Steve Davis BFA Show || Propaganda: The Art of DisInforming
Tuesday, December 15th, 2009
Hello everybody, it is great to be able to finish the show and share some of the work with everyone here. I have always been fascinated with propaganda, whether wartime or advertising related. To give you an idea of what my project was trying to accomplish, I will explain my process.
I spent a long time gathering information and eventually picked three topics to use: Global Warming, Air Pollution, and the Job Stimulus. Each topic was given A) A single set of quantitative information, B) A poster campaign in support of that topic, and C) A poster campaign in opposition to that topic. The catch was that the same info was used for both B and C, to illustrate how easy it is to skew information and support a given agenda, all the while never technically telling a lie.
This is the artist statement I put on the center podium for all to read before looking at my work:
The goal of the Propaganda project is to shed light on the ways accurate quantitative information can be skewed in order to achieve almost any conclusion desired by the person presenting the information.
By telling half-truths, one may easily mislead an uninformed audience.
This project is meant to encourage you, the audience, to take action to inform yourself, rather than let media feed you answers.
In times when political, environmental, or economic topics are so important and yet don’t have one simple answer, it is your own responsibility to be informed.