IMAGINATIONAL METAVEILLANCE - ONLINE EXHIBITION

 Drone Life Shadow Play Gouache on paper 30 x 42 cm 2016

I have been thinking about surveillance and sousveillance. And, I have also been thinking about metaveillance. Surveillance is commonly used to describe monitoring, spying and watching, normally in a clandestine or discrete way, often an activity of oversight from above. Sousveillance is a monitoring from below, normally undertaken by someone wearing/holding a device. According to Steve Mann, Professor of Computer Engineering at University of Toronto and 'father of wearable computing', "Surveillance happens when we’re being watched and sousveillance happens when we do the watching", and metaveillance is "seeing sight itself" through exposure of frequencies used for scoping/surveillance. In technical terms all three types of veillance involve digital, cyber or electronic technologies, for example, cameras and sensors, that can be fixed, or moving.

DRONES
Regular readers will know why I am interested in surveillance, sousveillance and metaveillance. Yes, the airborne militarised drone's surveillance capabilities are increasingly persistent and penetrative. Imaging technology enables surveillance and targeting, but is the image really needed if software is the scrutiniser of data? We can monitor the drone using devices on land and in space, but the monitoring is also reliant on sensors, using the same signal-reliant digital and cyber platforms as the drone. To me, this seems like a loop.

IMAGINATIONAL METAVEILLANCE
Imaginational metaveillance - maybe it should be imaginational veillance - is a way to monitor without using digital, cyber or electronic platforms, but with these platforms firmly in 'sight'. Hands-on painting practices/processes, and the resultant paintings, do not require digital or cyber technologies for creation, exhibition or storage. They cannot be hacked, appropriated, forensically investigated - they do not bleed data back into the system. For me, painting, as a practice and a creation, offers a distance from the technological system I critique. I invite viewers of my paintings to also fly with me.

By inviting viewers of my paintings to fly, in imagination, below, beside and above airborne drones and/or indications of their presence, surveillance and sousveillance do not seem adequate terms to describe what we might 'see'. And, when we fly above the drones, it's not only into the sky, but into the cosmic reaches of outer space where we can 'monitor' not only the drones, but also their ground-based and space-based support infrastructure against a backdrop of the 'pale blue dot'. Also, by making visible the invisible signals that ricochet from node to node, device to device, we can 'see' how landscape and environment are occupied by a mesh of stealthy techno-colonising forces. When we fly below the drones, the obscuring, or part-obfuscation, of the universal background indicates a loss of perspective. This maybe a sign of a hostage-like situation - and we are the hostages!

If metaveillance is technological way of "seeing sight itself" I think the imaginational metaveillance opens a way to something more, an embrace of vision in the broadest human sense - not only seeing with eyeball and pupil, but also 'seeing' in imagination, in dreams, in nightmares, in visionary and speculative thinking.  Who needs VR tech, when imagination, in full flight, can take you anywhere!

I could write more, but I'll leave the paintings to do the rest of the work!

In this online exhibition I have included various paintings where you are invited to 'fly'.

Imagine yourself below or above, or in front of the droned landscapes or skyscapes, netted with signals and punctuated with hardware.

 Droned Landscape Gouache on paper 30 x 42 cm 2016

Are you above a netted landscape, or below a netted sky or viewing a cross-section of landscape volumetrically occupied? 

 Drone Clouds Gouache on paper 30 x 42 cm 2016

With imaginational metaveillance swarms of drones become fake clouds, and act of stealth.

 Remote Control Gouache on paper 30 x 42 cm 2016

The tree-of-life is under attack. The tree-of-life escapes, perhaps? With imaginational metaveillance, life itself is 'seen'.

 What if? Gouache on paper 30 x 42 cm 2016

We 'witness' more than what can be seen!

 $urveillance Gouache on paper 56 x 76 cm 2017

With imaginational metaveillance we 'see' the military industrial estate. The sunshine-like rays are painted with small $ signs. Fake sunshine, real surveillance.

 Drone Zones Gouache on paper 30 x 42 cm 2017

New Sky? Gouache o paper 56 x 76 cm 2017

The 'new sky' is formed by pixellated blue drones. What is real?

 Sky - Drone - Net Gouache on paper 30 x 42 cm 2016

Signals, a false star, a net obscuring the sky - or - landscape. It depends where you think you are - above the drone or below it?

