Hyenas of the Battlefield, Machines 
in the Garden is a study of the ‘unholy alliance’ between military, entertainment industry and technology—and further, how they increasingly coalesce in today’s warfare. This work hopes to reveal the complex relationship between these apparently divergent arenas through the screen, which is pivotal to the emergence and ongoing development of the relationship between war, media, and industry as they relate to the virtual and the real. The screen is foregrounded in the training and delivery of warfare through, for example, the use of unmanned Aerial Vehicles (drones). This same screen is utilised as a conduit for the healing effects of images of war via exposure therapy. This paradox allows for
 an exploration of the role of dialectics in revealing the hidden truths embedded in today’s warfare.
 The work shifts from screen to landscape and incorporates imagery 
in disparate yet indelibly connected areas from Las Vegas to Pakistan, Waziristan to Hollywood (via Washington). The ‘Machines in the Garden’ denote the dialectical tension between the American pastoral ideal and machine technology. The ‘hyenas of the battlefield’, the technology-driven corporations that keep the us soldiers ‘in the loop’ but off the ground. For this is the goal — a mode of warfare designed to fulfill the new paradigm of the us administration, where no more American soldiers die on the battlefield.
Lisa Barnard