Mistakes and Memories

A multiplayer visual novel about autonomous devices that use swarm intelligence during warfare. Linsday Clark and Christian Enemark describe drones and other swarm-based systems as a more humane way of waging war — one grounded in the ethics of care, an idea that is absurd in itself. An attempt at communication and connection becomes a justification for one of the warring sides.

We developed a visual novel about how autonomous militarized devices turn into queer bodies — simultaneously robots and instruments of war. It is a story of how war disorients combatants, victims, perpetrators, and everyone caught within and around it, embedding into itself a language and mode of thinking that, by its very nature, should exclude war altogether.

The project uses principles of swarm intelligence to construct its sonic dimension — an attempt to build shared connections that bypass the biases of language, logic, and visual representation. The sound is generated in real time for all viewers and changes depending on how many are present.