Fire-and-forget is a military term used to describe third-generation advanced missile systems that do not require manual guidance after launch. By appropriating this phrase, I am reflecting upon what it might mean to fire-and-remember.

A video collage plays on an embedded LCD screen inside the gas mask. I’ve mixed cockpit video footage from a friendly fire attack by U.S. pilots on a British tank with short clips from the 1983 movie WarGames with footage from a U.S. apache helicopter attack on three Iraqis with screen-recorded scenes from the official U.S. Army online recruitment and training videogame America’s Army.

Here’s a YouTube version of the embedded video collage (2:47):

And here’s an excerpt from an article (”Scopic Regime Change: The War of Terror, Visual Culture, and Art Education,” 2008) that I co-wrote with Kevin Tavin, Bob Sweeny, and John Derby. You can download and read the whole piece here (.pdf) if you’re so inclined.

Fire-and-Forget: Technologies of Forgetting and the War of Terror
As the proliferation of networked media and insidious systems of observation and dataveillance from the war of terror clearly has demonstrated, we have been living in a society of surveillance where the amassing and storage of immense amounts of information is now commonplace (Sweeny, 2006).

As such, it has seemed counterintuitive that new media technologies and the surveillance-industrial complex, which record virtually every moment and iteration of contemporary life, can also facilitate specific kinds of “memory loss.”

As “technologies of forgetting,” however, the objects, systems, and representations from our surveillance society have played a critical role in how personal and cultural understandings and memories are created and maintained. This has been significant for the “way a nation remembers a war and constructs its history is directly related to how that nation further propagates war” (Sturken, 1997, p. 122).

By framing and shaping the dominant images and narratives of post-9/11 life, these technologies of forgetting have obscured deviant representations and countercultural accounts—thus helping to maintain the social and political conditions required for waging and promoting the war of terror.

“Fire-and-forget,” to borrow a phrase directly from the military lexicon, has described third-generation advanced missile systems that do not require manual guidance after launch. These systems, which allow armaments to store the characteristics of enemy vehicles and other targets directly onboard, have also been thought of as the most lucid manifestation of the technologies of forgetting used in the war of terror. The operators of such weapons have been freed from the responsibility of “watching” once they’ve lifted off.

Designed to allow soldiers to attend to their other combat duties, fire-and-forget has represented the ultimate in “out of sight, out of mind” technologies. Like the soldier remotely firing missiles comfortably in Colorado, operators everywhere and anywhere have fired and then promptly forgotten—the weapons themselves literally retain the memories of war.

Along with producing a body of work, students also write a thesis paper (approx. 20 pages), and create a thesis artifact (can be digital or analog) which serves as a historical record of the research project.

I’ve included info about two recent MA projects below to give you a small taste of what our students have been up to this year.

PROJECT 1: Finally, I’m being reCognized
by Tara Finneran (aka citizenFinneran)

After being required to provide biometric data (a thumb print) before writing one of the State mandated tests for Teacher Certification, Tara began trying to uncover what the private company that administered the test did with her personal biometric information (still to be determined).

Tara began to question who “owned” this information, where it was stored, and who could gain access to it. This search eventually introduced her to a burgeoning surveillance industry–one that is attempting to use technology to strike a balance between security and privacy.

She responded by building an “invisibility suit” and using the suit to interact with CCTV cameras in a number of public settings. These performances became a form/site of “public pedagogy” in their own right.

Tara writes:
The invisibility suit is a physical manifestation of this technology and ways in which our bodies can be measured as data. Increasingly, biometrical developments encroaching upon the public sphere are at the focus of vast ethical debates.

It also allows us to regain control of scopic impositions, in a sense this suit allows the wearer to assert his or her power of keeping his/her bodily representation objective. It rejects the viewer’s power to judge, interpret, and apply any values to the person being filmed. The proverbial playing field is leveled and the wearer has sent a semaphoric message to the video viewers- “How can I trust you if you don’t trust me?”

Tara’s Thesis Artifact took the form of an Instructable (Instructables.com is a free web-based platform where people can share detailed DIY instructions or “HOWTOs”). You can view Tara’s Instructable here.

Update: You can read more about Tara’s Thesis project over at CT4CT.com (my newest site) and also view some interesting video footage related to her work.

PROJECT 2: The Dream Project: An archive of dreams, aspirations, and fantastical notions for the future
by Chris Haske

Chris completed his student teaching at an International High School (a public school designed specifically for new immigrants) here in NYC. He became interested in the “American Dream” as seen through the eyes of recent immigrants to the United States. He audio recorded a series of interviews with seniors from the school and then designed an interactive website as a way of collecting, organizing and “visualizing” this “data.”

He describes his research as a “sound project made accessible through a visual interface.” He’s named it: “The Dreamfield.” You can experience the Dreamfield and learn more about the project here.

The project was inspired by Frank Warren’s Postsecret and participation was entirely voluntary. An interesting offshoot of the project was that attendance in my classes stayed unusually high. And because I always showed new cards at the beginning of each lecture, students consistently came to class on time–not always the case for large lecture-style courses.

You can learn a little more about the project from this Arizona Daily Wildcat story.