In chapter three of How to See the World, Mirzoeff explores the use of visuals and visualization in war from the ancient Chinese empires to the modern use of drones. Throughout history, visuals have been extremely important to battlefield planning, and, in the modern age, have become a way in which to spy, surveil and fight at the same time. In this section of the book, Mirzoeff focuses on four major points:

1. War and its methods are politics through other means
2. Not only do visuals lend a great advantage to those who can use them, they become a vessel through which to win wars and affect political change
3. War and its visuals have evolved and sometimes devolved from battle between people to battle between powers to shock tactics and mass image war, and then to stealth imaging and individualized targeting on a dictated basis.
4. We are living in a global network which makes targeted visualization by drones not only possible, but the terrifying norm

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A Summary:

War has been a constant of the human experience, from the very dawn of time. Mirzoeff begins this section about war and imagery by focusing in on the medieval kings, who had a similar power to political figures today. During the medieval times all the way to the War of Austrian Succession in 1743, kings tended to ride into battle with their troops, delegating from the field and often at the cost of their lives. However, in the era of the Napoleonic Wars in the early 1800s, kings grew to delegate more than lead, removing themselves from the battlefield as modern war was increasingly spread out across a more connected world and “could not be seen from one place” (p.101).

As a consequence of this newfound wide area of battle, generals had to learn how to “visualize”, that is, to see the world from above and use imagination, insight, and intuition to gage the state of the enemy and the next course of action, all based on what he and his subordinates could see. If done well, this could give an extreme upper hand to a general, as in the case of Napoleon. For example, the famous general used a smaller force to attack on one hill, anticipating the response of the attackers, and then moved in from behind with a larger force.

Mirzoeff goes on to mention the text On War by Carl von Clausewitz, in which Clausewitz argued a few key points:

1. War is mostly invisible
   • Generals have to plan in the fog of morning or even without even being at the site to begin with, and have to take strange and distorted reports and dimensions into account
   • Basically, the battlefield is no longer a site of seeing, but one of imagination and the anticipation of interaction
2. Modern war is not about honor or people fighting against one another; it is a strategy to affect change between two political powers which send foot soldiers in the place of kings and generals
3. Clausewitz wanted war to be seen in what is essentially a view from the air
   • This later became possible with drones and surveillance aircraft
4. With Napoleon’s professionalization of the military, war became more of a fine-tuned political tool than a battle between aristocracy

Visualization grew increasingly important to generals and expanded through the usage of maps. For example, Napoleon had very extensive maps made to look at after the battle, including ones from his height so he could see how his visualization and tactics had worked out and what he did and did not initially see. Those who could not do this tried to look at the field from above, in balloons and then in aircraft, and then with pictures to show everyone else on the ground.

Mapping, however, was an established field in China from as early as the 200s BC, in which Pei Xing developed a grid system and topography map. During the Han dynasty (1600s), China used maps for military purposes, and tributary states had to submit detailed maps of their territory to signify submission. This technology was largely lost to Europe until about the 1400s, but became vital for travel, trade, battle, and land ownership in the 1600s. The American Civil war greatly accelerated the progress of mapping, as information was gathered from balloons and were then telegraphed down to the ground via wire.

Mapping as a form of political assertion was very clear in the Berlin Conference of 1885. In fact, this was the height of mapping as a form of war, masquerading as politics by other means; European nations sat around a table and politically divided Africa amongst themselves (territory which they may have had to battle out in another configuration). They thought they were just carving up arbitrary land to which people had no claim, but in doing so, they completely destroyed long-standing nations and tribes. As Mirzoeff states, the Europeans had “actively forgotten” their extensive knowledge of Africa gained through the slave trade in the preceding centuries, and this forgetting led to disastrous consequences like the Rwandan genocide and the subsequent war in the Congo and Great Lakes area. The carving of the African continent was presided over by a rule known as “terra nullius” which basically meant that any land which was not being cultivated or used by European standards was land for the taking. Other farming techniques and lifestyles were invisible to the Europeans, and they significantly lacked the sensitivity to other cultures.

