REFERENCE 07. CRITICALLY CONTEXTUALISES SEMIOTICS
Barthes, R. (1977) Image, Music, Text. Translated by Stephen Heath. London: Fontana Press.
“The signifier and the signified are not static elements; their relationship is constantly slipping, opening the door to myth, distortion, and ideological appropriation.” (Barthes, 1977, p. 156)
Barthes’s semiotic theory offers a foundational framework for understanding how meaning is constructed—and deconstructed—through signs. In the context of my project, which explores how The Shipping Forecast gradually transforms from an information tool into a surface of mood and residue, Barthes helps explain why this slippage occurs. Each time I visually re-translate the forecast, the signifier (image, composition, form) becomes more dominant than the signified (the original weather information). Eventually, the image does not convey a message—it conveys an effect.
This is what Barthes calls myth: when a sign becomes naturalised, aestheticised, or emptied of its political/functional origin. What remains is a surface that appears meaningful but is ideologically passive. My project asks: can we design visuals that resist this mythologising? Or are all systems of iteration bound to end in abstraction and affect?
By connecting Barthes with Han’s concept of the “transparency society” and Benzon’s “fugitive materiality,” I begin to see a network of critique: as systems become more visual and less semantic, their authority is not lost—it is disguised as ambience. And that’s what I want to unpack through visual erosion.
REFERENCE 08. ABOUT VISUAL SYSTEMS AND ENTROPY
Flusser, V. (2000) Towards a Philosophy of Photography. London: Reaktion Books.
“Technical images do not reproduce the world, they project a programme.”
— Flusser, 2000, p. 10
In Towards a Philosophy of Photography, Flusser argues that technical images are not representations of the world, but projections of a program. Images are shaped by systemic choices, not by the realities they claim to depict. This is an especially generative concept within my current project: the visual iterations of The Shipping Forecast are not expressive translations, but procedural outputs.
With each visual iteration, the original semantic content is gradually “recompiled” by the system—lines, grids, and compositions become increasingly predictable, rhythmic, and abstract. Like an autonomous visual machine, the system stops caring about what is being said, and focuses instead on how it behaves.
In this context, distortion is no longer a failure—it is a built-in feature of the system’s logic. Flusser’s perspective aligns with Rubinstein and Sluis’s idea of algorithmic image construction, and Barthes’s theory of myth and semiotic drift. Together, they form a three-part critique of image-power: images are not transparent windows, but coded interfaces; they do not reveal truth, but generate atmosphere. What we call “clarity” is merely the illusion the system allows.
REFERENCE 09. ABOUT DISPLACEMENT, FORMAL EROSION, AND MEDIA MISTRUST
Paglen, T.（2016）Invisible Images (Your Pictures Are Looking at You). The New Inquiry.
Available at: https://thenewinquiry.com/invisible-images-your-pictures-are-looking-at-you/ (Accessed: 5 May 2025)
“Most images today are made by machines for other machines, with humans rarely in the loop.”
— Paglen, 2016
Paglen’s essay is a critical entry into the aesthetics and politics of machine vision. He argues that in the post-photographic era, images are no longer created for human eyes—they are produced, processed, and consumed by algorithms. This resonates directly with my current project, where The Shipping Forecast becomes an image not to inform, but to circulate, repeat, and eventually dissolve meaning.
Each time I iterate the visual system of the forecast, it grows further away from human readability. Like Paglen’s “invisible images,” my diagrams and compositions begin to simulate structure, but without communicative intent. They function more like semantic shadows—visually present but intellectually displaced.
Paglen’s text reinforces a central tension in my project: what happens when the visual is decoupled from explanation? If an image’s only role is to behave (rather than to mean), then we enter a space of aestheticised automation. The forecast stops predicting the world and starts simulating one. The implication is political: the more “neutral” and systematised a visual becomes, the less accountable it is. Paglen pushes me to question not just what an image shows, but who it serves, and what it silences.
REFERENCE 10. ABOUT PREDICTABILITY AND INTERFACE AS STYLE
Galloway, A. R.（2012）The Interface Effect. Cambridge: Polity Press.
“The interface is not something you use. The interface is where things happen.”
