Shooters: Art Against First Person War Games

December 19, 2011 — painters, Painting, Temme Barkin-Leeds games, war

Shooters: Art Against First Person War Games.

I love these paintings. But I was immediately reminded of some references lately to soldiers operating drones and their experience of PTSD.

What I didn’t understand about drone operators is, unlike bombardiers, they see much more detail and stick around for the aftermath.

From a 2010 article in True/Slant:

The drones—the Predator or the Reaper—continuously transmit live video: pilots will see the granular details of local topography and geology; they will see not just villages and social gatherings but faces, expressions.

and

After drone pilots engage the enemy—after they “put a missile on a target”—their aircraft do something that is historically odd: they hover, inertly. Manned fighter planes make a lethal pass or two and then turn around; ground troops kill the enemy and secure territory or engage and retreat. Drones just stay there, aloft: their streaming images remain valuable.

The virtual pilots, meanwhile, stay seated in the conditioned air of their Nevada trailers, observing people and buildings and cars exploding and burning. They may see their victims disintegrate, bleed, burn, writhe, die.

So, for all the young men who play at war through these first person shooter games, these paintings more accurately capture what real war games are now like.