DESERT MISSION 8: GHARIB MONUMENT VER3.13 / MOHAMED CHAMAS
DESERT MISSION 8: GHARIB MONUMENT VER3.13 is a video artwork using footage taken from a game engine. The assets featured in the video include custom shaders, 3D models and geometry made with photogrammetry software. It parodies military aesthetics appearing in entertainment media, videogame interfaces and affectionate digital communications – especially with family overseas. An anonymous player explores a virtual terrain created using heightmaps of the artist’s own motherland. Cursed and blessed imagery appears, contextualized by gamified feedback cues and sound effects. The video attempts to subtly provoke the third-culture memory in a dreamlike convolution, narrated by a perplexing, invisible NPC (non-playable character). The chaotic and ‘meme-like’ qualities present juxtaposed with both religious and militarized symbols aims fill the psychic gap between videogame pop cultures and orientalised bodies. What’s problematized here is perhaps entertainment media as an extension of military training software and the position migrant groups (and their generations) have in the settler nations which consume and create it.
DESERT MISSION 8: GHARIB MONUMENT VER3.13 / MOHAMED CHAMAS
DESERT MISSION 8: GHARIB MONUMENT VER3.13 is a video artwork using footage taken from a game engine. The assets featured in the video include custom shaders, 3D models and geometry made with photogrammetry software. It parodies military aesthetics appearing in entertainment media, videogame interfaces and affectionate digital communications – especially with family overseas. An anonymous player explores a virtual terrain created using heightmaps of the artist’s own motherland. Cursed and blessed imagery appears, contextualized by gamified feedback cues and sound effects. The video attempts to subtly provoke the third-culture memory in a dreamlike convolution, narrated by a perplexing, invisible NPC (non-playable character). The chaotic and ‘meme-like’ qualities present juxtaposed with both religious and militarized symbols aims fill the psychic gap between videogame pop cultures and orientalised bodies. What’s problematized here is perhaps entertainment media as an extension of military training software and the position migrant groups (and their generations) have in the settler nations which consume and create it.
DESERT MISSION 8: GHARIB MONUMENT VER3.13
MOHAMED CHAMAS
DESERT MISSION 8: GHARIB MONUMENT VER3.13 is a video artwork using footage taken from a game engine. The assets featured in the video include custom shaders, 3D models and geometry made with photogrammetry software. It parodies military aesthetics appearing in entertainment media, videogame interfaces and affectionate digital communications – especially with family overseas. An anonymous player explores a virtual terrain created using heightmaps of the artist’s own motherland. Cursed and blessed imagery appears, contextualized by gamified feedback cues and sound effects. The video attempts to subtly provoke the third-culture memory in a dreamlike convolution, narrated by a perplexing, invisible NPC (non-playable character). The chaotic and ‘meme-like’ qualities present juxtaposed with both religious and militarized symbols aims fill the psychic gap between videogame pop cultures and orientalised bodies. What’s problematized here is perhaps entertainment media as an extension of military training software and the position migrant groups (and their generations) have in the settler nations which consume and create it.