If you sense it coming, it may be too late: the digital screen as a window into warfare. Art Review – I Saw the World End (2020)

In an increasingly digitised reality, our interactions with war are often filtered through the screen. This review, If you sense it coming, it may be too late: the digital screen as window into warfare, focuses on Es Devlin and Machiko Weston’s I Saw the World End (2020) as an enmeshing of distanced spectatorship and an abstract intimacy that provides a window into warfare. The digital artist’s collaborative conceptualisation of the 1945 atomic bombings entangles a virtual and physical co-presence through its publicly networked projection. The artwork I Saw the World End enacts a personal, societal, and cultural dialogue for the past and future on the atrocities of warfare and the fragility of humanity, epitomizing digital’s art’s innate responsibility to bear witness and critique such events.