Output details

The War Office : Everyday Environments and War Logistics

Dunlop was invited by English Heritage to participate in documentation of the closure of the historic RAF Coltishall facility. Beginning with a site-based exploration of the architectures, behaviours and contexts of a military workforce facing an uncertain future, he developed a focus on the marks left behind on site after clearance and also on the existential status of the last fully functioning facility on site; the flight simulator. The actual airfield was becoming increasingly shuttered and abandoned; its simulacrum, within the flight simulator, remained pristine. In particular, Dunlop investigated the paradoxical nostalgias of high-tech computersimulations during military obsolescence processes. The insistence of pilots on ‘flying’ from the virtual base during training was contrasted with other more obvious forms of regret on departure. Negotiations with the site authorities allowed a period of filming in the simulator, resulting in an artwork wheretwin screen simultaneity using high-definition digital video and compositing was investigated as a visual methodology which paired real and virtual site. In addition, the artwork constitutes a valuable record of an entire simulationtechnology, once state of the art; all Jaguar simulation facilities have now been broken up.

The visual artwork which led to this article,‘Simulator/Realtime’ was installed in the exhibition “Multichannel 2” at ARTSWAY, 2008, selected by Helen Sloan (SCAN) and Peter Bonnell.

The subsequent journal article reflects on this process, and makes linkages with theoretical concepts of war simulation. The “electronic false-day” (Virilio 1991: 14) represented by the pilots’ ability to cling to the enduring virtual structure became a paradoxical locus for nostalgia. Through this article, Dunlop attempts to link techniques based on site exegesis and situationist traverses to a strategy of dealing with information environments. This research links site investigation, art as alternative geography, simulation technologies and nostalgia.