This is a single channel trailer for the 3d graphics experimental game mod for the Digital Yorktown® environment. It is the only attempt to date to simulate the experience of a spy in the American Revolution. All of the action is based on actual settings & maps of Yorktown in 1781.
In the summer of 1781, James Armistead Lafayette was the sneakiest man in America. He earned this dubious distinction providing intelligence for George Washington, America’s first Director of Central Intelligence. Against impossible odds, James, a slave, succeeded as a spy, thus liberating our insurgent forefathers from wage slavery to the British Empire.
History painting now
My work lyrically extends and technologically upgrades the tradition of Neo-classical history painting exploited by Jacques-Louis David. SPOOK™ operates in critical dialog with David’s example. I recover an obscured fragment using rigorous historical research techniques; James’s true story - his role as the double agent / slave helping to end the American Revolution. Then like Fred Wilson or Jenny Holzer, I present the ironic, problematic, reality. The formulaic memory requires re-assembly, changing our notion of the American Revolution and the founders.
Social memory and alchemy
Recalling a recent moment or event from the past requires murky processing; image retrieval, conscious mediation, synthesis and utter fabrication. The image is inherently unstable. Memory, personal or social, becomes the act of ordering incomplete pictures and manipulated desire. What is both close at hand and historically distant is reconstructed into a Sisyphean feedback loop. History and perception are used as creative tools. This process as compressed into the project SPOOK™ creates an open ended, non-narrative, feature film production environment that is a critique of a golden calf in history, the American Revolution, and a current social document, exploring guerilla warfare and insurgency.
