Having just turned twenty, I used hunter hunter to reflect on I had begun to notice in the field of technology. First, where I was buying the sorts of technology surplus parts that an art student could afford, in Chicago’s rich surplus stores, many of the items for sale were military surplus. Even the microchips I wanted to buy new had a “milspec” rating. I was also immersing myself in the history of computers, learning that most early advances in this field were designed to calculate artillery trajectories or model nuclear explosions. At this time, in the age of Ronald Reagan, more than half of an American’s tax dollar went to the Department of Defense. Our military marching bands received more funding than the National Endowment for the Arts.

Of course, image consultants had long before renamed the military as “defense,” but the industry mostly concentrates on weapons rather than fortifications. As Yugoslavia plowed toward armed conflict, the question was more often framed as “should the West arm Croatia?” rather than “how do we prevent bloodshed?”

Decades on, I now know much more about the enduring links between technology, war, and social control, but I’m still at a loss for why we accept such a completely dysfunctional, morally fraught system.

After showing hunter hunger in a gallery and a festival in Chicago, I was approached by a music video company to include it in their cyberpunkish video for the band Frontline Assembly. Then, many years later, some incredible musician friends from college did a completely original song and video about the piece, not even telling me until later…