Through this project, I planned to express the presence of information manipulation and propaganda across different media, era, publisher. I came to the idea of making fake news media through seeing the spread of misinformation. No matter which side one is on, I often find it frustrating to see people arguing with the backing of nonsensical information. I imagined the sources they would use to get their information from and decided to create an artwork based on my imagination. Because this theme is often taken too seriously – often sparks an endless argument between one another, I wanted to incorporate elements of humour and sarcasm, by having overly nonsensical information.

 

Among the six artworks, three of them are an imitation of an old newspaper while the other three are digital artworks, though for all of them, the pictures were edited on Photoshop to add the supernatural taste – enlarging or transforming the shape of a seagull or adding a giant caterpillar in the ocean. For the newspapers, wet teabags were applied on the surface of the paper to get the faded looks. The texts for all of them are nonsensical, where two of them were randomly generated Lorem Ipsum. Two of them were partially burnt, also to achieve the agedness. The other three pieces were done similarly in terms of the texts, though the design for each of them was based on different news media – a website, magazine, and a photography taken by a journalist.

 

The newspapers are to be displayed as a historical item in a museum, so initially, it was planned to be printed on an A3 paper and pinned on a black foam board. This way, it would add the impression of the newspaper being a rare item that tells history. Though since a physical exhibition could not be held, a picture of the newspapers and their black foam board will be presented instead. The news article and the magazine front page were supposed to be a virtual artwork from the first place. By presenting them virtually, i.e. with advanced technology, it gives the impression of how much time has elapsed from the time where news was printed physically. All the artworks will be arranged in the order of progression of time, so the damaged newspapers will be placed first, then to less damaged ones, online news media, magazine cover, and the picture taken by a journalist.