COMPETITION CONTINUUM: WAR

 Competition Continuum: War Gouache on paper 56 x76 cm 2021

It's been awhile since I last posted. My last post was the end of October 2020. And, now we are in 2021. Happy New year!

Electromagnetic Spectrum EMS
I have been researching the military use of, and reliance upon, the electromagnetic spectrum [EMS], particularly military [state and non-state] use of radio, microwave, infrared and visible light frequencies. Of interest to me is that the EMS can be an enabler of militarised and militarise-able technology, as well as being deployed as a weapon - hacking, service denial, signal jamming, high energy lasers. 

All frequencies in the EMS are constituted by photons, each photon holding energy and moving in a wave ie: they are both particle and a wave. Across the EMS photon energy varies and their wave lengths vary, from longer radio waves to shorter gamma waves. All photons move at the speed of light, hence, for example, signals carried by radio waves invisibly travel at the speed of light. 

Cosmology
Within 10 seconds of cosmological history ie: started by the Big Bang, photons played an essential role, producing electromagnetic radiation. Over eons, as temperatures cooled photon behaviour changed, but the foundation of the EMS, a natural resource now harnessed by human beings in our Earthy environment, can be traced to the beginning of the universe. 

EMS Domain
That the EMS, in the 21st century, is a domain of increasing interest to defence departments and militaries around the world, demands attention. Various defence force policy statements increasingly address how to enhance EMS domain dominance, to ensure strategic and tactical advantages in an age of signal-reliant hardware and systems, information warfare, and associated grey zone and hybrid warfare. The EMS is a congested and increasingly contested environment, vulnerable to forces that desire to dominate it.

Competition Continuum: War
In my painting Competition Continuum: War I have evoked the beginning of cosmological history by painting a tree-of-life form that cascades across an ambiguous but vast scape. I have painted strings of binary code 'instructing' the word WAR. These strings can be considered as visualised signals, transmitting or receiving data, information and instructions. These signals criss-cross each other - are they intercepting, hacking, surveilling? The symbol for the speed of light ie: C is also repeated. And, I have included the symbol for photon ie: γ. 

The title of the painting came from a couple of sources. Firstly the US Joint Electromagnetic Spectrum Operations, doctrinal statement, published May 2020. In the preface Daniel O'Donohue, Lt Gen USMC Director, Joint Force Development, states "This publication provides fundamental principles and guidance for planning, executing, and assessing joint electromagnetic spectrum operations across the competition continuum." The second source is the US DOD's Electromagnetic Spectrum Superiority Strategy, published in October 2020. The following quote is taken from the Strategy's glossary "Competition Continuum – Describes a world of enduring competition conducted through a mixture of cooperation, competition below armed conflict, and armed conflict. This is the environment in which the United States applies the instruments of national power (diplomatic, informational, military, economic) to achieve objectives."

From Cosmology to Militarised technology!
Regular readers will know that I have been very interested in the EMS, signals, militarised and militarise-able technology etc for a long time. Here are a couple of earlier posts. 

Signalscapes and Existential Risk 

Data Data 

Regular readers will also know of my long-term interest in cosmology - the study of the history of the Universe. I am intrigued and excited about how my interests in cosmology, landscape and technology are converging! I even had an exhibition called Cosmology at Purgatory Artspace in Melbourne in 2013. And, I have a designated page called Cosmology

Cheers,

Kathryn

MISSION CAPABLE LANDSCAPE

Mission Capable Landscape Oil on linen 72 x 137 cm 2018

EXPOSING SIGNALS

In Mission Capable Landscape I continue with my interest in exposing signals that wrap the planet, extend into the sky and space. I 'see' these invisible signals as a new layer of landscape, volumetrically occupying and colonising landscape from land into space. In the 21st century, signals operatively enable militarised technology, such as airborne drone surveillance, targeting and attack. Additionally, the dual-use nature of technological infrastructure, such as communication and GPS satellites, blurs military, policing and security activities. I am interested in not only militarised technology, but also militarise-able civilian technology. The latter includes such things as mobile phones, appropriation of social media data, and cyber technology used in homes and businesses. 

Thus, at the extreme, all signals are militarised or militarisable. If a system is deliberately isolated from general connectivity, this action demonstrates a defensive position that co-opts it into the militarise-ability of security. 

MISSION CAPABLE LANDSCAPE

In Mission Capable Landscape I have painted a landscape overlaid with lines. These lines mimic various signalling, scoping and targeting graphics seen on computer screens, such as those of a remote drone pilot. The lines mimic perspective, layering, bridging, fences, furrowed paddocks, roads, landing strips and more. Note the scoping cross-hairs fixed on the green circle [centre left]! At one instant the viewer may feel like a remote pilot, at another instant maybe even a drone, even a satellite. Are you coming into land, are you leveling on a target, are you simply surveilling and collecting data? What are you scoping? Is it all real? 