This is evidenced by an artwork by Nigerian-British artist Shonibare, called The Scramble for Africa. In this 3D installation, headless figures sit around the table, redrawing the map of Africa while wearing Batik fabrics, which are falsely attributed to Africa (they are a merge of the Dutch, Indonesian, and West African cultures, all through colonization). In another symbol, these “heads of state” are lacking visualization and sight, yet they are redrawing history and the future, as war by visual means.

Mapping, visuals, and visualization were revolutionized by the advent of aircraft in World War One. “The Great War”, as it was called, brought new technology that allowed leaders to see activity across enemy lines with precision and subsequently take photographs, label them and match them up to the actual location on a map. With aerial surveillance, quality and stealth continuously improved to the point where human visualization was no longer needed; aerial surveillance on the battlefield changed the entire idea of visualizing as a leadership skill and turned it into a service provided to us by technology.

With the introduction of modern warfare in the early 1900s, visualization also changed. The U.S. army’s change to the motto “map as you move” indicated a shift in mapping technology from paper maps to photo maps, which, when combined, can give an attacking or defending army a serious advantage, such as the visual tactics the Germans used in World War II, which allowed them to cover 750 miles in one day. War then also spurred technology, and a five-lens battle camera was introduced, which could provide topographic images and 3D maps of an area with the help of additional projectors; technology kept getting better and better and incredible detail was soon available.

                Further into the century, war had become an aerial affair; whoever had control of the sky also had control of the field.

The Cuban Missile Crisis during the Cold War is a very good example as visuals bringing superpowers to the brink of war. The U2 aerial surveillance place caught very detailed images of a nuclear launch site in Cuba, and these photographs provided “overwhelming visual evidence” that the U.S.S.R. was planning an attack. When the Soviet Union did not deny the proof, the two superpowers entered into a standoff and the weapons were soon removed.

After the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, a “war of images” began, which saw images being used as “weapons in a war of ideas.” This visual war was accompanied by the great shift to young, urban, connected populations, and this, in turn, shaped the way in which visualization worked. At this point, most people lived in cities, and while Napoleon always said that visualization never worked in cities or mountains, an ever-increasing threat of non-traditional warfare became visible in these urban environments, namely terrorism or other modern warfare.

The impact of this media change is far reaching and often scarily influential, as we have seen images mobilize entire armies and start entire wars. An example of this is the 2014 video posted by ISIS and another is the situation surrounding nuclear power in Iraq. In the latter situation, US general Colin Powell presented a PowerPoint about Iraq’s use of hidden nuclear weapons, and used images with large annotations to bring his point across, very different from those in the Cuban Missile Crisis.  “Powell distinguished ordinary seeing from specialized visualizing” here and had specialized technicians do the visualizing for him, discovering things which he could not see. With labels and the comparison on the PowerPoint, Powell was able to show potentially suspicious action and ask the UN to deduce the further meaning of the pictures, which “claimed to show what we could not in fact see.” This may have been the first use of the political PowerPoint. Only later was the annotation found to be entirely false, and too late, simply because of the expert visual analysis of the images.

The war on terror further changed visuals and visuals further changed the war on terror. After 9/11, the entire world became a possible battle field, as opposed to the strategy of containment followed during the Cold War era. Mirzoeff states that the attack on 9/11 was intended to cause a media frenzy with “spectacular media images”, part of the new use of visual media not just through mapping and surveillance, but also as propaganda and provocation, which were often countered by images from the opposing side. Mirzoeff continues by explaining that, through the globally connected medium of the internet, ideas of radicalism can be very quickly spread through images like those and taken up by people in various countries, particularly the younger population.

To combat a fresh wave of revolution and revolt in different areas, the US began to use the Shock and Awe tactic, which was based on demoralizing the enemy and domestic opponents. Key to this tactic was the idea that “it needed to be seen by those not directly attacked.” (p.119). Images, therefore, played a major role as a type of ‘demonstration’ and, among other things, caused the government of Saddam Hussein to collapse almost immediately. However, this also led to “trophy photos” of dead bodies taken by soldiers, which lost their affect through sheer repetition. In a twist of events, US photos of atrocities committed in Iraq prisons were also released and began to undermine the idea of the US ad coalition forces as the ‘good guys’ in the Iraq attacks. In this way, a picture is really worth a thousand words.

