Although I was largely spared digital losses while writing my scholarly book, my remix assemblage references moments of peril when lapses in the onboard memory or insufficient upload speeds brought the project to a state of continuous buffering. These digital interruptions, the staple of our novel viewing experiences, are symbols of the failure to deliver images as information to the user. I insert YouTube takedown notices and signs of software/hardware inadequacies into my remix, reminding spectators of the digital mortality of the electronic medium. Incorporating monochrome error screens, screens of death, buffering, and computer program crash warnings into my remix- assemblage, I show how deeply these new interface interstitials have become ingrained in our post-cinematic experiences. I deliberately introduce technical errors that point to media failures and breakdowns, which are typically dismissed by tales of technological determinism in its pursuit of perfection. From the perspective of abstract machining, failures that normally would cause frustration and panic in the user, turn into productive experimentations.
My remix-assemblage also inevitably reflects erasures by the neoliberal economy. I encountered many of the traces of digital erasure during my online research. Instead of ignoring or discounting these instances, I chose to include them in my remix. For the cinema of the state apparatus that dismisses discontinuities, ruptures, gaps, and inconsistencies for the sake of seamless and coded narratives, a war machine video consisting predominantly of black or white screens does not or cannot exist.
This video does not exist. 