How has your original position changed as a result of your further work? What existing networks of knowledge do you have access to that could reinforce your practice? How do you want to use the summer break to keep momentum going in your project? Where have holes or gaps appeared in your research, and how do you expect to fill them in future work? 

At first, I was more cling to exploring the automated design. As it was a mean to lower the human influence in reporting news. At first it was about exposing the malleability of information. Initially, my position was more critical of the “gullibility” of the audience.  The part from 100 screengrabs to making the random generator, it was about “exposing” the “fraudulent nature” of the news. However, now I am less critical of the situation. Instead, I think it is more important to raise awareness on both designers and the audience regarding the matter. French philosopher Jean François Lyotard’s Postmodern Condition(1979) has given me insight regarding my position. Now the bigger picture is giving a view on how ideologies like essentialism or structuralism imposes that there is a theory or belief that can make sense of everything. Metahaven’s the Sprawl(2016) is also one of the key elements that provided an insight about how the news media impose propaganda on people. The quote “Objectivity is a myth” is a really strong statement that aids my position. The documentary although demonstrated more than just the image and text, it raises the awareness of all the propaganda and warned about its danger. In short, My position went from skepticism of information, in the lens of online news, to now the skepticism of Grand Narratives. In short, my position is going from criticism of design decisions, to taking back authority by the audience, by the mean of doubting the narratives behind.  That is the reason I created the fill-in form. It is a way for news reader to recognise what they are looking at in a more un-structuralist way. The printed form is not really a format I wanted to go for. It is at this moment, that is the most reachable format. I hope it will be developed into a website or something of a digital nature.  

Lyotard’s Postmodern Condition is a bridge for skepticism of fake news to skepticism of general logic, world’s value, social normal and ethics.  In Lyotard’s postmodernity point of view in philosophy or specifically knowledge, Lyotard suggested that we all should be skeptical about the narratives that try to make sense of the world. He did not explicitly dismissed structuralism(but heavily criticised Marxism); instead, he raised questions about whether we should follow logic on its own sense. There are multiple communities and systems of meaning. Lyotard coined the term “Grand Narratives” to describe how the society always try to make sense by proposing some theories that could explain everything. Some examples of these narratives include Marxism, Christianity, Liberalism, or even science. It is suggested that the logic itself also reinforces what a belief was perpetuating by its own. We should come up with micro- 

My knowledge on postmodernism is very limited at the moment as I just found out its relevance to my project. It might be too weak to link all these to my project. Further study on postmodernism is very much required. Also, in previous written component I have mentioned that being self-aware as a critical design is also a direction to take. This echoes with one of the criticism on Postmodern Condition and Metahaven’s The Sprawl. The former has been accused of being a new meta narrative on its own which is meant to be contradictory and crumble on its own; while the latter has been named by its creators as “Propaganda About Propaganda”.  They are both self-aware of the nature of their own arguments. I think this is a pattern that should definitely integrate into my project. It is because, ultimately, using the form of media to doubt about the legitimacy of media, the subject and object are of the same nature. Hence it could be enhanced into a self-aware criticism in some proportion of the project.  

In summer, I hope that my project can be developed into an online page. It is important for the project to be participatory as it is about taking back authority and narratives back to the people. The uncanny Venus Flytrap model, the randomised news generator, and the news-doubting fill-in form 

Reference 

Metahaven (2016) The Sprawl (Propaganda About Propaganda). Available at: https://sprawl.space/ (Accessed: 17 May 2021). 

Gratton, P. (2018) “Jean François Lyotard”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edward N. Zalta (ed.),Available at: https://plato.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/encyclopedia/archinfo.cgi?entry=lyotard (Accessed: 25 May 2021).