                More recently, drones have redefined the idea of visualization in warfare. In fact, warfare has returned to the air with the drones, which visualize the battlefield from the sky. While this concept may not be strictly new, the tactics behind drone warfare certainly are: Drones are explicitly targeted. This means that there is no longer a clear battlefield, but a series of operations that need to be carried out and a series of targets to be eliminated.

                Modern drones follow specific patterns and policies: they fire from above, they are remotely controlled, and they fire on any potential threat opposition before weapons even have the chance to be used. Drones are far less accurate than traditional surveillance craft, but surveillance and fighting are now happening at the same time. Through their video inaccuracy and multi-tasking, however, drones have an extremely high rate of inaccuracy, often misinterpreting footage or causing civilian casualties, which has made governments hesitant to work with US forces.

The clear shift to this “aerial counterinsurgency” was the Bin Laden raid, in which Osama Bin Laden was targeted and assassinated. However, the era of the so-called ‘asymmetrical’ war of images also ended with the bin Laden strike; President Obama refused to release images of bin Laden’s death and dead body to the public, which could have been used as propaganda for al-Qaeda. In an interesting harkening to the original power of the medieval kings, the President of the United States has the power to decide who to kill, capture, and leave alive, which harkens back to the ‘droit de glaive’, the right of kings to choose who lives and dies.

With increasing surveillance, and the modern drone, it can seem like we are always being watched and policed. The drone industry has even gone commercial, scarily, using basically the same components as an iPhone. In fact, drones have spread far and wide all over the world, and have even become part of plans to deliver packages and be integrated into federal airspaces. Through all of this, the modern drone is changing the very concept of visualization and taking it to the urban and connected world. Right to our front door.

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A Commentary:

I felt that this section brought up areas of visualization and visual culture that are normally not considered to be visual, like mapping and drones. This opens up a very different way of thinking about the consequence of design as a visual art. What do we use that comes from war? What do we make that is used in war? Can we demilitarize the visual?

1. Education and Warfare

The idea of teaching a specific kind of thinking and visualization in regards to warfare related back to the previous chapter; On War is taught in military academies and so that pattern of thought is transferred to those who fight. The way a nation teaches its people is extremely important to that country and also to cultural vision as a whole. How does this affect the meaning of our objects? Does someone who lives there have a very different understanding than someone who does? How do ideologies differ and how can we work to accept and harmonize them?

2. War Spurs Technology – A Lot

In a situation involving the life and death of so many people hanging in the balance, getting the extra technological edge has always been important. War spurs invention and technology in extreme ways, and this then seems to leak into civilian life, such as with the drones. In that case then, how can we de-militarize technology? Or how can we call attention to the fact that the technology was once militarized?

3. Inspiration from the Past

I found it interesting that, even today, there are significant similarities to the societies of the past, particularly in regards to medieval and imperial ideas, like majesty and the power of life. As Mirzoeff states, kings have a similar power as political figures do today, in a way, just like Las Meninas in chapter one. In a way, inspiration always comes from that which we know. Perhaps that is also why humans are so terrified or put off when they encounter something that does not fit the archetype; they do not understand.

4. Falsified Images and Labeling

As we saw in other chapters, false images are an interesting contradiction. With the right persuasion, analysis, or appeal to social ideas, anyone will believe you. This can be applicable to many different areas, such as hoaxes about mysterious creatures or convincing the public that magazine photographs are completely unedited, but is perhaps most evident when something is uncovered as incorrectly annotated. In this chapter, the author explains the situation behind images used to justify the Iraq strikes, in which no one in the room really understood the photos of apparent nuclear sites but for the annotation. This essentially placed a war in the opinion of experts. However, even expert analysis, as seen in the Iraq photos, can be false, perhaps by misinterpretation or the natural human inclination to “want” to see something if we are looking for it. So now the questions become: Who do we trust? Why? How? And what does this mean for the designer working with and for the public?

