Category: Uncategorised

Based on last week’s feedback and questions, I think I’d prefer to use a publication to show how information can be hidden.

In this project. My purpose in the first part is to call on readers to question the truth of known news and search for the truth. In this part, I would like to call on independent media to maintain the authenticity of news releases. So my question is, if I want to publish this as an independent media outlet, what are the ways I can evade censorship in publications ? If I want to publish news as an independent media outlet, how can I hide information in a publication to avoid censorship?

The publication is presented in a sealed format, creating an irreversible reading experience in which the reader must destroy its cover while reading. This format explores how, as an independent media outlet publishing news, information can be hidden in a publication to avoid censorship.

This publication focuses on exploring how news information and the free speech of those involved in the news can be hidden in the physical form of the publication through typography and publication.

The binding uses a French fold to hide the information inside, and reading requires the folds of each page to be cut open or guided read by a cut line. For example, information is hidden in spine slits, in the fold marks on each French fold page, or by covering text with a silver coating. The information is only visible if the inside pages are cut or the coating is scratched away.

In addition, through my printing experiments I have found that it is more difficult for the eye to distinguish the nuances of colour in the same colour environment. Therefore printing the same colour on the same colour paper is more conducive to hiding information.

This project seeks to escape censorship by physically hiding information in publications, creating a reading barrier that makes the information more difficult to access.

This week My main work is to find some examples of secret communication print through the research of historical radical press. Include: these methods can be used for a variety of purposes, such as to protect sensitive information, to convey hidden messages or codes, or to evade surveillance or censorship.

First, is the Morse code. This is the most common way to send secret messages in times of war.
For example, during the French Resistance in World War II, underground newspapers used cryptic messages and hidden meanings to convey information to resistance fighters and allies. Similarly, during the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, activists used coded language and symbols to communicate with one another and evade detection by authorities.

Then there are invisible inks, which are invisible after writing but can be made visible by heating or UV light. It was also used in secret communications during the two world wars. UV markers are now the most commonly used method of writing, with the written information being displayed when exposed to UV light.

The third example is Moiré pattern. This is a way of breaking up information that needs to be hidden into an unreadable pattern that needs to be read by means of a special card called Grating.

The last example is nvshu, a unique Chinese writing system that originated in China. It is a
script used exclusively by women and forbidden to men. The purpose is to serve as a secret communication method for female friends to communicate, and it is usually presented in the form of weaving and embroidery, so generally men will only regard this type of text as ordinary patterns.

Reflection on audience engagement：

After engaging in dialogue with the audience, I found that the project was limited to exploring the ways in which government intervention in the news
is presented in visual form, yet the substantive issue of the news being interfered with was not addressed. It may not be possible for individuals to influence the interventions of those in power, but historically radical press has always seen a small number of independent media outlets disseminating information through independent publishing. Therefore, if I want to publish news as an independent media outlet, how can I hide information in a publication to avoid censorship?

The government’s obfuscation, concealment and deletion of many truthful news items has led to their gradual disappearance from the Internet, and even blocked articles posted by informed people through their self-media accounts. The government’s interference in the dissemination of news has seriously affected the accuracy and truthfulness of news dissemination. When the truth of the news is hidden, accordingly fake news created by the government is created to fill this news section.

In a context where readers want real news from news stories, false news content is as meaningless as Lorem Ipsum. They only serve as a blank piece of textual filler and do not really serve the reader’s purpose. So， I have transformed a piece of fake news into Lorem Ipsum as a way of making a call for readers to think critically about the veracity of the news they consume.

Similarly my next plan is to print this fake news in the form of Lorem Ipsum on masks. The masks imply government control over the masses, like an invisible hand covering people’s mouths and not allowing them to make their voices heard. It also means that the source of information disseminated by the masses is restricted, and the only way to get information is from the words on the masks.

“Obscured News” project aims to reveal the unseen side of the news and how the government manipulates the news on the internet from behind the scenes.

In the era of big data, a large number of hot news stories are posted on the internet and spread rapidly through internet platforms, attracting a lot of attention. However, as governments intervene behind the scenes on the Internet, high-profile news stories are gradually hidden from view, as if they never happened. These stories appear to be in a stable Internet system, yet they are extremely vulnerable to tampering and blocking.

Is what we are seeing the truth? Or is it what they want us to see?

How does the behind-the-scenes manipulation of online news challenge the accurate dissemination of news?

This project uses the form of newspapers to translate the expressions of the news parties on the Internet into newspaper columns and publish them, so as to present the real situation of news events. In addition, use temperature-sensitive ink to smear and cover the content in the newspaper. When the ink comes into contact with the temperature of the human body, it will produce a discoloration effect, and the occluded text will also appear. Through the interaction with readers, it implies that the government or those in power are manipulating the presentation and hiding of news content behind the network. As the number of clicks and heat increases, the internet presents more of the truth of the news.

Forgotten in this project does not just mean that the memory of news is forgotten, but also that it is blocked or hidden or deleted by the government. Most of the news content we see now is what the government wants us to see after vetting.

This project is more about censorship and how does censorship affect the authenticity of news events. So my enquiry moves from, “why do the news events that have been highly visible get forgotten by the Internet? Shifting to“How does the Internet’s forgetful behaviour towards news affect the accurate dissemination of news?”

