Nicolás Peña-Escarpentier, Stephanie Hagemeister
In an era of information bombardment, do we reflect on what we’re being told?
https://github.com/nicolaspe/extra
Description
An open newspaper with four changing projected videos of different highly streamed media content (political news, advertisement, celebrities, etc) emulates the bombardment of information we’re subjected to every day. The content is too small to be seen accurately from far away, and the superposition of sounds makes it incomprehensible. But as soon as someone comes close to try to understand the presented “information”, the newspaper closes, eliminating the videos and replacing them by white noise. This state persists until we step away for a while (a few seconds), only to start again.
This project wants to create a reflection on the “click-driven” format of current news media. The focus is not on giving accurate information, but on generating traffic and revenue. Our society has become accustomed to this format, accepting the content we’re fed. But, on a closer inspection, we realize this content is non-existant.
This also incorporates a reflection on the lack of accountability of news media. Apart from feeding us with empty content, any confrontation is futile, as they go back to their usual operation as soon as the user goes away.
Classes
Introduction to Physical Computing