5. Visualizing

Visualizing is an important tool in war, but what exactly does it mean for visuals as a whole? Mirzoeff goes through several visuals and designs which can be very impactful and their uses:

Visual	Usage
Mapping	Navigation and intimidation
Imagination and Visualization	Predicting the outcome of an event
Aerial Surveillance	Understanding an area and using that knowledge
Photography	Propaganda, intimidation, provocation, and counter-attacking
Drone Video	A video-game like interpretation of the world and sometimes how to destroy it

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Notable Quotes:

The Royal Wars

• “If in theory we all share a visual commons, in practice those in political power have always claimed to be able to see differently.” (p.101)
• “We still use ‘leadership’ and ‘vision’ as meaning more or less the same thing from this history of battle.” (p.101)
• (In relation to specific targeting) “This is one of the classic exercises of sovereign power. One of the oldest rights of kings has been droit de glaive, literally the right of the sword, meaning the power to decide who lives and dies. Jury trial and other apparatus have much diminished that power over time, until digital technology suddenly restored it.” (p.124)

Visualizing Warfare

• (In relation to post-napoleon) “War became known as an art in the West, as it long had been in China, requiring a specific new visual skill, which later came to be called ‘visualizing’. He task of the general was now to ‘visualize’ the battlefield as a whole, even though he could not see it. He had to add his imagination, insight and intuition to whatever he and his subordinates could see for themselves.” (p.101-102)
• “Clausewitz notes [in his text On War] that some of the work was done by sight and some by the mind:
  • That this whole should present itself vividly to the reason, should become a picture, a mentally drawn map, that this picture should be fixed, that the details should never again separate themselves – all that can only be effected by the mental faculty which we call imagination.” (p. 102-103)
• “His metaphors are striking: war is a picture physically imprinted or ‘fixed’ on reason itself.” (p.103)
• “If war was now a clash between two sovereign powers, rather than specific leaders on a battlefield, Clausewitz is often (if slightly inaccurately) quoted as saying: ‘War is politics by other means’. For the visualizers, war is not, then, anything in itself: it is a way of accomplishing political change. What truly matters in modern war is the political result. Visualizing was a way to make this political change happen by means of war.” (p.103)
• (Under Napoleon) “War had become the business of disciplined professionals.” (p.104)

Mapping War

• “The best place to make a map, which visualizes the world as if seen from the air, is the air.” (p.105)
• “The Berlin Conference was precisely war by other means, carried out to achieve the political results desired.” (p.107)
• “Shonibare’s installation reminds us both of the violence of colonial visualization and its decapitation of local histories and traditions. In his use of wax prints, he shows us that colonization was not a simple divide-and-rule, as the colonizers liked to think, but a pattern of global histories.” (p.108)
  • Think about visualizing not just as mapping, but as representing. In this piece, visualizing also takes the form of symbolism, especially in the fabric.
• “The era of colonial expansion culminated in the disaster of the First World War (1914-1918).” (p.108)

Modern Warfare

• (In relation to cameras and aerial surveillance) “From this point forwards, visualizing was a technology at the service of military leadership, rather than leadership being the ability to visualize…human visualization of war was now redundant.” (p.109)
• “From this point, all war became air war, meaning that the outcome of war was usually determined by control of the air.” (p.111)
• “More importantly from our point of view, Clasewitz’s concept of war as politics by other means now made visual images the key to the political issues at stake.” (p.111)
• (in relation to the Cuban Missile Crisis and its behind-the-scenes deal that kept the population in suspense) “On the one hand, the most advanced visual technology had transformed the nature of the conflict. On the other, leaders were still engaging in their won strategies with disregard for the opinions or feelings of their population…Kennedy made major political gains by using the aerial surveillance in avoiding war, appearing like a leader and removing missiles from Cuba.” (p.113)