— Galloway, 2012, p. 30
Galloway’s theory of the interface reframes it not as a transparent tool, but as a site of power—where actions are formalised and perception is engineered. This is especially relevant to my project, which reimagines The Shipping Forecast as a visual interface that no longer communicates, but simply performs. It flattens the unknown into style.
Each version of my forecast composition becomes more interface-like: gridded, regular, systematised. And yet, paradoxically, less meaningful. As Galloway suggests, this is not a glitch, but a design logic. The more “usable” and predictive an interface becomes, the more it precludes thought. It becomes aesthetic comfort—a frame that tells you where to look, but not what you’re seeing.
This explains the strange contradiction I observe in my own project: the more I polish and iterate the visual system, the more it invites trust—while simultaneously eroding interpretation. Galloway’s notion of “protocol as aesthetics” helps me understand how repetition becomes ideology: clarity becomes compliance, and legibility becomes invisibility.
REFERENCE 11. CRITIQUE OF VISUAL CONTROL AND AESTHETIC COMPLIANCE
Bridle, J. (2018) New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future. London: Verso.
“More computation does not bring us closer to understanding the world. It distances us from it.”
— Bridle, 2018, p. 7
James Bridle challenges the fantasy of transparency and clarity in data-driven systems. In his view, the more we try to visualise and compute the world, the more abstract and unintelligible it becomes. This idea feeds directly into my project: each visualisation of The Shipping Forecast feels more formalised, but also more opaque.
Bridle’s writing helps me reframe the forecast not as a source of knowledge, but as a ritual of display—a system that hides its uncertainty beneath visual polish. When we overdesign the surface, we aestheticise confusion. The forecast no longer tells us something—it tells us how to feel that we’re informed. That’s a crucial distinction. Bridle’s work gives me a way to talk about images that pretend to clarify while actually disorienting us. It suggests that my design can carry ambiguity—not as failure, but as critical resistance.
REFERENCE 12. IMAGE AS POWER / IMAGE AS FRICTION
Steyerl, H. (2009) In Defense of the Poor Image. e-flux journal, no. 10.
Available at: https://www.e-flux.com/journal/10/61362/in-defense-of-the-poor-image/
“The poor image is a copy in motion… it mocks the promise of clarity and resolution.”
— Steyerl, 2009
Hito Steyerl’s text is a key provocation in my project: her concept of the “poor image”—low-res, degraded, unstable—offers a counterpoint to the polished, systematised visual language I’ve been working with. As my iterations of The Shipping Forecast become more polished, they also become more compliant. Steyerl reminds me that “poor” images may be more honest—they are flawed, noisy, uncertain.
Her writing supports my decision to experiment with degradation and distortion. I’m not interested in beautiful diagrams—I’m interested in visuals that show their instability. In this way, Steyerl’s “poor image” becomes a tool of resistance: not against beauty, but against the false promise of control.
REFERENCE 13. IMAGE AS POWER / IMAGE AS FRICTION
Steyerl, H. (2009) In Defense of the Poor Image. e-flux journal, no. 10.
Available at: https://www.e-flux.com/journal/10/61362/in-defense-of-the-poor-image/
Hito Steyerl’s “In Defense of the Poor Image” reframes visual degradation as a site of critical resistance. The poor image, as she defines it, is not a technical failure, but a political alternative: low-resolution, degraded, mobile, and often misunderstood. It refuses the dominant logic of high-res visual control. It breaks from the corporate aesthetics of legibility and ownership, and instead affirms instability, distribution, and partial visibility as visual truths.
What makes Steyerl’s framing so relevant to my project is her rejection of the assumption that clarity equals authority. She shows that image quality is not neutral—it is embedded with class, access, ideology. The poor image exposes this. It doesn’t pretend to be whole. It shows its noise, its seams, its history of transmission. It is not meant to be decoded or trusted; it is meant to be felt as uncertain.
This idea has strongly influenced the way I handle visual repetition and erosion in The Shipping Forecast. At first, I was interested in how prediction systems sustain themselves through loops of legibility—how information, repeated in modular and structured forms, becomes believable through tone alone. Each page of my newspaper project—every layout, graph, and typographic spread—was designed to mimic the polished language of institutional trust. The forecast didn’t need to be accurate; it only needed to look like it was always arriving.