 Life and the Drone Gouache on paper 56 x 76 cm 2017

The battle of the 21st century?

 Ubiquitous Surveillance - An Invisible Landscape Oil on linen 60 x 110 cm 2017

 Anomaly Detection 2 Oil on linen 120 x 180 cm 2017

Pixellated weaponised drones hover over the pale blue dot - Earth.

 Sensored Oil on linen 50 x 50 cm 2017

The sky is occupied by sensors and their enabling signals. A false star extends beyond the edges of the painting....

 New Horizons Oil on linen 97 x 112 2018

Computer-like graphics impose new horizons and false perspective. A drone's wingspan cuts the landscape.

 Mission Capable Landscape Oil on linen 72 x 137 cm 2018

Multi Mission Gouache on paper 30 x 42 cm 2019

DRONE - A FLYING AERIAL?

DRONE Gouache on paper 30 x 42 cm 2019

DRONE

In DRONE [above] a weaponised drone appears to hover in front of you. Its guided missiles and Hellfire missiles seem aimed at you. Its wide area surveillance system sends out surveillance signals, scoping, detecting, and perhaps targeting. It’s data-link antennae sends and receives information and instructions. But, the blue lines sectioning the sky disrupt this reverie of stealth. Perhaps this is not an image of a drone flying through the air, but rather, an image of a simulated drone graphically depicted on a computer screen. The blue lines may indicate geolocating graphics guiding the real, or not, drone into landing.

The binary code inscribed across the drone's wingspan 'instructs' the word DRONE, and then appears to start a new word that continues off the right side of the picture. Or, is the 'instruction' meant to be DRONED? I will leave you to think about the variety of possible interpretations here! That the last bit on the last byte is missing, indicates that the dronfication of landscape extends beyond the painting. Indeed, the lines, indicating signals also extend beyond the painting. 

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle or Unmanned Flying Aerial?

What I want to focus on is the term or name unmanned aerial vehicle [UAV]. This name for a drone conjures the idea of a plane flying in the air without a pilot on board. And, this is certainly a good description of an airborne drone. But, a drone can also be considered as an airborne aerial.  There is no need to use the word unmanned, because aerials and antennae are normally unmanned. Even satellites that receive and transmit data are unmanned. This idea came to me as I was worked through recent paintings where I expose signals that enable the operation and functioning of militarised technology, dual-use technology, and militarise-able civilian technology [including drones]. 

I was also thinking about my father. Although my father was a grain grower, from the age of 12 he had been an enthusiastic HAM, an amateur radio operator. Dad had a number of aerials dotted around the farm. Various antennae were mounted on each of them. These antennae enabled transmission and reception of messages from around the world. In 1957 when the Russians sent Sputnik 1 into space, my father [aged 20] was one of a number of HAMs from around the world who tracked the spacecraft and sent co-ordinates back to the Jet Propulsion Unit in the US, via an intermediary. My father, a farmer in western Queensland, Australia, played a small part in Cold War intrigue! Sputnik 1 heralded the space race. 

Thinking of the airborne drone as a flying aerial, an intermediary between Earth and optimal orbits, forced me to think about the drone in a different way. Essentially the drone could be described as a metal-clad flying chassis, its structure designed to enable the transmission and reception of signals that transmit data and instructions from land-based and space-based support infrastructure. Is it a vehicle? Well yes and no. But, could an aerial be described as a vehicle? That's a tricky one, because an aerial is an enabling node for signals to deliver and transport data and instructions. Are signals more of a vehicle than an aerial? 

Flying Weapon Aerial?

Now to the role of the flying aerial as a carrier of lethal weapons. As a carrier, the drone could be considered a vehicle. But, signals between devices on the flying aerial, and signals sent and received from land-based and space-based assets deliver data and instructions to the drone and its payloads. This includes instructions triggered by remote human operators, as well as internal algorithmic systems, to surveil, track, target and attack. Maybe the airborne militarised drone is a weapon aerial, a very sophisticated weapon, an interconnected matrix of sensoring, imaging, orienting, surveilling and targeting capabilities. Signals are pivotal to this kind of weaponry. Where does the human being fit in this matrix? 

I am going to leave my rambling there. But, while I might be off tangent, I think it is important to scrutinise how nomenclature contributes to assumptions and beliefs about contemporary technology, particularly militarised technology. 

