Echo Theohar

F-35

2019

A generative text piece which forms a shadowy perspective on the trajectory of the US military industrial complex via its most expensive and secretive venture to date: the F-35 fighter jet. This code reshapes video footage of flight simulators to re-create the haze of predatory computer vision—something with moments of clarity, but which is overwhelmingly dampened by the speed at which new information is added and reorganized. At this pace, it is difficult to see anything for what it truly is, and mimics the dissociation from humanity fighter pilots experience in their computerized line of sight.

This code uses Rita, a software toolkit for computational literature, and WordNet, a Lexical database for English. Nouns are replaced with synonyms to alter the phrasing of the banner at the bottom of the HUD, which provides an internal dialogue that builds and deteriorates not unlike a coding script.

Coded in Processing 3.

Excerpt of video documentation here.