But Steyerl pushed me to question what I was participating in. My clean diagrams and algorithmic layouts were not neutral—they were echoing a logic of compliance. I began to see clarity itself as a design effect, a visual rhetoric used to suppress doubt. The more resolved the image became, the less room it left for critique.
That realization opened the door to a new method: deliberate image breakdown. I began introducing compression, typographic drift, structural slippage. I let diagrams glitch, text overflow, symbols blur. What emerged was not chaos, but rhythm—another kind of coherence, one that embraced degradation as an aesthetic and ethical choice. The “poor forecast” no longer tried to explain. It started to behave like Steyerl’s poor image: it admitted it had limits.
Within the structure of my newspaper, this shift is especially powerful. The format carries an expectation of clarity and authority. It is a medium historically used to order time, events, truth. When that format begins to erode—when captions dissolve, when layout stutters, when images resist decoding—the breakdown becomes visible. The system begins to reveal its own fragility.
Rather than presenting degradation as visual noise, I treat it as a structural counterpoint to the promise of prediction. Each page becomes a residue of its own collapse. Information does not accumulate; it loops and fades. Like Steyerl’s poor image, these iterations don’t build trust—they suspend it. They ask the viewer not to understand, but to witness.
This approach doesn’t reject design—it reclaims it. It reframes graphic communication not as a tool of legibility, but as a site of ambiguity and systemic critique. The poor image gives me permission to let the forecast fail, beautifully. It teaches me that instability is not a flaw in the system I’m simulating—it is the truth it was designed to conceal.
REFERENCE 14 Propaganda About Propaganda
Metahaven (2015) The Sprawl (Propaganda About Propaganda).
Available at: http://sprawl.space (Accessed: 24 May 2025).
“The Sprawl is not a documentary—it is a media system that performs propaganda as an atmosphere.”
— Metahaven, 2015
Metahaven’s The Sprawl operates less as a documentary than as a disorientation engine. It mimics the form of political media—televised commentary, embedded interviews, interface overlays—but refuses to resolve into narrative or conclusion. Instead, it loops tone, fractures coherence, and simulates the effects of watching something that “feels informative” but can never be fully grasped. This sense of rhythmic overload and intentional ambiguity is central to my own project, which takes The Shipping Forecast and reimagines it as a predictive system that no longer communicates weather, but instead rehearses the aesthetics of authority.
Where The Sprawl explores propaganda as a distributed condition—something aesthetic, structural, and environmental rather than purely rhetorical—I adopt this same principle in my newspaper project. Each page borrows from official design languages: layout grids, typographic neutrality, pseudo-objective data visualization. But beneath the polished exterior is a feedback loop. Forecasts are repeated, tone reinforced, ambiguity structured. It is not a publication of facts—it is a performance of stability.
Metahaven’s use of the interface as a narrative condition is particularly influential. The Sprawl presents overlapping text blocks, image saturation, and layered subtitles not to inform, but to simulate the experience of information. Their interface design doesn’t tell the viewer what to think—it tells them how to feel about the act of knowing. In my project, I use similar tactics: maps without locations, headlines without events, diagrams that resemble data but represent nothing. Each element is part of a visual cadence, designed to generate the sensation of awareness without the burden of interpretation.
This false fluency—where images and texts feel coherent only because they repeat a familiar structure—is what I am most interested in unpacking. The Sprawl critiques propaganda by aestheticising it to the point of collapse. It exposes structure as spectacle. My project takes up this method, applying it to a system once built for public service—the weather forecast—and pushing it into absurdity. The forecast becomes form without content, trust without truth.
What makes The Sprawl such a powerful reference is that it doesn’t merely “say” anything. It demonstrates what it critiques. It becomes its subject. I aim for the same thing in print. My newspaper doesn’t explain its logic; it imitates it. Through typographic control, visual repetition, and rhythmic contradiction, it constructs a system that feels legible until it doesn’t. Until you realize there is nothing behind the diagram but the diagram itself.
In this way, The Sprawl helps me reframe graphic design not as communication, but as condition. Not a message, but a climate. The newspaper format in my project borrows its credibility from history, but its content from structure alone. What circulates is not information, but predictability. Like Metahaven’s work, my goal is not to clarify—but to reveal how easily design becomes a proxy for comprehension. And how trust, in visual systems, is often nothing more than the repetition of familiarity.