toyed around with the idea of someone being trapped in a cage of his/her own making, while constrained to a path of someone else’s making.  Players engaged in traversing through the path will eventually come to the understanding that successfully passing through the gauntlet isn’t the end, and that we must all forge our own path. Yet we are compelled to define ourselves in the eyes of someone else by putting on a suit ( or an identity ) before playing this game.

 

 

FYP Ideation – Update THREE

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For my Fyp, I’m looking to simulate an immersive experience of isolation in an oppressive and terrifying environment. The story revolves around a man who wakes up in the middle of a facility, only to find that everything around him does not look right. I’m looking into lovecraftian or Eldritch horror-style survival genre that is explored in games like “amnesia” and “penumbra”.

Before any of these concepts can even be considered, however, I’ll have to figure out if the scope of the work is even feasible, or artistically coherent and consistent enough to reach out to people. As someone who is inspired by the artworks of Gustav Dore, Edward Gorey and David Macaluay, I feel that my strength is in rendering with crosshatches. However, when translated onto a game engine, a few issues begin to emerge. First of all, crosshatching looks fantastic on print, but scales rather poorly when ported to other monitors with their respective screen resolutions. The main reason for this is because the renderer interpolaties between pixels, causing blurring or aliasing . The remedy would be to arrange the scenes as tilesets. However, the issues start to compound on the design side, as tilesets are extremely time consuming to align, and would take away from any programming that I would have to be involved in. Diagonal tileset pieces with a resolution of 126X126 are also very hard to get right in a short amount of time.

The second method would be to simply paint with the default brush tool in Photoshop, and then import them into Unity before rotating the individual pieces. The issue here would be to solve Z-fighting, which is a flickering effect caused by two intersecting 3D planes that are in the exact same Z axis position. To solve this would require a lot of 3D modelling and optimization, which also takes up a lot of time.

Another thing to note is that I was considering to make a point and click adventure game. Although this genre is niche, it has also managed to remain relevant throughout the years, with games like Franbow, Dead Cyborg and Machinarium making considerable sales figures. ( check steam sales for listed games) The downside here is that point and click games are not only story intensive ( I would be extremely busy getting Game User Interface, Raycasting and Physics2D to work), but would also require a lot of animation time, which is something I calculate to be in extremely short supply.

This is where the genre of first person survival horror shines. Not only will I be able to increase the level of immersion ( due to the fact that you are in the shoes of the main protagonist), but I would also be able to cut the animation time of the main character entirely. There are a few major issues with making the game this way, however. The first being that the art style for the FPS game has no unifying art style that I feel stand out. (I’ve looked into Art Deco, Brutalism and the Bauhaus school. However, art Deco has been used in games like “Prey”, and “Bioshock”) The only art style that isn’t used as much in video games is German expressionism , something along the lines of “The cabinet of Dr. Caligari”. However, the risk in doing this art style is the fact that surrealist/ expressionist environment design, if done wrongly, would downright look incoherent, and could potentially mess around with the enemy AI colliders and NavMesh.  Games like “we happy few”, “dishonored” and “NaissanceE” have managed to use the unique art style as a selling point to their concept.

I shall continue to do my research on the kinds of art styles I can use, and how I can fix optimization issues.

inspirations from Neverending nightmares, Penumbra, Amnesia and Bioshock respectively.

Thoughts about Emergent visions: Heidi Rae Coolie

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Heidi Rae Coolie

Thoughts on the koi exhibition

  • App development functioning in conjunction with Geo-fencing technologies
  • Art piece to emulate human interaction and provide a platform for behavioural analysis
  • Interpretation and retrospective take on things like institutions and community and offer momentary insights
  • Perhaps even change habits
  • Discusses human interactions with one another
  • Reflective on habitual actions
  • finding, navigating and accessing
  • challenging conventions on human interaction and community.

