Artist Statement

There is a magical reality to the rise of drone technology; the future as imagined in decades prior where robots soar and swoop above our earthbound heads as we watch transfixed by… what? Is it the wonder of what our sophisticated imaginations have made tangible? Or the horror of a new method of warfare, a monstrous door opening to an increasing field of anonymous killing machines.

My project, “The Sky Is Not the Limit” was originally conceived as a single channel video installation and was included in two exhibitions in 2014 and in two different physical incarnations. The first exhibition, which was at the “New Media Festival” at the University of Bridgeport (Bridgeport, CT USA) was a threedimensional projection onto a sculptural “mass” about 3 high and measuring about 6’ x 8 feet in surface size. It was actually made out building canvas that had been crumpled and covered by fabric. The overall aim was to mimic the look of the desert in Iraq and Afghanistan with drone surveillance footage projected onto it. In other words, the images recorded from military computer screens would more closely look like the real terrain (with hills and valleys) that was being targeted by bomb-carrying drones.
Most interestingly, many young people who observed the installation (there is also simultaneous audio of soldiers making “hits” on actual people on the ground) was that it was a display of some sort of video game! The video material used in the artwork was Not a video game, but real footage leaked from U.S. Military sources and from Wikileaks.
This work was presented very differently in a second exhibition, as part of ‘MAKE ART NOT WAR”, a show at City Lights Gallery (also in Connecticut). In order to accommodate a modest gallery space, the piece had to be reduced in scale. My solution was to construct the piece as a sort of “wall hanging” and project the video through an artfully arranged mass of military netting, the kind used to spread over tents to prevent mosquitos from entering. This material was chosen as it has a diaphanous sort of quality and the video could be projected on and through it. This time, the piece was a more poetic reference to drone combat operations, rather than an attempt at “re-creation”.
The third presentation (proposed for ISEA2015) is yet again, quite different. It is to be shown on multiple video monitors, one of which would be relaying livesignals (using a roof-mounted AstroPhotography Telescope) of the Persied Meteor Showers which occurs in mid-August.

• Lisa Seidenberg, Connecticut, USA. My work is concerned with the politics of image-making; my work crosses the boundaries of documentary and experimental genres and centers on themes of culture and mass media history. Before concentrating on work as a visual artist, Lisa Seidenberg had a long and multi-faceted career in reportage and electronic media: as Video-Journalist at the United Nations, Haiti, Russia and Kurdistan, Director of Photography for broadcast TV programs, working as a radio reporter for Christian Science Monitor and as feature writer for VENU Magazine, among other publications. She is profiled in the 2006 documentary, “Women Behind the Camera” by Alexis Krasilovsky and book of the same title. missmuffett.com