Ients or the finer points of copyright law. Curious how a larger organisation might have responded, I contacted the Head of Wellcome Images, Catherine Draycott.29 The Wellcome has over 40,000 clinical and biomedical images in its online database, alongside over 100,000 photographs of paintings, prints, drawings, manuscripts, rare books and archive material from the Wellcome Library collections. A search for historical images of plastic surgery turns up an album of First World War photographs from King George Military Hospital (later the Red Cross Hospital) in London: pictures that would have served the purposes of BioShock’s art department just as well as those featured in Project Fa de.30 Wellcome images are generally free of charge for study, teaching and academic publication, but commercial use is chargeable and governed by terms and conditions. The Wellcome’s LM22A-4 web definition of “commercial” is specific and wide-ranging, covering everything from the reproduction of images in medical textbooks to “artist reference” fees for CGI and special effects. If a makeup artist on the BBC hospital drama Casualty needs to make a gunshot wound look realistic, they can — in the absence of an actual shooting — use the service provided by Wellcome Images.31 Would Wellcome have permitted the developers of BioShock to use their photographs in the game? No, said Draycott, they wouldn’t: even though such a request might fall under the rubric of “artist reference”, it would have been considered unethical. The comparison she made was Benetton asking for images for an advertising campaign “for shock value”. Even if the patient could not be identified, “the usage would still have been unethical”.32 Pending a trans-Atlantic copyright case, where does this leave Henry Lumley? Should we conclude that his ghostly presence in BioShock only “deepens the moral grey areas” of the game, to quote one blogger?33 One of the problems with this conclusion is that it fails to address the concerns raised by players in the discussion forum, who point to a troubling interaction — or order ALS-008176 blurring — of real and imaginary worlds. In contrast to Sicart, who brackets the world outside the game, what disturbs the players (or some of them) is precisely the intrusion of the historical Real. Here is the case against BioShock, from someone whose nom de plume is Nias Wolf: I just feel a little bad that we are using these poor souls (who fought in a war by the way) for entertainment. If I was disfigured horribly, and saw my face being portraid [sic.] as a monster, I would be greatly offended.P H OTO G R AP H I E SA few posts later he (or she) adds: “Honor the dead people. And honor soldiers too. I just want to keep that in mind.”35 One of the genuinely innovative — and truly eerie — things about BioShock is the way it incorporates found objects into the game world. One of these objects is Lumley’s photograph, but the commitment to realism is not confined to the game’s visuals. Each level or “deck” in Rapture has a different theme: the fisheries, the medical deck, arcadia all have distinctive musical and ambient elements: aleatoric music, solo cello and violin, and jazz piano are interspersed with recordings of buoy bells and boats, the distant sound of a concertina, footsteps, a car horn, voices. “I actually found the sound of an insane woman on the internet”, Garry Schyman explained, “and messed with her voice digitally and infused it into the score and it becomes a very scary element”. Sc.Ients or the finer points of copyright law. Curious how a larger organisation might have responded, I contacted the Head of Wellcome Images, Catherine Draycott.29 The Wellcome has over 40,000 clinical and biomedical images in its online database, alongside over 100,000 photographs of paintings, prints, drawings, manuscripts, rare books and archive material from the Wellcome Library collections. A search for historical images of plastic surgery turns up an album of First World War photographs from King George Military Hospital (later the Red Cross Hospital) in London: pictures that would have served the purposes of BioShock’s art department just as well as those featured in Project Fa de.30 Wellcome images are generally free of charge for study, teaching and academic publication, but commercial use is chargeable and governed by terms and conditions. The Wellcome’s definition of “commercial” is specific and wide-ranging, covering everything from the reproduction of images in medical textbooks to “artist reference” fees for CGI and special effects. If a makeup artist on the BBC hospital drama Casualty needs to make a gunshot wound look realistic, they can — in the absence of an actual shooting — use the service provided by Wellcome Images.31 Would Wellcome have permitted the developers of BioShock to use their photographs in the game? No, said Draycott, they wouldn’t: even though such a request might fall under the rubric of “artist reference”, it would have been considered unethical. The comparison she made was Benetton asking for images for an advertising campaign “for shock value”. Even if the patient could not be identified, “the usage would still have been unethical”.32 Pending a trans-Atlantic copyright case, where does this leave Henry Lumley? Should we conclude that his ghostly presence in BioShock only “deepens the moral grey areas” of the game, to quote one blogger?33 One of the problems with this conclusion is that it fails to address the concerns raised by players in the discussion forum, who point to a troubling interaction — or blurring — of real and imaginary worlds. In contrast to Sicart, who brackets the world outside the game, what disturbs the players (or some of them) is precisely the intrusion of the historical Real. Here is the case against BioShock, from someone whose nom de plume is Nias Wolf: I just feel a little bad that we are using these poor souls (who fought in a war by the way) for entertainment. If I was disfigured horribly, and saw my face being portraid [sic.] as a monster, I would be greatly offended.P H OTO G R AP H I E SA few posts later he (or she) adds: “Honor the dead people. And honor soldiers too. I just want to keep that in mind.”35 One of the genuinely innovative — and truly eerie — things about BioShock is the way it incorporates found objects into the game world. One of these objects is Lumley’s photograph, but the commitment to realism is not confined to the game’s visuals. Each level or “deck” in Rapture has a different theme: the fisheries, the medical deck, arcadia all have distinctive musical and ambient elements: aleatoric music, solo cello and violin, and jazz piano are interspersed with recordings of buoy bells and boats, the distant sound of a concertina, footsteps, a car horn, voices. “I actually found the sound of an insane woman on the internet”, Garry Schyman explained, “and messed with her voice digitally and infused it into the score and it becomes a very scary element”. Sc.