Potential applications

  • Can be used as an application for therapeutic purposes. Eg. for people who have PTSD
  • Potential to talk about the different kinds of social structures
  • Humanitarian, ethnocentric. Etc. (Refer to JASSS study that was conducted)
  • Obstacle would be in generating the interest to interact
  • Instead, we could automate the process by translating human positioning and movement to generate art

QUESTION:

  • why would people use this app instead of actually interacting?
  • Possible Answer: in offering proxies/avatars/analogies, helps facilitate alternative perspectives for self-reflection
  • Perhaps the app could be used to bring strangers together via the application.

Joejoe martin The Koi Pond

  • Large scale interactive installation light sculpture.
  • Does so with the use of projection mapping on a flat surface on the ground

Nerd Eye

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So for my assignment, I’ve decided to create the penultimate in looking glass technology. I’ve decided to hot glue all 6 pairs of glasses.

I also decided to experiment with the idea of warping someone’s line of sight as I realized that adding additional lenses wasn’t entirely going to increase the overall degrees. It was more of the individual curvature that was affecting the sharpness of the image.

I then decided to pull apart a pair of binoculars and pull out a prism, then experimented with turning the individual pieces laterally to manipulate the depth perception. I created a circular rig around the two prisms and attached it to two different steel hooks. The hardest part was in keeping the lens from sliding down, so they had to be kept tension  before I started gluing them together.

Once that was done, I hooked them up to a plastic glass frame, and added a pair of double convex lenses, but only to act as a polarizing filter. The types of lenses used were optical inserts, old discarded spectacles and binocular lenses.

If there is anything that could be improved, It would be the overall weight, or the way that it is mounted on the user’s eye. Since it’s a little too heavy to be worn for extended periods, a better way to wear it would be to strap it on a pair of goggles bound together with elastic leather straps.

fyp ideas

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  1. so my general direction for fyp would be to make some sort of metroidvania sidescroller. i’d like to do something that is puzzle driven and slightly combat driven. i would also like to do a story that is a little more scattershot and obscurantist, and let the player put the pieces together.   Continue reading →

Thoughts on the Cinerama exhibition

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Zsa Zsu Zsu

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3ZW8NONmlw

Zsa Zsa Zsu is a music video that was done by a Bandung-based music band called Rock N’ Roll Mafia(RNRM). For the music video, the members of RNRM uses buttons and beads to create a stop motion animation to pair with the music. The lyrics of the song depicts the experiences when a new love interest appear, explaining from both the male and female perspective. The phrase “Zsa Zsa Zsu” first appear in Sex in the City and were used to describe the “lovely, butterflies feeling” when you are with the love interest.

a bloody gorgeous man pours bloody mary into my glass

he asked me a couple questions of courtesy

and for god’s sake he stunned me

his voice so sweet like the mellow sound of saxophone

I bet he’s good at sex on the phone

 

she’s a happy maiden liberty, she got no wrong in her life

twist your head to change your point of view,

I give you my deepest condolences

and who the hell is she? real thing in front of me,

oh I just only see, but my heart is agree

and who the hell is she? real thing in front of me,

oh I just only see, perhaps you’ll find your zsa zsa zsu

 

we are a perfect match, cause we will become a featured cast

I suppose, I suppose, we supposed

The use of buttons and beads were no coincidences as well. It were meant to be a tribute to Bandung, the centre for garment manufacturing and Rock N’ Roll Mafia’s hometown. The blend of electronic music and stop motion animation with buttons and beads created a rather strange yet fitting video

The director of the video goes by the alias of Tromarama; which is actually an art collective consisting of Ebie Babyrose, Herbert Hans, and Ruddy Hatumena. All of whom (Both the band and the collective) hail from Bandung, Indonesia.Stylistically the video harks to Tomorama’s style of low-fi and use of the everyday. However the resulting visuals speaks to the collective’s ability to create a polished product no matter the medium; creating a work that invokes a sense of nostalgia and of days past. The buttons and beads also pay tribute to their hometown of Bundung; renowned for being a locus for garment manufacturing.

