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Eye in the sky

Gods Overhead explores the moral and ethical landscape of drone warfare

By Jim Mount

Fort Wayne Reader

2016-05-05

The haunting swirl of a synthesizer evokes impressions of something robotic and threatening, while in the background another voice hints at the human element behind the machine…

This is a small example from the online exhibit “Gods Overhead,” a multimedia exhibit exploring the moral and ethical dimensions of drone warfare. The exhibit is made up of the contributions of three different individual artists, each engaging an element of media to present the issue. Musician Kurt Roembke developed the soundtrack; Armin Sta_czyk contributes poems and prose; Andrew Dubach completes the project with graphics. The project the multimedia is designed to more fully and intellectually engage the viewer in the controversial discussion of drone warfare.

Sta_czyk, Dubach, and Roembke have all known each other for several years before the collaboration on Gods Overhead, meeting through what they describe as “the collision of various art circles in Fort Wayne.” The origin of the Gods Overhead project came about when Sta_czyk started passing around the book A Theory of the Drone, by French philosopher Grégoire Chamayou.

Chamayous' book focuses on the moral and legal problems of engaging in drone warfare, specifically the targeting of individuals secretly and globally on what is described as a “mobile battlefield.” “A Theory of the Drone was crucial to our project, Gods Overhead.” Roembke says, “ It really served as a spark, a springboard for us. Without Armin having read it and brought it to the attention of Andrew and myself, the initial conversations about drone warfare likely wouldn’t have occurred.”

Modeling their project on Chamayous’ approach, the trio began forming the groundwork for the project, “We sought to view the issue as neutrally as possible,” Roembke continues, “especially early on, gathering many different voices and perspectives, similar to Chamayou’s approach.” Roembke makes the point that in beginning, they tried to disengage from a partisan point of view, “Like Chamayou,” while we are cognizant of our own personal politics and ethics, we want to make sure this is more of an artistic and intellectual project rather than purely a polemical or partisan one,” Roembke says.

The project was divided into the three categories of media presented; Graphic, audio and literary ultimately combining together in what is described as an ongoing online project, updated every so often with new contributions from the collaborators.

“Armin had begun working on these poetic pieces that were constructed out of quotes by public officials on drone warfare,” Roembke says of the beginning stages of the project. “Andrew saw these poems and started mirroring Armin’s process, but in a visual art form. He collected images and motifs related to drone warfare, and combined them into one densely-layered image by passing a single sheet of paper through a printer multiple times; each time the paper was sent through the printer, a new image was added over top of the last until he felt the piece was finished. Armin and Andrew decided to present their work together as collaborative project.”

Eventually hoping to move beyond the online presence, the literary stylist of the project, Armin Sta_czyk, is making plans to make the project available in a traditional format by way of print. “Now that Andrew and I have built up solid processes for our respective works,” says Sta_czyk, “we’re now looking at ways to have my quote-poems and his visual pieces converse with each other beyond just on the web site. To that end, we are getting ready to publish small pamphlets that will include our works on facing pages. These will be distributed nationally, and we hope will help us reach a larger audience.”

A news follower, Sta_czyk became immersed in Chamayous book and its effect on his perception of drone warfare was telling. “Even though I keep a close eye on national and international news”, of his role in the formation of the project, “reading Chamayou’s The Theory of the Drone really opened my eyes to the troubling use of drones by the U.S,” Sta_czyk says. “It sent me on a months-long research jag into the history, ethics, and current policies regarding drone technology. It is a terribly complex topic, but one that has not been fully debated openly in America.”

A concern that is echoed by graphic arts contributor Andrew Dubach. “I became troubled by the use of drones in 2013, when drone strikes on American soil were becoming a possibility,” he says. “It was disturbing to know that the government could potentially have the capability to order an assassination on American citizens without a the use of a trial.”

Sta_czyk's own role, aside from providing the originating spark to the project, is contributing the literary aspect of it, in illustrating in poetic verses the issue at hand, “As a writer, I was naturally attracted to the language that was used in the materials I read,” Sta_czyk says. “I increasingly began to see poetic possibilities in the arguments put forth — both for and against drones — by the authors I read. There was repetition, and parallelism, metaphor, hyperbole, all sorts of traits that you’ll find in captivating poetry. I began taking short excerpts from quotations and forming them in quick-hitting poems. My hope was that this format would capture the reader’s attention and deliver the powerful meaning contained in the text more explicitly and easily than if it was simply left embedded in a lengthy article. Basically, in the visual presentation of the quote-poems I aim to poeticize and, at times, emphasize aspects of the quotation.”

“It’s not my intention,” Sta_czyk adds, “to distort or misrepresent the original words of the writer/speaker.”

Sta_czyk's literary effort would make an imprint for Dubach to mirror graphically in such a way that Dubach efforts juxtapose American lives with foreign both in the cross hairs of the drone. “My work for the project was made to mirror Armin’s collage-like poems,” Dubach says. “The imagery used is often meant to contrast American life with the lives of those unfortunate enough to live in a country where a lethal military drone program is active.”

For Roembke’s part, his effort is the contribution of sound to complement the literary and graphic components of the work. “For my speech-key sound pieces, I began studying the voices of public officials while they spoke about drone policy, analyzing the tones in which these officials speak, and then began to use those pitches to compose sound pieces,” Roembke says. “Mapping out all of the pitches used by a specific public figure as they speak about drone policy, I assigned each pitch to a slider on an audio mixing board. I then faded the notes in and out on the mixer (much like a pianist plays the keys of a piano), listening to how these pitches interact as they fade in and out in the sound space. I then used digital automation to randomize each tone’s left to right position in the stereo sound space (panning).”

“When I hear about the concept of identifying, and eradicating ‘terrorists’ in order to protect American lives, I begin to feel very uncomfortable with the language at play,” Roembke adds. “We tend to use labels to generalize subjects, making the plans to fix our problem more prone to turning violent. By labeling a group of people as terrorists, we de-humanize them, allowing them to be more easily feared and hated. Our issues can be more deeply observed if we allow ourselves to see the humanity in these people, and attempt to understand why this violence has developed between us. Until this happens, we will continue to respond in violence, reinforcing the us-vs-them construct that has been building since the beginning of our conflict. People shouldn’t be de-humanized.”

Roembke concludes: “They are very much human, and behind everything they do lies a reason. I hope that the government can do all that they can to realize this and keep this in mind in their overseas pursuits.”

The exhibit can be viewed at the droneartproject.org website.