A MESSAGE TO THE READER

This is a Burnt Book!

This project explores topics such as literary censorship and its relationship with the platforms in which it is manifested, both digital and printed, and consequently our perception of the written word. Mutability of text and the fluidity of screens in contrast with the stability of a printed book. The idea of techno-utopianism and how the Internet provides access to an overwhelming quantity of information possibly creating the sense that censorship no longer exists.

Reflecting on the impact of words moving from paper to screens some questions begin to rise, what happens when book censorship is no longer manifested in great fires, when books suppression is not replaced by the smell of smoke? What is the correspondent image when we move to the screen? The written word on a screen may be associated to less credibility, once compared with a printed publication. This may occur for various reasons, the facility we have in publishing, how effortlessly it can be altered or edited, sources may not be properly identified or evaluated, text may have been corrupted and others. Which raises one question, does this contribute to an increased vulnerability to censorship? By not being rigorous and demanding quality of information on the Internet are we encouraging and creating conditions for censorship to evolve?

Texts being altered in our screens without us having the power to stop it? Words being replaced by other words, the meaning and message being forever lost in front of our eyes? This could be a possible representation although without the same sense of loss. The lack of brutality or rampage in this process is a key subject for this project. What are the effects of unseen censorship, one that we might even encourage through our behave in a digital environment, and how powerful can it be?

Material and dramatic gestures, such as burning a physical book, call for dramatic responses. A contemporary and problematic scenario is one in which censorship finds a society that not only is blind but passive, the fundamental question is no longer if censorship exists but instead, what kind and in which form.

It is a strange moment, this we live in, only some “clicks” away of discovering that freedom of press is compromised in a third of our world, and not necessarily confined to a totalitarian sector. A world where information seems so easily accessible and yet so equally volatile.

As censorship goes underground, different and new kinds of politics emerge.


How It Works

An algorithm has been developed to hack this entire text, altering its meaning and its message. The process consists of providing a list of all singular nouns that is then compared with the original text, if the word is a noun the programme attributes it a number that represents its position and than shuffles all words. Because only words that existed in the original text are used, the text remains in the same context as its original version, making it harder for the user to recognise the changes, although they undermine the book entirely.

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