A close-up of one of the vitrines in “AK-47 vs. M16,” an installation by the Propeller Group made by firing bullets through ballistics gel, a material used by engineers to see how bullets explode.

AK47 vs M16

The second work I’d like to talk about is the AK47 vs M16 installation by the propeller group, a collaborative work between art collectives from Ho chi Minh and Los Angeles. The founders are Tuan Andrew Nguyen, Matt Lucero and Phunam Thuc Ha. In this ultimate video edit, we see footage of assault rifle use from movies such as The american sniper, the lone survivor, jarhead, black hawk down, lord of war, children of men, apocalypse now, full metal jacket, platoon, we were soldiers and many others.

In each movie, there is a different telling of the frontlines, and the nature of war itself. In the movie, we were soldiers, we see the Battle of La Drang unfold, and watch as the weight of the Marine corps’ hubris collapse like a deck of cards. Interestingly, the vast military superiority of the united states was undone due to its outdated “search and destroy” doctrine, which was a new variant of attrition warfare. Instead of strategically capturing positions and routing the enemy, the soldiers would go on search and destroy missions in the aim of fulfilling a kill quota. Anyone well versed in the art of war by Sun Tzu would immediately see the flaw of such a strategy. Firstly, numbers alone don’t confer victory, secondly, the VC would often use the tunnel networks and the cover of the forest to redefine the front, evening the playing field.

Technologically, the newly issued M16 weapon initially suffered from what was referred to a type II malfunction. This meant that the shell casings would remain lodged in the chamber. The cause of this was eventually determined to be an inferior grade of gunpowder which was not tested properly. This crucial second would be the difference life and death, as shown in a sequence in the movie “full metal jacket“, where joker gets the drop on a female Vietcong sniper but lost the element of surprise as his weapon jams. (These problems would eventually be addressed in later iterations) Inversely, production of the AK47 still persist to this day due to its low production costs and reliability.  It can be dropped in mud, sand, snow and water, and even fire reliably (However, it should also be noted that there was also a high rejection rate in the production of the receiver). The 7.62 mm caliber round also outperforms the 5.56 mm round in terms of penetrating power, although its slightly shorter barrel means that overall accuracy is affected in distances longer than 400 meters. This “impediment” wasn’t seen to be an issue as the Russians deemed through experience that the range of 100-400 meters is where most combat usually occurs.

The cheap price, interchangeability, simple production doctrine and universality of the weapon was what stood as the antithesis to the symbol of the american dominance, with the AK47 being sold in over 100 countries. Recently, Anti-Assad forces fighting in the region of northern Aleppo and Idlib have had the support from the US in the form of armaments shipments. (according to documents released by the US’s Federal Businesses Opportunities)

Proxy wars or state sponsored terrorism isn’t new, however, as there has been a long history of the United states sponsoring militant/rebel groups in an effort to destabilize governments loyal to the Soviet government, which is also understandable given the dark history of failed marxist policies and Dekulakization. What I find interesting is that the weapon of choice in which to supplant them was still the AK47, further associating the image of the weapon with tyrannical governments, revolutionaries and power vacuums.

Another technological advancement was the use of helicopters in the field of combat. Although the Bell UH-1 was able to quickly deploy marines in thick jungle and redefine the front uncontested for the most part, the loud noises of the single turboshaft engine rendered the charge useless as they had lost the element of surprise. (as seen in Apocalypse now, Full metal jacket, and we were soldiers) Vietnamese soldiers hearing these sounds would flee in time before the ensuing conflagration, hiding in the forests or retreating to the safety of the underground tunnels. Although there were tunnel rat divisions in charge of flushing these people out, they would often run into punji stick traps and anti-infantry mines, some of which were disarmed and recycled from american mines.

