Simulation, Exercise, Operations

Book excerpt: Collection of interventions on the status of the moving image in an age of advanced simulation, exploring the contemporary links between power, simulation, and warfare. This collection of wide-ranging interventions and discussions on the status of the moving image in an age of advanced simulation explores the contemporary links between power, simulation, and warfare. Today, technological simulation has become an integral part of military training and operations; and at the same time, media spectacle—often enabled by the same technologies—has become integrated with military power. Trained in virtual environments, army personnel are increasingly enhanced by augmented reality technologies that bring combat into conformity with its simulation. Equally, the seductions of media and entertainment have become crucial weapons for “information dominance.” At the same time as the infosphere demands that war takes on the properties of a game, hyper-realistic videogames evolved from military technology become a kind of virtual distributed training camp, as the lines between simulation and action, combatant and civilian, become blurred. Based on a round table discussion prompted by the work of artist John Gerrard, Simulation, Exercise, Operations assembles thinkers from philosophy, media, and military theory to examine the powers of simulation in the contemporary world.