‘Afterfact’ is a digital attention toolkit against the crisis of truth aesthetics, consisting of a multimedia installation and an online guide. The project dives into the mechanisms of misinformation, as well as individual and collective sense-making that occur when a controversial statement is made with an image. The installation presents a video essay investigating three different cases of misinformation: connecting recent ‘AI events’ to other known cases of misinformation. The video installation is accompanied by an online guide which allows users to interact with the evidence.
Image courtesy of the artist
Image courtesy of the artist
Image courtesy of the artist
Image courtesy of the artist
Through the reframing of disinformation issues, the project exposes the mechanisms behind visual evidencing. It aims to empower audiences to develop their own visual literacy, train their ability to notice, perceive and make sense, and trace networks of disinformation.
Interludes within the video installation harness the research into eye tracking technologies, digital attention extraction, as well as traditions and practices of noticing, to instruct and speculate on ways in which we can regain ownership of our digital attention.
Interview with Martyna Marciniak about chapter 1 of the work, Anatomy of Non-Fact shown at Ars Electronica Festival 2024.
Every day we face an onslaught of visual content, which poses itself as fact. Having to surrender trust in our own ability to distinguish facts from fakes, we end up relying on authorities to make sense of the images we see. How can we perceive the visual falsehoods in the first place? Do images alone have the capacity to misinform?
These questions, about the influence of media and visual design on imagination, perception and understanding of events and phenomena, have been central to my practice: from my architecturally-focused projects, where I investigated the role of design in shaping culture, collective ideas and undoing or reiterating existing biases, to in-depth visual and spatial investigations of human rights abuses, environmental violence and crimes.
As a filmmaker, visual/spatial investigator, and digital artist, I see a pressing need to creatively approach the issues of disinformation, away from the prevalent discourses that oscillate between techno-doom and techno-optimism and towards visual literacy focused on detailed noticing, perceiving and making-sense.
My video installation ‘Afterfact’ responds to Ars Electronica’s call to break down the mechanisms behind misinformation, a particularly urgent need within the context of online over-information and increasingly complex media relationships.
Utilising my experience in journalistic story-telling, human rights abuse investigations, and art and design practice, my work stays connected to reality, archival material and analysis, while simultaneously applying speculative fiction narratives and digital art techniques to ask questions, speculate on possible futures and provoke new ideas.
In my recent projects, the digital medium has become the main tool for situated storytelling, while the physical/digital sculptural props establish a connection to speculative realities. The physical elements and detailed architectural reconstructions are also meant to trigger a bodily connection to otherwise distant and sometimes abstract ideas.
I want my work to make apparent the hidden connections between technology and biases, and to provoke curiosity and imagination. I wish to inspire others to become keen observers of reality and rigorous critics of its reproductions and representations.
Martyna Marciniak
Jury Statement
With Afterfact, Martyna Marciniak expanded our initial question – What’s new/s? – and gave it a compelling direction. Marciniak will develop a ‘digital attention’ guide and toolkit as well as an audio-visual piece investigating the ‘digital aesthetics of fact’. In the information age that blew open the definitions of journalism, information and media, Marciniak’s work at the intersection of human rights research, art, and design is key to any investigation of fact-making mechanisms in digital realms.
Ars Electronica
Martyna Marciniak (PL/DE)
Martyna is a Polish, Berlin-based artist and researcher. Her work explores spatial storytelling, speculative fictions, and 3D reconstruction to investigate cases of systemic violence and human rights abuses and question the role of technology in perpetuating or undoing existing biases and misconceptions.
She has worked with media outlets including CNN and BBC, as well as NGO’s including Forensic Architecture, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch. The research group Border Emergency Collective, which she co-established, investigated and documented stories of migrating people at the Polish-Belarusian border.
Her artworks were exhibited at the Warsaw Biennale, Kinema Icon in Bucharest, Haus Gropius in Dessau, and deTour Festival in Hong Kong, among others.