At around 1947, the army had done some study on kills on the battlefield and found that only 2% of the army were intentionally shooting to kill. Interestingly, the analogy used in the movie The american sniper summarizes the army succinctly using religious allegory, stating that in war, there are three types of people: The wolf, the sheep and the sheepdog. The wolf represents the psychopath that cannot process human empathy in others and thus has no compunction in killing. The sheepdog represents the minority of people who kills out of love of his comrades, and possess natural leadership skills. However, the “shooting to kill” percentages of remaining troops had also recently increased to 95% in the gulf war. The reason for this is just as interesting.

B.F.Skinner, who was well known for the introduction of behavioral reflexes, was later referenced, with his ideas serving as a template for training new recruits. Instead of using circular targets, as had been done in previous wars, the army had decided to use human shaped targets. The idea was to condition recruits to reflexively shoot targets bearing the silhouetted profile. This idea worked. Unfortunately, no training was given to help veterans deal with the post traumatic stress of killing someone.

The “PlayStation” generation had also raised a new age of people who get into the front lines knowing exactly what to expect. They are no longer the naive dough boys who’ve only heard secondhand anecdotes of trench warfare, but are already well versed on the nuances of urban combat through combat simulators and realistic virtual reality games.

As someone who was once trained with an assault weapon, I can understand the appeal of the AK47 and the M16. I don’t see this sadistic romanticism ending anytime soon, and it’s not like I’d want to anyway. As bad as it is, violence and suffering is every bit part of the overall human experience as happiness and goodwill.

Experience

I went to the cinerama exhibition as part of another course module, and as such, had written an article prior to this assignment. For this trip however, I decided to write more about the AK47 vs M16 exhibit this time round.

Overall, I felt that the pixel art exhibition to be an interesting experience. The ballistic gel exhibit by the propellor brothers was certainly an interesting introduction into the dark and brutal reality of mechanized warfare. At first, It looked like the jellyfish exhibition that I’ve seen a few weeks back, which was part of the “The Oceanic” exhibition at the Nanyang Technological University gallery. However, this exhibit was anything but normal. Though the whole concept of warfare, proxy wars and violence isn’t anything new to me, I still enjoyed the overall juxtaposition, and rather than going out feeling a little bit more moody, I felt that the experience was more of a reinforcement and reminder of what war is, and how everyone plays this game.

On a lighter note, the Zsa Zsu Zsu stopmotion film was a fun little exhibit that I can certainly appreciate, being a graduate from the school of 3D animation in Nanyang Polytechnic. Though I focus purely on 3D animation, I can certainly enjoy the occasional stopmotion craftsmanship and adapt some of the aesthetics onto my own works. It also brought me back to the time when I saw the music video of “Fell in love with a girl” by the band “The White Stripes”. On the choice of medium (buttons), it certainly brought me to the time when my mother would sew uniform buttons on my uniform as I was rambunctious in school and would occasionally get into a scuffle or two, which would often result in having some of my buttons ripped out. Suffice it to say, it brought back a feeling of nostalgia.

Criticisms

If there was one criticism for the exhibition, it would be from the tour guide itself. I didn’t think it would be necessary for him to be at the site as he was just reciting what was labeled. There was also this exhibition titled: “There’s a word I’m trying to remember, for a feeling I’m about to have” where I tried lying down on the soft seat, but was yelled at by the security guard. Apparently, I wasn’t supposed to lie down on it, but the soft plush seat was signalling otherwise. If it’s really an issue, I feel that they should just use regular seats with cushions instead. That altercation really annoyed me as his reaction was disproportionately and unnecessarily incensed, and I ended up leaving the exhibit forgetting everything that I saw in there.

 

Analogue device: Iron mesh

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For my project, I’ve decided to work on a steel wire mesh suit. This idea came into fruition as I was looking at pictures of bear suits and Iron maidens. I had initially thought of using flexible steel or bronze plates, but eventually settled with steel wires due to budgetary constraints. The material chosen also came with its own set of disadvantages. Firstly, weaving the suit was slightly difficult. There was an alignment issue with the helmet in terms of overall diameter and straightness of vertical columns. I initially used a single piece of wire for the vertical columns, but as soon as I begun work on the chest piece, I decided to weave the vertical columns one at a time to avoid the issue of having to cross over and under the horizontal wires.