Images and War

• “If visualizing was the task of the nineteenth-century genera, today images are frequently used as weapons in the war of ideas.” (p.113)
• “As Clausewitz would have understood, the primary task of the images here is to accomplish political goals because they cannot do physical damage like conventional weapons. But they can nevertheless lead to real suffering very quickly.” (P.113-114)
  • A picture is worth a thousand words, and words can hurt. A lot.
• “It is important to note that this shift to a war of images occurred just as the transition to a young, urban, networked global society began to take hold.” (p.114)
• “And in the digital age, the war of images changes the traditional balance of power.” (p.114)
• “The war of images was reinforced by the new logic of Bush’s Global War on Terror, according to which every space on earth was ‘either with us or against us’. The task of visualizing the battlefield from the air now extended across the world’s surface.” (p.117)
• “Like all insurgency, the war of images is an asymmetric war, meaning that the United States and its allies have an overwhelming superiority of force, but can still be drawn into exchanges which cannot simply be ‘won’ in the way a formal battle might be. These ware are also asymmetric in that the partisans of each side feel themselves to be overwhelmingly in the right and will not concede that the other side even has a case.” (p.117)
• “The war of images has similarly unfolded in asymmetric ways. The 9/11 plotters, for example, intended the attacks above all to create spectacular media images, with the first plane drawing in countless media in time for a second attack.” (p.117-118)
• “Furthermore, the sudden appearance of these photographs undid the asymmetry of the ‘good’ was being presented by most Western media at the at point, in which the Coalition was ousting a violent dictatorship in order to create a democracy.” (p.120)

The Rise of the Drones

• “Asymmetric warfare is very hard to win: there are no capitals to conquer, nowhere to hoist a flag. Relatively small acts can make it seem that the conflict is still ongoing, as we have seen in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Once launched, the image wars have proved very hard to contain…it is sometimes no longer clear how politics can be conducted at all, whether by war or other means.” (p.121)
• “The goal is to decapitate resistance by depriving it of leadership. There is no longer a battlefield, only zones of surveillance. These zones have moved beyond the official conflict areas to all major areas of government concern that have been designated as ‘wars’ in the metaphorical sense, such as border security and drugs.” (p.121)
• “The drone literally makes politics into war by other means. Political officials decide whether or not to target specific individuals and even watch the results.” (p.121)
• “The killing of bin Laden marked an unannounced but clear shift in the global counterinsurgency to a policy of targeted assassination, wherever the subjects may happen to be.” (p.121)
• (In relation to targeted assassination by one executive figure) “Here politics is again war by other means. The goal is no longer to win the war, but to make sufficient political gains, especially at home, to justify the action.” (p.124)
• “The long history of removing the general from the battlefield while enhancing the possibilities for visualizing the conflict, has reached a (literally) new high point.” (p.124)
• “Although the drone pilots don’t make the decision whether to fire, it seems that video game shoot-first tactics predominate.” (p.126)
• (in relation to civilian drone casualties) “These are small numbers by the standards of industrialized war and pale in comparison with the millions of deaths in the world wars or post-colonial conflicts. There is a certain unique horror to the very precision of the process nonetheless. To be seen by a drone is to be under potential sentence of death. Journalist Steve Coll quoted Malik Jalal, a tribal leader in North Waziristan, in 2014 to the effect that ‘Drones may kill relatively few, but they terrify many more.” (p.126)
• “Further, as the British artist James Bridle has put it, the drone ‘embodies so many of the qualities of the network. Sight at distance, action at distance, and it’s invisible’. In other words, it’s very easy to imagine being targeted by a drone because we are already living in a network that makes it possible.” (p.124)
• (In relation to commercial drones) “It’s as if our phones have come to life, taken to the air and started watching us.” (p.127)
• “The drone epitomizes the new moment in global visual culture. It creates a view from the air via endless low-quality images that are hard to analyse, even as they are connected to lethal missiles. It is a networked device, deployed globally. With the emergence of the new micro-drones, the future of the UAV seems to be in the cities where traditional armies are less able to work. In order to understand the emerging world of the drone, then, we have to go to its territory: the network and the city.” (p.127)

 

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Cover photo from http://30secondstomarsmusica.blogspot.com/2013/07/fotos-thi-is-war.html?m=1, taken from the Thirty Seconds To Mars, “This is War” music video.