I think DRONE looks like an airborne weapon aerial!

Cheers,

Kathryn

CHARTING THE INVISIBLE

Charting the Invisible Gouache on paper 30 x 42 cm 2019

Charting the Invisible is another of my paintings that 'exposes' how signals operatively enable contemporary technologies to function in a networked and inter-connected manner. Without connectivity, many devices would be useless or near useless. By 'charting' the normally invisible connectivity and inter-connectivity of the modern technological world this painting can be understood as a kind of counter-map. Here, I focus on the 'map' as a subversive exposure and demonstration of the connection between militarised and civilian technologies. When you consider that security and policing activities are increasingly blurred with military activities, the militarise-ability of civilian technologies is an issue. Does this make everything dual-use? Additionally, while security, policing and military activities are generally considered necessary by many, malign entities using networked and inter-connected systems are more than unwanted interlopers. 

NODES AND DEVICES

Like my last painting and post Martial Map I have painted lines that join nodes and devices. These lines represent signal connections. For example, a ground control station is linked to an airborne weaponised drone. This control station is also linked to a communication satellite, which is also linked to the drone. The drone is linked to a mobile phone, also linked to the GPS and communication satellite. The phone is linked, then, to a car, and a computer. Some nodes and devices send signals beyond the edges of the painting, to indicate connection to other devices and nodes. And, there are more connections between all the devices, and some connections are still invisible!

TECHNO-COLONISATION

While the painting can be read as some kind of map, the cosmic landscape background positions the viewer in an ambiguous perspective. Is the viewer above or below, in front or behind, the net of signals? If they are below, the sky is netted, if they are above the planet is netted. If they are in front or behind the nets act as walls. Here, the netted appearance is important to me, as I 'see' this signal-net as an imposition on landscape, an occupier of space and a sign of a new kind of colonistion, a techno colonisation that holds us all hostage. Given the militarise-ability of civilian technology, in addition to designated militarised technology, does this colonisation come with a persistent readiness for defensive and offensive actions? If so, are we in a constant state of war preparedness, where the near light-speed delivery of data and instructions via signals expunges time for peace?  

On that 'happy' note.

Cheers,

Kathryn

MARTIAL MAP

Martial Map Gouache on paper 30 x 42 cm

I have returned from overseas. In Toronto I presented on a round-table, themed to war preparedness, at the International Studies Association annual conference. I then had meetings in London and Berlin. 

EXHIBITIONS

And, I saw a lot of art, from the Rembrandt exhibition at the Rijks Museum in Amsterdam, to Is This Tomorrow at the Whitechapel Gallery in London, to Hito Steyerl's Power Plants exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery, London. Two exhibitions at the KW Institute in Berlin still occupy my thoughts. The exhibitions showed works by David Wojnarowicz and Reza Abdoh. Both artists brutally, honestly and sensorially reflected upon the AIDS crisis of the 1980s/early 1990s. I saw a number of exhibitions in Berlin, including Cian Dayrit's thought provoking counter mapping/cartography exhibition Beyond the Gods Eye at Nome Gallery. And, at C/O Gallery I saw two provocative photographic exhibitions - Double Take by duo Cortis and Sonderegger, and Before Sleeping/ After Drinking, a survey show of work by Boris Mikhailov. Matthew Day Jackson's exhibition Pathetic Fallacy at Hauser and Wirth, Somerset was a highlight. This quote from the gallery site gives you an idea about Day Jackson's motivation in this exhibition, "The overarching conceit is an interest in our compulsion to document, map and systemise our natural world as a method for understanding nature." Day Jackson's exhibition and Dayrit's exhibition were both highlights.

COUNTER MAPPING?

Since returning home the idea of counter cartography or mapping has occupied my thoughts. Are my paintings, where I expose signals that enable drone operations, a kind of counter mapping? In many of my paintings I paint proliferating nets of signals as imposed topographies that occupy landscape, from land into space. This volumetric occupation, I 'see', as a techno-colonisation of landscape and environment, facilitating an insidious control and manipulation of human behaviour and movement. I call my paintings 'new landscapes in the drone age'.

