Censorship and 'Truth'

This lecture we had is all about 'truth' given from media. For example the photographic manipulation and the documentation of truth to the public and how these information change and affect people's thoughts in order to believe the given information is trust-worthy. The most common rendered truth is from photography especially it is related to political crisis, these could be seen as a conspiracy create by the government in the simulacrum. I think this quote is absolutely right about the world we are living in ‘Everybody everywhere wants to modify,transform, embellish, enrich, and reconstruct the world around him – to introduce into an otherwise harsh or bland existence some sort of purposeful and distorting alleviation’ Theodore Levitt, The Morality  (?) of Advertising, 1970. I always doubt when reading new articles and this is a trust exercise the government gives to the citizens, the better the performance (in this case the people who support the given 'truth'), usually the they are treated better than the rest. Historically, revolutions began by a group who question the world or the government and they believe in a different truth and contradicting with such large government, the only path is to success or disappear.

It is also interesting how text can change our interpretation of a picture. My first reaction is thinking how ridiculous these adverts are! This is extremely rude to use such sad accident to modify into commercial use however this is how they work in order to catch our attentions in either good or bad way. We have already absorbed so much wrong information in daily life whether we are willing to or not and this proofs the power media has when interfering our mind and I will say brain-washed.

Another example from myself is the current ISIS. There are a lot of doubt on the news and internet media whether they can exaggerated the events in order to gain more views or censor the information due to conspiracy. There is a radio channel in HongKong which I always listen to, encourage audience of the news to think carefully about the information and not to be affected by the texts. I do not think there can be a specific law to protect us from these censored 'truth' but to be smart and interpret the 'truth' on our own, put forward any individual thoughts and not to be lambs to follow the crowd which is also an advantage we have as living in this 21st century world.

We are talked about should art sit outside of censorship laws exercised in other disciplines. As an artist, I definitely want art to be not restricted politically or financially and sit outside the censorship law. However it is always difficult to be accepted by the public and not always successful in terms of spreading messages to the public since the majority do not consider art as a daily subject.