1. Playas: Homeland Security By Jack Stenner

2. Biography Jack Stenner has been creating digital media art since the 1990’s He holds a bachelors of Environmental Design and a Masters of Computer Visualization from Texas A&M University He is currently working on his Ph.D and is an assistant professor of Digital Media in the School of Art and Art History at the University of Florida His art addresses “issues related to out socio-culturally constructed ‘reality’ and the ways we create meaning from our environment” He attempts to question his surroundings using digital media, video gaming, computer aided environments and information retrieval

3. History of Playas, NM Playas, New Mexico is an ever-changing construction of a town In 1900’s formed around a railroad station built by Phelps Dodge Corporation In the 1960’s, the trains stopped and the property became a ghost town In the 1970’s, the town became a “company town” for the Phelps Dodge copper smelter and the town was named Playas The town had a population exceeding 1,000 people and housed over 250 families In 1999, P.D. closed the smelter and abandoned the city In late 2004, The United States Department of Homeland Security funded the purchase of Playas by New Mexico Tech University The town is currently being converted into “a national and international anti- terrorism training facility

4. Stills and films from the Installation http://digitalmedia.arts.ufl.edu/~jack/playas/

5. Installation Format Computer video game in an installation environment A single player (acting as an “innocent civilian explorer”) at a computer navigates the virtual Playas, built on digital images of the real town Player can interact with an environment that “toys with the dichotomies of subject matter” Player can enter many of the buildings and click on object that present information (photos, videos, documents) about the previous families living there This “gives a sense of what it might have been like to live there…the place someone calls home” The computer screen is projected as a live installation onto the walls of the room

6. Installation Format, cont’d People can enter and leave the room, where a video tracking system monitors the number of people in the environment When people enter, they are incorporated into the “game” as innocents, terrorists, or members of the Department of Homeland Insecurity (DHI) It is up to the player to determine whether these characters are violent or non-violent and whether they pose a threat to him The viewer impacts the space as well-the projection creates a “ghost- like form of their presence within the game environment” and suggests the idea of a mirage

7. Theories and Thoughts Idea of interaction with Playas as a “game”-reflects anti-terrorist training as a “game” or a false reality or test Success of recreating reality-through suburban life, gaming, obsession with terrorism, which are “man-made constructions that are superficially connected to reality” Connect the disparate histories of Playa as a space Idea of “mirage” questions what is real in this environment and creates a feeling of displacement that arises in a town, a reality, that is constantly being reconstructed

8. Artist’s Proposal “This paper describes an interactive installation that addresses issues of presence and absence by creating a virtualized representation of an abandoned town, Playas, New Mexico. This town is slated for conversion into an anti-terrorism training facility by New Mexico Tech University in conjunction with the United States Department of Homeland Security. Using the metaphor of the mirage, it functions as a critique of our understanding of ‘reality’.”

9. Questions Raised In Artist’s Proposal “This set of circumstances and the geography of this place suggest certain questions apropos for digital virtual space. How real is reality? Is a constructed reality real nonetheless? How real is the training that will take place at this site? How real is the threat? What is the relationship between manufactured security in suburbia and this new national focus on security? To what point is embodiment ‘real.’ As an artwork, this project does not propose to answer these questions, but attempts to raise questions in the mind of the viewer.”