I also gave some leeway for the belly area as I wanted others to be able to wear the suit. Once that was weaved, I attached the helmet on top of it, and soldered the cross sectional areas as there were pieces of steel wire sticking out. The easiest way to solder the loose ends was to align them with the adjacent wires so that it would only require as little surface area of contact to solder together.

The initial idea was to have a self-contained air conditioning suit that would cool the user through the use of numerous ice cubes, which are suspended around the rig. However, just wearing the suit itself and keeping it on is a feat in and of itself. I recommend that everyone give this experience a try as it’ll change the way that they perceive and interact with the world.

Semester Project proposals

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I was initially thinking about doing a giant cockroach suit and moving around in public to film their reactions, but I guess someone else had done it already, so there goes that idea… However, in my defense I was just thinking of getting a giant suit rather than filling up a suit filled with actual cockroaches. The niche field of cockroach reactions have already been filled.

I was less certain that my second idea would be free for the taking afterwards, and sure enough, there were numerous art exhibitions where there was nothing being presented . I was initially thinking about doing this as a joke, and although there was an instance where Pat Kelly and Peter Oldring put such an exhibition to prank gallery visitors, (Link) this idea had been taken seriously by Andy Warhol in his artwork titled: Invisible sculpture, and John Cage’s noiseless 4’33, where he just sits in front a piano and does nothing. It was at this point where I was beginning to simultaneously lose faith in humanity and increase my motivation to try something more worthwhile.

 

IDEA #1:

To approach the third idea, I had three rules that I wanted to stick to. I don’t think that everyone needs to follow this method, but I feel that it helps me to focus on what I want. The first was to ask how much the project cost, and the second was to ask if this installation is going to be practical and easy to make. The third was to see if audiences are more than willing to participate or interact with it.

Hence, I came up with a third idea of making a string sculpture that everyone can contribute to. Since this isn’t entirely a novel concept in an of itself, I decided that this idea should have some form of twist, or include an additional element like papers, plastic bags or pieces of different colored fabrics. Another idea would be to soak each one of them in different brands of soaps and act as a sort of aromatic trail for the viewers. Not all of them are going to be scented, so they’ll have to figure out where they would like to go. Another idea would be to demarcate the region with tape and create an “empty” space that is also filled with annotations.

IDEA#2:

Another idea I had was to basically freeze as many ice cubes as possible before placing them on a metal framework, which would in turn be affixed to the person. The idea would be to create a small pocket of cold air around the person. I had the other idea of fusing multiple ice cubes together with a little bit of water before placing them back into the freezer. The only problem with this idea is the collection of ice cubes, and the construction of the framework itself.

Constructing a seamless dome shaped helmet by fusing the ice cubes together might work, although I feel that this would most likely be a one-off project that can only be shown as a recording, and not something that can be demonstrated in-class afterwards.

Update 20/2/2018 I’ve added a framework for the ice rack. My approach was to weave together a helmet mesh using only steel cables. Instead of welding them together, i decided to loop every section of the wire onto each other, creating a mesh that resembled more like a barbed wire fence. I made sure to avoid cutting myself, while keeping the cables in tension, while checking to make sure that there weren’t any sharp edges facing inwards. Once the framework was complete, I decided to go for a more freestyle approach, weaving in any direction and seeing where it would take me. Although this particular project was meant more for the next assignment, I thought it would still be noted as part of my research as I could carry over aspects of spacial navigation.

IDEA#3:

The frame could also be looked at as a miniature for something much larger. It could be a space where cold air is blown in a small dome through the use of fans and ice cubes (like a reverse sauna), or it could be the framework for hanging together coloured strings. The idea would be to create a space where people can cool off after a hard day at work.

