"Jack Stenner, Andruid Kerne, and Yauger Williams. 2005. Playas: homeland mirage. In Proceedings of the 13th annual ACM international conference on Multimedia (MULTIMEDIA '05). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 1057-1058. DOI=10.1145/1101149.1101375 http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1101149.1101375" This paper describes an interactive installation that addresses issues of presence and absence by creating a virtualized representation of the abandoned town, Playas, New Mexico. This town is slated for conversion into an anti-terrorism training facility by New Mexico Tech University in conjunction with the United States Department of Homeland Security. Using the metaphor of the mirage, the work functions as a critique of our understanding of reality.

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