Joseph Delappe Lecture

Joseph Delappe's work seeks to integrate integrate real life scenarios and ideas into virtual environments, and vice versa.  His projects using the game 'America's Army' showcase these principles.  America's Army is a game developed by the US Army that is intended to be both a straightforward game and a recruiting tool.  One of Delappe's projects, called 'Dead In Iraq,' involved joining a multiplayer server within the game and, instead of playing with the other people, typing information of servicemen killed in the Iraq war using the in game chat.  Delappe, a strong opposer of the Iraq war, meant for this to balance between being a memorial and a protest piece.  He feels that the American people are disconnected from the war in the middle east, so entering the personal information of dead soldiers inside a government made shooter game is a way to remember their sacrifice and also get people to think about the implications of the war.  Delappe's America's Army projects, along with many of his other works, are very politically oriented; their primary purpose is to make people think.  This is evident in his Iraqi Memorial website.  Iraqimemorial.org invites anybody to submit a proposal for a memorial to Iraqi civilians killed in the war.  Revisiting the memorial and protest ideas, this project could encourage people to research the civilian death toll and other unfortunate consequences of the war while at the same time think of ways to make sure the dead are remembered.  Another aspect of Delappe's work other than memorial and protest pieces are reenactments.  The example he talked about was a reenactment of Gandhi's famous salt march within Second Life.   He rigged a treadmill as the controller, so when he would walk on the treadmill, the Second Life would walk the same distance in real time.  To make it a true reenactment, he walked the same distance as Gandhi in the same time, the only difference being that the Second Life Gandhi did all the moving.  He interacted with other people in Second Life and invited them to join his march, and by the conclusion, there was a big, populous protest party within Second Life to promote peace, just like the real Gandhi.  Delappe's art exists not only to impress, but also to inspire and engage the audience to question and become more involved in the world around them.

Quesitons:

1. Do you think the message behind your more political work, specifically the America's Army series, has been understood by a majority of it's viewers?

2. Do you intend for your work to inspire change within society, or simply to make people think.