This body of work explores the theme of reality vs. virtual reality, utilizing the popular media of video games and in particular, Call of Duty: Black Ops. As a child of the 90’s I grew up alongside the progression of the video game culture. Starting with the Nintendo Entertainment System to now, all-encompassing entertainment consoles like Sony’s Playstation 3, video game consoles constantly competed in “console wars” to outdo each other with superior graphics (ability to visually replicate reality). This relationship to the video game culture is where this work originates. With current video games it is the visually defining line between virtual reality and reality that is growing ever thinner. If you accompany that with the accelerating rate of technological advancement, this generation of consoles may be the last to have such obvious signs of a virtual nature.

The photographs in this series represent two explorations of this virtual nature, with the first series of four images depicting an explosion of a bomb-strapped RC car. The serial or clinical approach to the framing reinforces the explosion as the sole subject, highlighting its subtle changes from image to image. The next set of images concentrate closer in on human subjects in order to illustrate the games ability to closely simulate our reality.