By exposing the nets of signals that enable militarised and militarise-able technologies I manifest a kind of map. These paintings expose the invisible, thus resisting techno-military forces by drawing attention to the insidiousness of inter-connectivity and networking. Additionally, the medium of painting enables the exposure of signals without relying on contemporary technologies that utilise connectivity, networking, for example, cloud storage, downloaded software - the internet. While I might upload images, the process of creation remains discrete. 

Martial Map 

The idea for Martial Map was inspired by reflecting upon IR scholar Antoine Bousquet's book Eye of War: Military Perception from the Telescope to the Drone. In this book Bousquet provides a compelling historical perspective on what he calls the development of the "martial gaze", the human eye's conscription into surveillance, targeting and destruction. But, the human eye cannot see signals. Yet, once Heinrich Hertz first transmitted and received radio waves in 1886, radio communication opened the door to modern day connectivity and networking, the enabling signal forces of contemporary militarised and militarise-able technologies. 

The word 'martial' describes something that is related to or suitable for war, related to military life or inclined to war. Martial Map shows how various nodes can be linked, and inter-linked. I have painted various nodes; GPS and communication satellites, credit cards with chips, a cruise liner, home security technology, a digital tv, a drone's ground control station, human beings holding a mobile phone, a car, 'cloud' storage in the form of a huge building, a fitbit, a street surveillance camera, airport security apparatus, a relay aerial and three weaponised airborne drones. The painting suggests how civilian technologies can be conscripted into the militarised network. Dual-use is clearly  a highly problematic and diffused concept in the contemporary world. 

Cheers,

Kathryn

BEWARE, WHISPERS THE WIND

Beware, Whispers The Wind oil on linen 61 x 97 cm 

Beware, Whispers The Wind 

An armed Reaper drone creates a false horizon across a landscape. The drone's wings slice through the air. Its wide area surveillance system hangs like a bulbous probe below the aircraft's chassis. Four Hellfire missiles and two guided missiles are poised ready for release. 

Orienting graphics impose a virtual map under the drone. This map penetrates the landscape, its virtual presence indicating that it can operate anywhere, everywhere. From screen to screen, its data driven operation isolates kill zones as the drone's sensors harvest more data to facilitate full spectrum dominance.

The drone's sensors are invisibly connected by signals to enabling devices on land and in space. Operational signals instruct the harvesting of data from other networked devices; domestic, civilian and military. An invisible cartography of signals nets planet Earth with instructional codes operating outside human dimensions of space and time.  

With Beware, Whispers The Wind I wanted to play with the tension between reality and virtuality. The white drone and white lines mimic the appearance of computer graphics. Is the painting an image of a computer screen? Or, is the tumultuous and colourful landscape real?  The viewer could be facing the drone, on a screen, from another aircraft or maybe you are a bird? The viewer could also be looking down upon a drone that soars upwards, the orienting graphics creating a virtual abyss. Maybe the drone is coming into land, somewhere on a screen, on a tarmac or on our collective subconscious?

But, on a distant horizon the red tree-of-life stands as a beacon. As it leans to one side it shows us the presence of the wind. Does the wind exist in a virtual world? Is the tree-of-life and the wind sending us a message? 

What do you think?

                                                 NEWS

I am on a roundtable at the International Studies Association annual conference in Toronto. The roundtable will be discussing "Researching War Preparedness: Challenges, theories and inter/disciplinary possibilities". Wednesday 27th 8.15-10 am.

I am thrilled to be talking about my paintings where I suggest that signals represent a techno-colonisation of landscape from land, to sky, and into space! That these signals enable networking and interconnection  across civilian and military systems poses the question - are we in a perpetual state of war preparedness/readiness, for offensive and defensive activities? 

DETAILS 

Researching War Preparedness: Challenges, theories and inter/disciplinary possibilities

Participants:

• Chair: Mark J. Lacy (Lancaster University)
• Discussant: Maria Stern (University of Gothenburg)
• Discussant: Mark J. Lacy (Lancaster University)
• Participant: Christine Agius (Swinburne University)
• Participant: Helen Dexter (The University of Leicester)
• Participant: Kathryn Brimblecombe-Fox  (University of Queensland)
• Participant: Victoria M Basham (Cardiff University )
• Participant: Hannah-Marie Chidwick (University of Bristol)
• Participant: Sara Matthews [Wilfrid Laurier] 

