Saturday night I was out and about with Creative Time helping with Anne-Marie Schleiner's Operation Urban Terrain performance art/tactical event. Anne-Marie and Elka were in cyberpunk style wear, black and skintight, strapped into support systems for their laptop/speakers and generator/projector. We hopped on a subway over to 5th Ave. Not too many strange looks. I guess the weekend before the RNC people weren't surprised.

After resurfacing, we walked a couple blocks and set up. Yury Gitman's magic bike provided a wireless connection. A crowd started gathering while we waited for other team members to join the first act.

One brief interaction:
"What are they playing?"
"It's a computer game called 'America's Army' that was released by the U.S. military."
"Get out of here."
"No, really."
"No."
"Yes."
"Why would they do that?"
"As a recruitment tool."
"Oh man, they got a taxi in there? That's not cool. I'm a cabbie. Those dickheads."
"Ok."

After having a close encounter with a late night garbage train, we made it up to 125th St. The crowd was definitely more active, taking pictures with the artists, shouting at the screen. As the combatants in the game created graffiti hearts via bullet holes on the game walls, the spectators yelled, "What are you doing? Shoot him! Shoot him!" At one point, Anne-Marie and Elka suddenly started heading down the street. We picked up our gear and followed them, not sure what was happening. They started projecting the game onto passing cars, up onto the side of apartment buildings. Just before the end of the performance, a group of kids passed through. Two of the boys jumped in front of the screen and alternated shaking as if getting riddled by bullets and standing boldly, "c'mon shoot me!" super macho. They threw themselves against the storefront's closed gate, shaking the metal and adding to the war noise.

Last location of the night was the most scenic. Right under the Manhattan Bridge. Lovely. Kelly told us about her experience playing America's Army while prepping for the event. After attempting to pass through the several levels of training necessary before you're allowed to join the online play, she gave up. Apparently, the game defaults to the same audio/text cues whenever you make an error "That might be your way, but that's not the army way!" with no indication as to what, exactly, is the proper action.