Virtually dead in Iraq

To protest the war in Iraq, a media artist infiltrates the U.S. Army's popular online video game and gets himself shot. While angry gamers, soldiers and even some peace activists call him a nuisance, others say his message hits home.

By Rebecca Clarren

Read more: Arts & Entertainment, Arts & Entertainment Features, Iraq War

Sept. 16, 2006 | On the online video game "America's Army," a strapping guy in camouflage scrambles on his belly across cracked dirt in a war-torn city that looks like Baghdad. As he peers out from behind a low stone wall, he peels up to his feet and starts running down a hill toward a small square hut. He fires several rounds from his machine gun at another soldier, this one dressed in a black-hooded outfit. Five yellow streaks flash from his gun, and the black-hooded soldier rolls over and slides down a hill. Our guy in camouflage chases him till he sags against a van, shoots him again, and then satisfied that the dust emerging from his back indicates death, moves on.

Across the top of the screen appears the name of a real American soldier, his age and the date he was killed in Iraq. Last week that name read: "CHARLES A. HANSON JR 22 NOV. 28 2004."

"America's Army," created by the same designers who produced hit first-person-shooter games like "Redneck Rampage" and "Kingpin," is funded by the U.S. Army (to the tune of nearly $10 million), which is to say American taxpayers. But the name of the American soldier killed in Iraq, which those logged on to the game are forced to see, is certainly not part of the game's design but the handiwork of artist Joseph DeLappe.

To streak entertainment with reality, DeLappe has turned "America's Army" into a war protest and a memorial to dead soldiers. Since the anniversary of the Iraq invasion this past March, DeLappe, chair of the art department at the University of Nevada, Reno, has been playing the game under the call sign "dead-in-Iraq," which is also what he calls his work of "performance art."

He logs on to the game and does nothing. While other online players around him simulate war -- and eventually shoot him -- he types into the program's chat interface -- typically used for gamers to strategize with one another -- the name of each service person killed in Iraq. As of Sept. 14, he'd entered 1,273 names of the 2,670 Americans killed there; he plans to continue until the war ends. "I'm trying to remind other gamers that real people are dying in Iraq," DeLappe says.

The military funded "America's Army" in part to interest kids as young as 13 to join the Army. The virtual rifle range (free to download) is also a training ground for real combat in Iraq. With 7.5 million users since its release in 2002, "America's Army" has become the main place where young people learn about the military, according to a 2004 marketing survey conducted for the Army. It's an "entertaining way for young adults to explore the Army and its adventures and opportunities as a virtual soldier," reads the game's official Web site, which links gamers to a military recruiter.

"It's probably the only game out there on the Internet, where if it draws you in and gets you to join the military, you could die," says DeLappe, 43. DeLappe's electronic and new-media art has been shown at national and international exhibits, including the 2002 International Symposium on Electronic Art in Nagoya, Japan. Typically his works transpose common electronic objects, such as computer mice or video game joysticks, into large sculptural corncobs, sunflowers or mandalas. While all of his work questions the role and effect of technology in our lives, DeLappe says the meaning and impact of "dead-in-iraq" supersedes his earlier work.

"It's bizarre that anyone can get absorbed in such an insane computer game simulating warfare, when there's real suffering taking place," says the soft-spoken artist. "This is a way to communicate a sense of loss and frustration with the fact that soldiers are dying over there and life just seems to be going on like normal over here."

DeLappe created "dead-in-iraq" as a response to the wave of 9/11 memorials that he feels didn't address the aftermath of the event: the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the thousands who are dying there. His timing couldn't be much better. His work slices into the heart of national dissatisfaction with the Iraq war and the lack of a government strategy to disengage. The list of dead and wounded soldiers and civilians continues to grow. Along with thousands of U.S. soldiers killed, an estimated 43,000 Iraqi civilians have lost their lives, according to Iraq Body Count, a nonprofit group. A poll conducted for CNN found that as of last month, 60 percent of Americans oppose the war in Iraq, the highest number since the beginning of the war three and a half years ago.

Amid this growing political rancor, "dead-in-iraq" has sparked the blogosphere, bouncing around nearly 150 blogs, some of which praise it as "powerful," "quite elegant" and "wickedly clever." Rhizome, the country's leading new-media art organization, which resides at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, calls "dead-in-iraq" a "thoughtful co-opting of the tools of digital culture." To some antiwar groups and parents of soldiers who were killed in Iraq, outraged by the $4 billion a year the military spends to recruit new soldiers, DeLappe's performance art is valuable.

"I applaud him," says Celeste Zappala of Philadelphia, a member of the antiwar group Military Families Speak Out. Her son, Sgt. Sherwood Baker, a former nursery school teacher, disc jockey and member of the National Guard, was killed in Iraq in 2004. "I've always believed when people participate in virtual violence, it makes the victims of violence become less empathetic and less real, and people become immune to the real pain people suffer. This war is real blood, and it's real families that answer the door to learn that their loved ones have been killed."

Next page: Gamers say DeLappe just doesn't get it