Abstract: 
This roundtable examines the possibilities and (interdisciplinary) prospects for advancing knowledge on war preparedness. In international relations and security studies, an overwhelming focus is on conflict and warfare, and while work on conflict prevention has a strong presence, war preparedness if often overlooked or only briefly addressed. War preparedness has been confined to military strategizing and predictive schemas and historicised too, with dominant associations focused on Cold War nuclear planning or civil defence during the Second World War. Preparing for war, however, is not solely an activity or ethos that is authored by state militaries. It requires the inculcation of citizens, public and private spaces and technologies, and is an ever-present part of everyday practices, images, discourses, and ideologies. Understanding war preparedness is vital for grasping how we theorise war and violence over time and space. Importantly, identifying how war preparedness is operationalised and rationalised requires critical engagement with dominant ideologies and material developments. This roundtable will explore the possibilities for theorising war preparedness and how interdisciplinary approaches may inform new approaches to understanding war preparedness and what this can also mean for peace.

Cheers,

Kathryn

SEEING THROUGH THE FAKE WINDOW

Seeing Through the Fake Window Oil on linen 30 x 46 cm 2018

FAKE STUFF

Fake stuff is happening everywhere! Fake news, fake videos, and now there is a thing called "deep fake". "Deep Fake" uses artificial intelligence to create images or videos the depict seemingly real events, with depictions of real people, sometimes even with fake people. So, for example, videos of politicians saying and doing things they have not said or done. Here are two interesting articles that discuss fake phenomena and artificial intelligence, and "deep fake":  You Thought Fake News Was Bad? Deep Fakes is Where Truth Goes to Die.  by Oscar Schwartz in The Guardian, and What You Have to Fear from Artificial Intelligence  by Ryan Metz in Current Affairs: A magazine of Politics and Culture.

Paul Metz writes: "If you think “fake news” is a problem now, just wait. When an image can be generated of literally anyone doing literally anything with perfect realism, truth is going to get a whole lot slipperier."

Fake news clearly has political, social and security issues, but "deep fake" takes these issues even further. Used indiscriminately, "deep fake', to my mind, is a threat to civilisation as we know it. 

"DEEP FAKE"

Fake news, and particularly "deep fake" are intrinsically linked to digital and cyber technology generally, and the screen more specifically. The screen is the "third" or "cathode window", as Paul Virilio, called it in interviews and text. Jean Baudrillard also proposed a loss of reality delivered by the screen. His "perfect crime", the death of reality, may reach its ultimate prosecution in "deep fake". 

SEEING THROUGH THE FAKE WINDOW

So, to my new painting Seeing Through the Fake Window. Obviously I am playing into the news about fake phenomena. I am also playing into the idea of the screen being a window, a fake one. Without the ubiquity of the screen would fake news and "deep fake" pose threats to the fabric of society? The screen is ubiquitous because it is the computer screen, mobile phone screen, or other device screen. The screen is, however, also associated with the camera and the weapon, surveillance and targeting. 

In Seeing Through the Fake Window. you can imagine yourself looking through a fake window, aka screen. Maybe it is an airborne drone screen, one of its many multispectral cameras perhaps ? Or, maybe you are looking at a remote drone pilot's screen. Or maybe, you are looking at a television screen, watching news of a true or fake story about a true of fake drone strike? I have painted a dark blue square in the middle of the night- vision green 'cloud'. Is that a new window? Maybe, maybe not.

Seeing Through the Fake Window is not only about giving an impression of looking through a window, a fake window. It is also about exposing the fakery, critiquing the fake window that delivers fake news into our private and public lives. 

FAKE LANDSCAPE

As with many of my paintings, I have painted lines that crisscross a landscape. These lines are signals and computer graphic-like markings. They create a new landscape topography, one which is normally invisible, except perhaps on a screen, maybe a remote drone pilot's screen. It is a fake landscape! As I have previously written, nets of signals that enable connectivity and networking, wrap the planet, extending from land to satellites in space. Theses signals transmit news, stories and images - real and fake - around the world. 

"Deep fake" is a potentially disastrous 21st century tactical weapon, deployable via our nets of signals.

On that happy note!

