PARACEL STORM (西沙風暴), 2024

taken from a multiplayer map featured in Battlefield 4, PS1 (released in 2013), the game is set in the contested Pracel Islands located in the South China Sea. The game map features a combination of arms and battleplay, with unpredictable environmental events like tropical storms to challenge the strategic decision making of possible naval and aerial state warcraft to imagine and roleplay the fictive aparatus and population training for imminent and possible war.

The video draws from screengrabs, menus, and player clips extracted from the game. Weaving together fictitious landscapes that have become inaccessible to Southeast Asian people and non-mainland Chinese people.

Digital extraction and Ai imaginaties become the only means to cross heavily militarised and contested borders.

(this short film is composed of discrete scenes and imagery that has been partially animated with Openart.Ai - and the various glitches and visual anomalies of early Ai formats. The use of geenrative Ai has profound and often unseen socioeconomic and environmental implications that are seriously considered when using these and other agentic technologies)