REFERENCE 14. Writing Response
This project continues my long-term exploration of how systems of information—particularly predictive ones—are visualised, interpreted, and ultimately deformed in the process of circulation. It began with The Shipping Forecast: a daily weather broadcast originally designed to inform sailors, now perceived more like a piece of ambient ritual. Its tone is precise yet emotionally detached, informative yet strangely poetic. From the start, I was less interested in what it said than in how it behaved.
By iterating its structure through graphic systems, I started to notice how each repetition didn’t clarify, but slowly abstracted the message. Meaning turned into rhythm. Information became texture. This led to my newspaper project, which exaggerated the aesthetics of prediction until the forecast no longer predicted weather—it merely simulated a language of anticipation.
In this video, I take the logic one step further. I turn to moving images, not as representations, but as predictive behaviours themselves. Inspired by Hito Steyerl’s “In Defense of the Poor Image,” I experimented with visual degradation—compressing, distorting, and layering feedback until the forecast became illegible, yet emotionally charged. As Steyerl suggests, low-resolution doesn’t mean low-value; it often reveals more about the system than polished clarity can.
What struck me was this: prediction is rarely about truth. It’s about making the future look familiar. A visual format, a tone of voice, a rhythm of delivery—all these suggest certainty even when the content is vague. The same mechanism applies to economic models, financial projections, and algorithmic feeds. Forecasts today are not reports. They’re performances.
Drawing from Steyerl’s Liquidity Inc., I created a web-based moving image as the video’s final scene. On screen, fluid motion replaces narrative. A system of visuals flows like water—always reacting, always appearing meaningful, yet refusing to resolve. This structure mimics prediction not as knowledge, but as sensation. The page doesn’t inform; it loops. And like real forecasts, it reassures through design, not truth.
This video does not aim to explain prediction—it tries to simulate what it feels like to be inside it. You’re surrounded by motion, repetition, interface. But the deeper you look, the less you see. There is no center. Just format. The question is not what’s being said, but why we trust what feels “predictive” at all.
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