Cheers,

Kathryn

OPERATIONAL LANDSCAPE

Operational Landscape Oil on linen 41 x 56 cm 2018

SIGNALSCAPE

Operational Landscape is a continuation of my interest in exposing what I call the 'signalscape' of the 21st century. This invisible 'signalscape' enables the operation of networked and interconnected digital and cyber systems - including systems that are militarised or militarise-able. I have spent many hours painting landscapes that are netted by signals, with skies occupied by weaponised drones and satellites hovering in space. I have come to realise that signals, ricocheting from node to node, from land to sky and into space, create a persistent readiness for offensive and defensive activities - an ever-present readiness for war. 

It was with great interest that I read the Australian Chief of the Army, Lieutenant General Richard Burr's recent Accelerated Warfare statement. In this statement he maps out a future trajectory for war and how Australia might respond to accelerating developments in warfare. The statement places emphasis on technology. This quote below is particularly pertinent re: my painting Operational Landscape:

"Threat. Our operating landscape is changing – adversaries, including violent extremist organisations and state-based threats can now control and influence all operating domains. The advent of rapidly evolving, easily accessed technology increasingly offers asymmetric capabilities to both established powers as well as non-state actors and even individuals. The ability to sense and strike from long range as well as swarming low-cost technologies are increasing the vulnerability of major military systems. Future strike capabilities will not just be physical but also digital, executed often at the speed of a mouse-click."

OPERATIONAL LANDSCAPE

In Operational Landscape, an ambiguous  but colourful landscape oscillates between appearing to be land-based and sky/cosmic-based. Are you looking down upon a landscape or up towards a tumultuous sky or are you looking into a landscape of  mountains, river, grassy knolls and sky? This play with perspective, is a visual ploy I use regularly in my work. I like to think it generates surprise, imaginational involvement and ultimately a critical stance. Lines seeming converge somewhere. That they are operational is evidenced by the cross-hairs set against the dark terrain. Whether you are above or below the signals, the occupation of volumetric landscape - from land, to sky, to space - is inescapable. There is a sense that geography offers no hiding place in the era of the algorithm, the epoch of netted signals, and the age of the unmanned drone - the 21st century. 

Please also check out:

Lethal Landscape

Hostage

Occupied Landscape: Everywhere

NEWS

My painting New Horizons is a finalist in the $30,000 Tattersalls Landscape Art Prize. The exhibition of paintings will be on public view from Sept 10 until Sept 21, at Riverside Centre, 123 Eagle St , Brisbane, Queensland, Australia: weekdays 7am - 6pm.

All the finalist paintings can be previewed HERE

Congratulations to the winner of the prize as Kate Shaw, with her painting The Grandparents -1928, The Gorge.

New Horizons Oil on linen 97 x 112 cm 2018

Cheers,

Kathryn

NEW TERRAIN

The New Terrain Gouache o paper 56 x 76 cm 2018

As I have previously mentioned, I am interested in making visible the invisible signals that enable contemporary technological inter-connectivity. I 'see' signals wrapping the planet, extending into the sky and into space. Signals enable the operation of designated militarised technology, dual-use civilian/military technology and the appropriative capabilities of state and non-state entities, aberrant groups or individuals. Regarding the latter, think of election interference, cybercrime and so on.

SIGNALSCAPE

In my view signals that ricochet around the world, from land-based, sky based and space based nodes, create a new type of landscape - a signalscape. This signalscape is an invisible colonising force that forms a dense net that volumetrically occupies the biosphere and extends to space-based assets in low Earth orbit and geostationary orbit. 

This net is not a neutral force, as it represents a persistent readiness for action which includes a  constant readiness for offensive and defensive activities. In other words we live in a world that is constantly ready for war, twenty-first century style. Seen this way the invisible signalscape holds us hostage. I wrote about this in a recent post called HOSTAGE.

THE NEW TERRAIN

In The New Terrain I have made visible a section of the new signalscape. It appears to be glimpsed between clouds. However, the clouds may be a ruse. Taking the nomenclature of The Cloud maybe the netting is too small for us to see, hence the cloudy appearance? Maybe the area I have exposed is closer to the viewer, just one layer if the volumetric occupation? 

As with many of my paintings, the viewer could be above the new occupying signalscape. Maybe you are beyond the busy orbits of enabling satellites? However, you could be on land looking up and through the signalscape, its layered nets wrapping around you, even stroking you as you move in your environment - unaware of your hostage situation.

I have deliberately used the word 'terrain' in the title for two main reasons. The first is that it is linked to ideas of landscape and landscape features, and secondly it has military potential.

Cheers,

Kathryn