ENDLESS WAR
– YoHa (Graham Harwood and Matsuko)
How does the way war is thought relate to how it is fought?
NATO forces invaded Afghanistan on October 7th 2001. At that point a system for reporting every interaction between NATO and local people started up. On 25th July 2010, WikiLeaks released a document set called the Afghan War Diary, over 91,000 (15,000 withheld) reports covering the war in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2010. The reports, written by soldiers and intelligence officers, are mainly short descriptions of military actions but they also include intelligence information, reports of meetings with political figures, and other details. This document was used by a group of newspapers to generate articles, many of which gave new kinds of insight into the prosecution of this war. The full data set however is rarely seen, and access to it is blocked in many territories around the globe. As a full document it is 108MB of text. It gives unique insight into the futile nature of the war in Afghanistan but also the ontology of contemporary war as it is carried out on the ground. Just as an algorithm is an ‘effective procedure’, a series of logical steps required to complete a task, the Afghan War Diary shows war as it is computed, reduced to an endless permutation of jargon, acronyms, procedure recorded, cross-referenced and seen as a sequence or pattern of events.
On 25th July 2010, WikiLeaks released a document set called the Afghan War Diary, which includes over 91,000 (15,000 withheld) reports by soldiers and intelligence officers covering the war in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2010. Endless War is not a video installation but a prolonged real-time processing of the data set seen from a series of different analytical points of view. As the war is fought it produces entries in databases that are in turn analyzed by software looking for repeated patterns of events, spatial information, kinds of actors, timings and other factors. Endless War shows how the way war is thought relates to the way it is fought. Both are seen as potentially endless, computational processes. The algorithmic imaginary of contemporary power meshes with the drawn out failure of imperial adventure.
Endless War is not a video installation but a real-time processing of this data seen from a series of different analytical points of view. Pick-up microphones on the central processing unit feed back to the inner working of the machine as it processes each result. N-gram fingerprints categorize the summaries of the records finding a pathway through the 76,000 files. The reduction of words to sequences of bytes or letters allows patterns to emerge from the sequences which can be used in trigram matching between entries; and searches for the frequency of terms within those entries. As the war is fought it produces entries in databases that are in turn analyzed by software looking for repeated patterns of events, spatial information, kinds of actors, timings and other factors. Endless War shows how the way war is thought relates to the way it is fought. Both are seen as, potentially endless, computational processes. The algorithmic imaginary of contemporary power meshes with the drawn out failure of imperial adventure.
戰事如何被構想，與它的真實運作何干？
北約部隊於2001年10月7日入侵阿富汗。自此一個紀錄北約和當地人之間所有互動的系統啟動。2010年7月25日，维基解密發佈了一份名為《阿富汗戰爭日記》的文件，當中包括超過 91,000個 (其中15,000份絕密)由士兵及情報人員作的有關2004至2010年間阿富汗戰事的報告。報告涵蓋了阿富汗戰爭從2004年至2010年由士兵和情報人員紀錄的報告，主要是是軍事行的簡要說明，但它們還包括情報信息，政治人物會議報告，以及其他細節。這份文件在一些報紙中選取文章，其中有許多為對這場戰爭的控訴提供新的視點。這樣完整的數據集是十分罕見，亦被阻止在全球許多地區發怖。作為一個完整的文檔，它有108MB的文字。它為徒勞的阿富汗戰爭及現代戰爭的本體論提供了獨特的視點。
《Endless War》並非一個錄像裝置作品，而是一項持續的、實時式、以多角度分析的數據處理系統。在漫長的戰事中產生出大量數據，將經由軟件程式進行分析，去發現當中的模式，包括事故出現、地理分佈資料、參與人員、時間性及其細節事項等。作品展示大家對戰事的構想，與其實況比對，兩者都看似是沒完沒了的過程，當代列強數理上的想像比照它們實戰上的失敗。《 中央處理器上的麥克風每個處理完的結果反饋機器的內部運作，N-gram指紋在 76,000個文件中尋找分類的記摘要。把這詞語分拆成以字節為單位或字母序列，讓模式以從所述序列出現，進行配對，並搜索這些條目中的術語的頻率。
隨著戰爭的戰鬥，它於數據庫產生的條目，由軟件依次進行分析，尋找事件的重複模式，空間信息，各類行動者定時等因素。無盡的戰顯示戰爭如何被認為是涉及到它的戰鬥方式。
*****Endless War, YoHa with Matthew Fuller, 2011, was exhibited at Void Gallery, Derry, Northern Ireland, 2011 and the Kunst Hal Aarhus, Denmark, 2013.
About YoHa
Graham Harwood and Matsuko Yokokoji have lived and worked together since 1994. YoHa’s graphic vision and technical tinkering has powered several celebrated collaborations, including Harwood and Yokokoji’s co founding of the artists group Mongrel (in 1996-2007), which specializes in digital media, and the Mediashed a free-media lab in Southend-on-sea (2005-2008). In 2008 they joined long-time collaborator Richard Wright to produce Tantalum Memorial, which won the Transmediale first prize (2009), was then featured at the ZeroOne Biennial (San Jose, USA), Manifesta07 (Bolzano, Italy), the Science Museum London, Ars Electronica, Plugin (Switzerland), and Laboral (Spain)
Graham Harwood and Matsuko Yokokoji 自1994年起互為生活及工作夥伴。「YoHa」對圖像的灼見和對技術的玩弄撮成了多個知名的合作計劃。他們共同創立了以數碼媒體創作主導的藝術家組織「Mongrel」(1996-2007)；又於英國濱海紹森德設立了自由媒體實驗室「Mediashed」(2005-2008)。2008年，與長期合作伙伴Richard Wright共同製作了「Tantalum Memorial」，並獲Transmediale 2009第一名，其後於美國聖荷西的ZeroOne藝術雙年展、意大利波紮諾的「Manifesta 07」、倫敦科學博物館、奧地利國際電子藝術「Ars Electronica」、瑞士的「Plugin」及西班牙的「Laboral」展出。
