Lapsus Memoriae
The names of military operations function as slogans for short-term military-marketing campaigns. These slogans have been created so to secure wide support for a certain military operation. “As the Wall Street Journal wrote last week, if security were a marketable product, it would be harder to find a better brand name than NATO.” [31 Jan. 2002 NATO After September 11, Speech]
Lapsus Memoriae is a memory game. There are 20 cards (10 matching pairs) with colourless illustrations of the most harmless (in semantic sense) names of the military operations on the flip side. The cards are spread out with the blank side up. Can you find two identical symbols of Amber Fox, Shining Hope or Endless Justice? If there is a match, the player finds out how the operation name causes slip of the memory, i.e., an unconscious erasure of all negative connotations connected to the concept they refer to. Play until all of the tokens are exposed. In this game nobody wins.
Memory game is Zero-Sum Game, because the amount of tokens won by one player is equal to the amount lost by another. But in Lapsus Memoriae nobody wins, since in the war games for what one player loses in terms of lives and injuries is not won by the victor.
Produced within the framework of artist in residence programme at C3 Center for Culture and Communication, Budapest, Hungary, 2002.
Credits: Benedek Gaspar, programming
link to artwork: http://urtica.org/media-arts/lapsusmemoriae-interactive/lm-flash.html
link: http://urtica.org/artworks/lapsus-memoriae.html#.V2BVa46vUic