Cinerama Review: AK47 vs M16 and Zsa Zsa Zsu

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3ZW8NONmlw

Zsa Zsa Zsu is a music video that was done by a Bandung-based music band called Rock N’ Roll Mafia(RNRM). For the music video, the members of RNRM uses buttons and beads to create a stop motion animation to pair with the music. The lyrics of the song depicts the experiences when a new love interest appear, explaining from both the male and female perspective. The phrase “Zsa Zsa Zsu” first appear in Sex in the City and were used to describe the “lovely, butterflies feeling” when you are with the love interest.

a bloody gorgeous man pours bloody mary into my glass
he asked me a couple questions of courtesy
and for god’s sake he stunned me
his voice so sweet like the mellow sound of saxophone
I bet he’s good at sex on the phone

she’s a happy maiden liberty, she got no wrong in her life
twist your head to change your point of view,
I give you my deepest condolences
and who the hell is she? real thing in front of me,
oh I just only see, but my heart is agree
and who the hell is she? real thing in front of me,
oh I just only see, perhaps you’ll find your zsa zsa zsu

we are a perfect match, cause we will become a featured cast
I suppose, I suppose, we supposed

The use of buttons and beads were no coincidences as well. It were meant to be a tribute to Bandung, the centre for garment manufacturing and Rock N’ Roll Mafia’s hometown. The blend of electronic music and stop motion animation with buttons and beads created a rather strange yet fitting video

Zsa Zsa Zsu is a stop-motion music video by the band RNRM (Rock-and-Roll Mafia). The director of the video goes by the alias of Tromarama; which is actually an art collective consisting of Ebie Babyrose, Herbert Hans, and Ruddy Hatumena. All of whom (Both the band and the collective) hail from Bandung, Indonesia.

The video itself is made entirely of buttons and beads depicting the members of RNRM performing the song. Stylistically the video harks to Tomorama’s style of low-fi and use of the everyday. However the resulting visuals speaks to the collective’s ability to create a polished product no matter the medium; creating a work that invokes a sense of nostalgia and of days past. The buttons and beads also pay tribute to their hometown of Bundung; renowned for being a locus for garment manufacturing.

The second work that we chose to talk about was the AK47 vs M16 installation by the propeller group, a collaborative work between art collectives from Ho chi Minh and Los Angeles. The founders are Tuan Andrew Nguyen, Matt Lucero and Phunam Thuc Ha. In this ultimate video edit, we see footage of assault rifle use from movies such as The american sniper, the lone survivor, jarhead, black hawk down, lord of war, children of men, apocalypse now, full metal jacket, platoon, we were soldiers and many others.

In each movie, there is a different telling of the frontlines, and the nature of war itself. In the movie, we were soldiers, we see the Battle of La Drang unfold, and watch as the weight of the Marine corps’ hubris collapse like a deck of cards. Interestingly, the vast military superiority of the united states was undone due to its outdated “search and destroy” doctrine, which was a new variant of attrition warfare. Instead of strategically capturing positions and routing the enemy, the soldiers would go on search and destroy missions in the aim of fulfilling a kill quota. Anyone well versed in the art of war by Sun Tzu would immediately see the flaw of such a strategy. Firstly, numbers alone don’t confer victory, secondly, the VC would often use the tunnel networks and the cover of the forest to redefine the front, evening the playing field.

Technologically, the newly issued M16 weapon initially suffered from what was referred to a type II malfunction. This meant that the shell casings would remain lodged in the chamber. The cause of this was eventually determined to be an inferior grade of gunpowder which was not tested properly. This crucial second would be the difference life and death, as shown in a sequence in the movie “full metal jacket“, where joker gets the drop on a female Vietcong sniper but lost the element of surprise as his weapon jams. (These problems would eventually be addressed in later iterations) Inversely, production of the AK47 still persist to this day due to its low production costs and reliability.  It can be dropped in mud, sand, snow and water, and even fire reliably (However, it should also be noted that there was also a high rejection rate in the production of the receiver). The 7.62 mm caliber round also outperforms the 5.56 mm round in terms of penetrating power, although its slightly shorter barrel means that overall accuracy is affected in distances longer than 400 meters. This “impediment” wasn’t seen to be an issue as the Russians deemed through experience that the range of 100-400 meters is where most combat usually occurs.

