May 6, 1999

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    COMMISSION  CONTROL
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http://artcontext.com/remote
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Commission Control draws upon divergent 
representations of contemporary warfare.
Begun before the escalation of war in the 
Balkans, this work responds to the anti-
social imperatives of war industry, and to 
the relationship between military industries 
and the media. With regard to the ongoing 
conflict in Kosovo, the authors' perspective 
is not neutral, but above all their aim is to 
focus attention on the war in Yugoslavia, 
encouraging people to investigate beyond 
the blind suppositions of 'clean' war that 
are so prevalent on television in the United 
States. The pattern of remote, high-speed, 
pyrotechnic violence must not be understood 
only through the sanitized analytical abstraction 
of attack chronologies, not only through filtered
announcements from press secretaries and generals.
Having engineered the virtual absence of impartial
reporting from the field, the Pentagon portrays the 
grave toll of warfare as inevitable, calculable. 
The artists are unconvinced by the 
rhetoric of moral imperative that is trotted out 
for each successive war. It is largely through 
the ineptitude and lack of vision of foreign 
policy that nations have recently found themselves
in these supposedly noble 'humanitarian' war 
efforts.  Notwithstanding the potential 
consequences of non-intervention, a pacifist 
position must be presented coherently to the 
public.

Commission Control is a collaborative effort by New 
Yorkers Andy Deck and Joe Dellinger.  Andy Deck is 
an artist who has been producing work for the 
Internet since 1994.  Recent projects include 
GrafficJam and Space Invaders Act 1732, both of 
which can be found at http://artcontext.com.  
Joe Dellinger is a teacher and thesis group leader
at the School of Visual Arts, NYC, MFA Computer 
Art Department.  His work deals with the double 
edged sword of information and technology and who 
swings it.  

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http://artcontext.com/remote
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