“If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.” Albert EinsteinAs news channels grow into bodies of theater the stream of data used by the media becomes manufactured information for commercial consumption. The visual documentation that materializes as mass synergy leads the viewer to climatic experiences of hyper-environments, the multiple. The environment in which media filters out the new sources remain unexplored by cultural studies but are in most cases assumed. We know the wizard lurks behind the curtain but we seem to let him continue the show. The dilemma we must try to uncover is that media controls the information, allowing information streams to become tools in which to manipulate and to pluck with no starting point and no consequences. The information used by the media during the information age is second hand and broadcast many times over before it is seen by the multiple. From our first encounter with the story and when the story reaches the masses the information is put to a host of judgments to test its strength, to see if it is fit enough for consumption by the masses or if it will die as a symbol of something second hand. What are the tests given to the data and how does some information survive while others become background links to the main story? Is the information able to change to fit something completely different? Is the change a product of propaganda?
"It happens when they change something." (The Matrix)In the coming years as a student and user of
Media Art and Text I hope to find out the cause and concerns of current uses of media propaganda, either by exploring our notion of traditional uses of propaganda or discovering new forms of image and data manipulation. Our Goblin Market once again becomes a tool for documenting our visual culture. What facts shall we find behind the fictions?
“Later in Archive Fever he [Derrida] also reminds us...that 'there is no political power without control of the archive, if not memory. Effective democratization can always be measures by this essential criterion: the participation in and the access to the archive, its constitution, and its interpretation.'”
(Charles Merewether, Introduction, The Archive: Documents of Contemporary Art, Whitechapel, London, 2006, page 13)Look at what is happening in Iran, the US, and elsewhere as the political power tries to manage the archive.
