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<\/figure><\/li><\/ul><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\nXenon is a gas, rare in nature, but easily synthesised, whose name derives from ancient Greek, meaning \u2018strange\u2019 or \u2018peculiar\u2019. Xenon gas creates brilliant, white light in all digital scanners\u2019 built-in lamps. In everyday use, these lamps light streams of documents placed on scanners\u2019 un-illuminated glass beds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During its hack from document-reader to camera-plate, Veness stripped a xenon lamp from an everyday scanner and re-named it Xenon-Eye<\/em>. Fitted to a camera-back, Xenon-Eye<\/em> can see lens-based images only because its bright xenon lamp is absent, otherwise it would blind its own scanner-head, instead of recording images projected by its camera\u2019s antique lens. Nevertheless, the scanner\u2019s lost xenon lamp lives on under the camera\u2019s new name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Employing customised software to override the scanner\u2019s alarm at its severe hacking, and to make it a stable, functioning camera-plate, Veness has used Xenon-Eye<\/em> to document Class Wargames\u2019 public events since 2007; playing Guy Debord\u2019s The Game of War<\/em> at national and international venues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Xenon-Eye<\/em>\u2019s lack of empathy, its predilection for representing humans as unnatural grotesques, can be understood as a parodic visual aesthetic for neo-liberalism. As awareness grows of unchecked markets\u2019 indifference to human welfare, these images come to define the individual\u2019s true identity within the presiding system\u2019s logic: distorted, extruded and forced into unbearable forms. Far from showing people \u2018as they really are\u2019, Xenon-Eye<\/em> shows them \u2018as they really exist\u2019: unwilling actors within the current socio-economic logic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When the disillussioned majority finally throw off the shackles of neo-liberalism, there will be no use for Xenon-Eye<\/em>, and it will be ritually destroyed. Until that time, it will continue to record the colourless, painful distortions suffered by citizen-players, unwillingly forced to endure the intolerable indeterminacy of free-markets and the distressing brutality of economic liberalism for the benefit of a tiny, super-wealthy network; an increasingly despised bankocracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u00a1Hasta la victoria, siempre!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Xenon-Eye is a hybrid camera constructed by Class Wargames co-founder, Alex Veness, combining a hacked digital scanner (to become a photographic plate) and a Victorian camera. Xenon is a gas, rare in nature, but easily synthesised, whose name derives from ancient Greek, meaning \u2018strange\u2019 or \u2018peculiar\u2019. Xenon gas creates brilliant, white light in all digital scanners\u2019 built-in lamps. In everyday use, these lamps light streams of documents placed on scanners\u2019…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":4,"menu_order":3,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-195","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.classwargames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.classwargames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.classwargames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.classwargames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.classwargames.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=195"}],"version-history":[{"count":46,"href":"https:\/\/www.classwargames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/195\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5239,"href":"https:\/\/www.classwargames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/195\/revisions\/5239"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.classwargames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.classwargames.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}