The cheap price, interchangeability, simple production doctrine and universality of the weapon was what stood as the antithesis to the symbol of the american dominance, with the AK47 being sold in over 100 countries. Recently, Anti-Assad forces fighting in the region of northern Aleppo and Idlib have had the support from the US in the form of armaments shipments. (according to documents released by the US’s Federal Businesses Opportunities)

Proxy wars or state sponsored terrorism isn’t new, however, as there has been a long history of the United states sponsoring militant/rebel groups in an effort to destabilize governments loyal to the Soviet government, which is also understandable given the dark history of failed marxist policies and Dekulakization. What I find interesting is that the weapon of choice in which to supplant them was still the AK47, further associating the image of the weapon with tyrannical governments, revolutionaries and power vacuums.

Another technological advancement was the use of helicopters in the field of combat. Although the Bell UH-1 was able to quickly deploy marines in thick jungle and redefine the front uncontested for the most part, the loud noises of the single turboshaft engine rendered the charge useless as they had lost the element of surprise. (as seen in Apocalypse now, Full metal jacket, and we were soldiers) Vietnamese soldiers hearing these sounds would flee in time before the ensuing conflagration, hiding in the forests or retreating to the safety of the underground tunnels. Although there were tunnel rat divisions in charge of flushing these people out, they would often run into punji stick traps and anti-infantry mines, some of which were disarmed and recycled from american mines.

At around 1947, the army had done some study on kills on the battlefield and found that only 2% of the army were intentionally shooting to kill. Interestingly, the analogy used in the movie The american sniper summarizes the army succinctly using religious allegory, stating that in war, there are three types of people: The wolf, the sheep and the sheepdog. The wolf represents the psychopath that cannot process human empathy in others and thus has no compunction in killing. The sheepdog represents the minority of people who kills out of love of his comrades, and possess natural leadership skills. However, the “shooting to kill” percentages of remaining troops had also recently increased to 95% in the gulf war. The reason for this is just as interesting.

B.F.Skinner, who was well known for the introduction of behavioral reflexes, was later referenced, with his ideas serving as a template for training new recruits. Instead of using circular targets, as had been done in previous wars, the army had decided to use human shaped targets. The idea was to condition recruits to reflexively shoot targets bearing the silhouetted profile. This idea worked. Unfortunately, no training was given to help veterans deal with the post traumatic stress of killing someone.

The “PlayStation” generation had also raised a new age of people who get into the front lines knowing exactly what to expect. They are no longer the naive dough boys who’ve only heard secondhand anecdotes of trench warfare, but are already well versed on the nuances of urban combat through combat simulators and realistic virtual reality games.

As someone who was once trained with an assault weapon, I can understand the appeal of the AK47 and the M16. I don’t see this sadistic romanticism ending anytime soon, and it’s not like I’d want to anyway.

▁ ▂ ▄ ▅ ▆ ▇ █ 100 Pages █ ▇ ▆ ▅ ▄ ▂ ▁

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For our project, we’ve decided to choose a hundred pages of journal entry, all of which would be taped together vertically to form a kind of modern tapestry. The idea would be to place it against the wall or have it dangling, and have people who are curious to walk past it and analyse it. Since it has been some time since that journal was completed, I have almost no idea what I have written. Most of them are mere descriptions of my location and some others are more esoteric in nature. Nonetheless, among the receipt descriptions, license plates and technical jargon, there exists posts where I might’ve written my darkest inner thoughts.

I had the pages photocopied and cut to size as the scanned images aren’t in A4, after that was done, we fastened them from end to end with clear tape. Makoto was then in charge of securing the space in which to hang the artwork. However, as the schedule was tight, we were unable to get a slot to book the area, so we setup the assembled pieces near the atrium area and take a couple of shots of us unraveling the tapestry.