However, let us take back the human gaze! Let us turn human surveillance back onto the occupying signals. Let's expose them - for all to see!

HYBRID WAR

As I painted Mission Capable Landscape I was thinking about a lot of things, including the notion of hybrid war. What is hybrid war? It is a military strategy that tactically blends conventional methods of war with activities such as perpetrating cyber threats, manipulating of social media, de-stabilising elections, infiltrating government online infrastructure for essential services, promulgating fake news and so on. Contemporary hybrid war needs networked systems and inter-connectivity to enable its tactics. It needs signals! It is a subversive act to expose them!

HYBRID LANDSCAPE

In a sense Mission Capable Landscape is a hybrid landscape. There is more than one landscape in this painting, including the conventional one and the new landscape of signals. The latter stealthily colonises and occupies the conventional landscape cloaking it with a persistent readiness for offensive and defensive actions. Are we perpetually, and everywhere, in a state of low grade war? A war that can be amplified when triggers are hit. The conventional landscape is rendered permanently 'mission capable' by its virtual non-identical 'mission capable' twin. Conventional landscape, and all its living creatures, are held hostage - it's just that we do not realise it. A creeping occupation of landscape by invisible signals is actually hard to detect - what an insidious strategy! That's why we need to expose them!

But, is there a vulnerability lurking within the new landscape of signals? I argue that its vulnerability may lie within its strength - invisible speedy networked inter-connectivity. As its networking insidiously weaves layer upon layer of enabling signals it presents as an invisible but impenetrable ubiquitous force. But, is it? 

What can we metaphorically or literally unplug to expose its underbelly? I leave you to think about it.

Cheers,

Kathryn

* I have previously written about being taken hostage by signals HOSTAGE

  

MILESTONES

Do You Know, Have You Met? Mixed media on paper 37 x 27 cm 1991

MILESTONES

My daughter is getting married next year. With the flurry of excitement about planning for a wedding I have reflected upon life's milestones. When I was pregnant with this daughter, my first child, I painted a series of works about her immanent birth - certainly a milestone! My maternal grand-mother, born in the nineteenth century, passed away - another milestone, a sad one -  shortly before my daughter was born, making many of these images a kind of homage to ancestry and the cycle of life.

You will notice that the pregnant figure in a few of the selected paintings seems to have multiple shadows, or iterations of herself. Maybe these are ancestral figures, maybe they are multiple aspects of the expectant mother, maybe a plethora of interpretations.... 

My last blog post Twelve Years Blogging - Twelve Paintings was an online exhibition of twelve paintings, one from each year since 2006, when I first started blogging. 

BUT, there was life and painting long before Blogspot! 

The selected paintings in this new post are from 1991, the year we bought our first mobile phone, I got a home computer, and had a baby - in the twentieth century!

Homage Mixed media on paper 37 x 27 cm 1991

COSMOLOGY

Regular readers will notice the cosmic appearance of these 1991 paintings. As you know, I still fly into the cosmos - and invite you to fly with me - in my work today! 

The babies, pregnant bellies and figures float against indefinite spaces, cosmological in possibility. In these spaces, circles and dots could be read as planets or atoms, star dust or thoughts. The tree-of-life also appears in these paintings. Here, though, the tree-of-life is linked to a familial tree, a more intimate one than the universal ones I depict in my later and more recent paintings. However, while intimate in intent in these 1991 paintings, the tree-of-life positioned in cosmic-like landscapes is never without universal potential.

Children Mixed media on paper 1991

1991

If you think about these 1991 paintings and my recent dronescape paintings, you can possibly see where my concerns about the future of humanity, in the age of the drone and the algorithm, spring from. I will leave you to think about that...but...the first Gulf War erupted in August 1990 and officially ended in February 1991, a few months before my first child was born. This war, however, never really ended, it just morphed into ongoing conflict, with battlefields existing in real and virtual spaces. These distributed battlespaces blur the lines between military, counter-insurgency, counter-terrorism and security activities. War is now a hybrid of conventional and unconventional warfare, the latter appropriating civilian technological systems and platforms to perpetrate new modes of war, such as cyberwar. Airborne drones were used in the first Gulf War, for surveillance - they were weaponised in the second Gulf War, and continue to be used in declared and non-declared war/battle situations.  

So, in the years since the birth of my first child, the world has changed.

A Pure Life, Haunted Mixed Media on paper 1991

THEMES

It is interesting to me, and I hope for the reader, to identify elements that continue to appear in my work over many years. Even though subject matter has changed, underlying themes have not. Some of these themes, such as cosmology, initially appeared before I had the words or terms to ascribe to them. 

As I have written this post, I am also struck by the links between my recent work dealing with the apparatus of war and conflict in the twenty-first century, and a personal life milestone that occurred in 1991, the year War did not really end. 

But, back to these 1991 paintings. They are joyous images. I am glad I still have some, especially as we are about to celebrate another joyous milestone.

Cheers,
Kathryn

Where Are You? Mixed media on paper 1991