Are those real people? Memory and creative activism

Essay detailing a lineage of creative projects and actions that function at the intersections of art, technology, social engagement and interventionist strategies exploring militarism, violence and memory. These will include the 2006 project dead‐in‐iraq, to type consecutively, all names of America's military casualties from the war in Iraq into the America's Army first person shooter online recruiting game. The essay will as well examine the iraqimemorial.org project, an archive and web based exhibition created from an open call for proposed memorials to the many thousands of civilian casualties from the war in Iraq. More recent projects to be described and analyzed include Killbox, a BAFTA Scotland nominated game about drone warfare developed with the Biome Collective. These projects and ongoing efforts share an approach to critical and conceptual positioning as an artist - developing works that inquisitively engage issues of memory, politics, history, physicality and the virtual. The theoretical basis for the work lies in the belief that it is essential, as an artist and citizen of the world, to engage in, challenge and question the norms and expectations of the digital present and our larger social/political context.