War Machine is a speculative sounding of the myriad entanglements of technology, ecology, discourse, politics, and conflict shaping the contemporary environment. Taking the tools of geopolitical competition and control as its formal and conceptual basis — wargame simulations, artificial intelligence, weaponised drones, territorial enclosure, and extractivist economics—War Machine presents a series of digitally simulated conflicts over the most ecologically vulnerable areas of the Earth, using the data gathered to generate hybrid visual poems that stand in for the multitude of political, conceptual, and economic battles that are presently raging across the face of a profoundly endangered planet.
A hybrid work of generative criticism and poetry, War Machine depicts the intensive complexities of the present moment through conducting an experimental textual performance, attempting to enfold and perform, rather than simply describe, challenging conjunctions of competing discourses and activities. The resulting stream of outputs and interpretive potentials preclude the ascendency of any “definitive” critical narrative, refusing any straightforward integration with existing canons of worldly diagnosis, but also illustrating opportunities for resistant play and critical-creative possibility within the uncertainty.
The consciously unconventional gesture at the heart of War Machine is in attempt at modelling an adventurous, forward-facing approach, in both thought and practice, that refuses inaction when dealing with otherwise devastating scenarios. It is an approach that acknowledges head-on myriad worldly harms, seemingly insurmountable, while still contributing to the aesthetic, affective, and conceptual foundations from which alternative modes of knowing, being, and meaning are developed and justified.
About the Author
Richard A. Carter is a Senior Lecturer in Digital Culture at the University of York (UK). Carter’s academic practice addresses questions concerning the more-than-human dimensions of digital systems and environments, particularly their ecological underpinnings, and considers how these define different capacities of perception, action, and expression in the contemporary world. Carter focuses especially on the role of digital art and writing in telling different stories about these aspects, and in realising other potential worlds and imaginaries. Critically informed speculation, experimentation, indeterminacy, and possibility are a cornerstone of Carter’s research practice, which engages a wide range of technologies, formats, and modes — including drones and satellites, machine vision and artificial intelligence, generative algorithms, poetic text, and virtual worlds.