In this week, I tried some temperature-sensitive inks that are printed on the entire text. When the ink senses a higher temperature, it will produce a discoloration effect, and the blocked text will also appear. It’s like when some news is clicked by everyone on the screen, as the number of clicks and popularity increases, more truth will be presented. As the heat dropped, this piece of news was gradually covered in black and forgotten.

Moreover，When the finger is in contact with the paper, the ink will change color with increasing temperature. The blocked information also appears, like the presentation and hiding of information manipulated by the government or the power behind the Internet. To the Internet, however, government manipulation of online news is invisible. So the manipulation of information through publication is much more traceable.

This black newspaper’s content comes from the web code of an article that revealed news events that were blocked and hidden in 2022. I translated this article through code programming, but within a few days the page was blocked, and the code I recorded became the only trace. So I tried to translate the content of this article directly in the form of the original code of the page, and published it as an invisible news.

A printed version of news content is more valuable because print is a fixed version that is difficult to tamper with. Any change will be magnified. Yet news presented on the Internet can easily be copied over and over again. Even tampering is hard to spot.

In my reference, it is mentioned that “the easiest way for the online newspaper archives is to put up barriers so that they are not as easily accessible as they are today “. So all the experiments I did were to represent this forgotten behavior by creating some dyslexia.

This process I simulated the Internet to create a content full of dyslexia. This is used to show the impact and challenge of this forgetting behavior on communication.

In the current era of big data, a great deal of news and information is presented in digital form on the Internet, and we can access the information and news we want to know whenever and wherever we want. These news are in a seemingly stable internet system, yet they are very easily altered and even gradually forgotten by the internet through obfuscation, deletion and hiding.

So my enquiry moves from, “why do the news events that have been highly visible get forgotten by the Internet? Shifting to“How does the Internet’s forgetful behaviour towards news affect the accurate dissemination of news?”

I have tried to experiment with publication and printed materials by translating digital content through publication. This is a way of showing how the forgetting of news on the internet is presented on publication. Because it is more traceable to use publication to represent information being forgotten.

For this experiment I have selected a video that has been silenced by the internet, featuring a debater speaking about gender equality. Throughout the video, this large section was de-voiced because of the number of sensitive words and content she mentioned.

So I tried various visual ways to simulate the internet’s forgetfulness of this textual content. This includes by creating a set of blurred fonts replacing sensitive words, and through irreversible hollowing out to delete or block sensitive information.

In addition, I would like to try some silver printing inks that can be scratched off, to show a limitation in this way. In my reference, it is mentioned that “for online news, the easiest way to make it more difficult to obtain such information is to set up obstacles to make them less accessible and readable”. So all the experiments I did were to represent this forgotten behavior by creating some dyslexia.

The purpose of news is to quickly and accurately disseminate important social events. However, this phenomenon of being forgotten by the Internet has violated the original intention of news dissemination. This dyslexia caused by this forgetting behavior also poses challenges to the dissemination of information.

I talked on the topic of hot news being forgotten. More specifically, some of the once-high-profile news events have been forgotten by the Internet. I have googled the definition of news. News, is a kind of literary style that truly records society, spreads information, reflects important events of every moment and transmits information through media.

Nowadays, once a news event represented by the supervision report of public opinion is exposed by the media, it will always spread rapidly through the Internet platform, even overtaking all news, creating the Hot news and attracting the attention of the public at a time. However, as time goes by, the hot news events that once attracted attention gradually disappear, and the related websites and comments are deleted, even as if it never happened. At the same time, due to the dependence on the Internet, the memory of many netizens is gradually blurred or even disappeared with the loss of Internet memory.

So my enquiry is, why are the news events that have been closely watched forgotten by the Internet? What affects the memory of the Internet? Is it because the information spread too fast in the era of large Numbers of data, too much information gradually covers up the previous news events? Or is it influenced by some power that these high-profile content is restricted to dissemination, hidden or blocked? So will these gradually missing information pose a challenge to the dissemination of information?

Therefore, in my proposal, I plan to explore the process of news being forgotten through experiments of visual and printed materials. I did some sketchmaking this week. I tried to extract the headlines from the news report and blurry the pictures and text through the Color Halftone visual way. It’s like the picture has been reposted countless times, and the picture pixels will become lower and lower.

In the context of printing, information is printed by dots to plane way to gradually present clear information and picture. On the contrary, in the same context, whether the information can be carried out from clear to fuzzy or not, the clear picture gradually blurs into various dots, which means to express the process that the information is gradually forgotten. The use of this more transparent paper to print these headlines is to show the stacking effect of information, and the overload of information leads to the gradual disappearance of many news that has been widely watched.

In this visual way, you can see the content clearly from a distance, but when you want to go into the details, you will find that the content is blurred and difficult to identify, just like the news you may have heard, but when you want to search for details, the news has been forgotten and deleted by the Internet.

In the process of my research, I found that the “right to be forgotten” in the law may be the key to causing hot news to be forgotten and deleted by the Internet. In the era of big data, everyone’s personal data and information are becoming increasingly transparent. This “right to be forgotten” protects people’s personal information to some extent by means of human intervention on the Internet, but challenges people’s “freedom of speech” and “public right to know”. So I will be the next thing I will continue to study.