# An Introduction

Daniela Silvestrin

    Reading these words is a bit of a challenge.
    A challenge that confronts you, the reader, with difficulties, or necessary measures
    and equipment out of the ordinary, as the book you are holding in your hands is printed with
    a special fluorescent ink that remains invisible under normal light conditions and only
    appears when illuminated with ultraviolet light, more commonly known as black light. This
    ink is normally used to imprint hidden signs
    on a document or object, which later can serve as proof for its validity, authenticity, origin,
    or source — banknotes being the most familiar application of UV ink. UV ink is also a technology to encrypt and hide information, its roots going back to about 300 BCE and a long tradition and science of using organic and inorganic liquids to write secret messages that would remain hidden until made visible through mechanical or chemical reactions.
    But this is an entire book — more than 350 pages — printed with transparent, invisible
    UV ink. You might ask now: why this torment for the reader, why this hassle for the editors, designers and printers? Using this special
    ink imposes difficulties at practically every step of the process: from ordering this security material, thinking about the graphic layout and the choice of paper, the production of test prints and the printing process in general, to the publication’s presentation, distribution, and finally the reading experience — everything
    is more difficult, laborious, annoying and time consuming than with normal ink. Shouldn’t information be made more easy to access instead of more difficult? Should not the aim of a publication and the motivation for the editors and designers be to present the content as accessibly, clearly, and aesthetically as possible?
    Well, not necessarily.
    More than just providing theoretical reflection and analysis by way of what is written, the
    aim of using invisible ink in META is to render these critical questions at the essence of the human relationship to information, at the core
    of this project, tangible. As not just an editorial but an artistic project, META is a response
    to a contemporary moment in which the conditions by which knowledge and information are produced, distributed and published, accessed and consumed are changing. While people have more frequent and easier access to news
    and sources of information than ever before, the reliability of them being »true« and based on »facts« vanishes with the increasing awareness of how news and information can be subject
    to manipulation, biased reporting, low or no fact checking, and so forth. Being spammed and flooded with news and information constantly and everywhere, our attention span, patience, and interest in reading much more than
    the headlines or a few paragraphs of an article, has diminished decisively, not to mention
    the concommitant decline in the dedication
    and thoroughness to check several sources and compare what and how information is being provided, justified and traced back to its source. We are trapped in the conflict between wanting to stay informed, and being overwhelmed
    by too much information and too many, often contradicting sources. We seem to have lost ground, as we have lost the confidence and faith in formerly established institutions
    and methods to find information, and to know when and why to trust our received information sources. The declaration of the words »post truth« and »postfactual« as words of the year 2016 ( the former by the Oxford Dictionary, the latter by the Society for German Language ) officially transformed a personal feeling into a general condition.
    As defined by the Oxford Dictionary ( 2016 ), the term »post-truth« is » ... relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion
    than appeals to emotion and personal belief.« Both terms — »post-truth« and »post-factual« —  are based on the observation that discussions about political and societal issues are increas ingly lead on emotional rather than factual premises, that what one »feels« or »believes«
    is true and factual are more decisive factors
    than »sciencebased« and »factchecked« data. Appealing to peoples’ »gut feeling« and emo tional responses when competing for political, economical, social or other power does not require the same scrutiny as it might if one
    were to engage in a discussion of rational logic, reason and common consensus for what counts
    as »objective,« »scientific,« »factbased« and therefore »true.« To reach people on an emotional level needs a whole different mindset and range ofskillsandabilities. Thisunderstandinghas developed into very sophisticated strategies of communication, promotion, lobbying and blurring of what constitutes the body of information that is relevant and to be taken into consideration for informed decision making on all levels.3 Whether you call it »fake news,« »misinformation,« »post-truth« or »post-factual«  — what all these concepts have in common
    is that the importance and focus does not lie any longer on what is being said but why and how : the intent behind it. The potential emotional impact must be strong enough that it will motivate peoples’ support. When philosopher Harry G. Frankfurt ( 2005 ) calls this strategy »bullshitting« he is not just swearing angrily but coining a term to define an important distinc tion — between the mindset of a liar ( as betrayer of the »truth« ), and that of the bullshitter as »post-truth« communicator:
    The fact about himself that the bullshitter hides ... is that the truthvalues of his statements are of no central interest to him; what we are not to under stand is that his intention is neither to report the truth nor to conceal it ... the motive guiding and controlling it is unconcerned with how the things about which he speaks truly are.... he is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.... Someone who lies and someone who tells the truth are playing on opposite sides, so to speak, in the same game. Each responds to the facts as he understands them, although the response of the one is guided by the authority of the truth, while the response of the other defies that authority and refuses to meet its demands. The bullshitter ignores these demands altogether. He does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it. He pays no attention to it at all. By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are. ( Frankfurt, pp. 54–61)
      If you should have the feeling that by now, in today’s world, »the amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it« — you are not alone. Already in 2013, Alberto Brandolini, an
    Italian independent software development consultant coined this expression, which
    then became known as »Brandolini’s law« or, as Alberto suggests, the Bullshit Asymmetry Principle ( »Brandolini’s law,« 2014 ).   Questions of what is right, what is wrong, what is good, what is evil, what is true or a
    lie, fact or fiction, have been subject to changing paradigms and conditions throughout history. Science and technology have been a major driving force and reason for most of these changes, as have been the fights, struggles and efforts of people who have suffered injustice through the paradigms shaping the context and society they were born into. So, what does
    it mean to live in an era marked by »posttruth« politics? What is our responsibility in shaping it, and how to respond to it? The two terms »posttruth« and »postfactual« seem so alike as to be interchangeable, but might fact and truth have different implications? What param eters are used to identify truth and deception, and what factual architectures are they capable of building? How can an artistic project make the changes we are experiencing more tangible and comprehensible, taking them into account in all their complexity and intricacy?
    These and more were the questions driving the development of META as an attempt to trace, grasp and respond to the changes in the contemporary regimes of knowledge production and dissemination of information, whose bases most often lie in ideology and power.
    META is not just a printed book, but also a technical device and an online platform, all of the
    three parts belonging together and depending upon each other in function and conceptual development. META combines and entangles different carriers of meaning and information, and different technologies of inscription, translation and encryption. Production, distribution, access and appreciation of knowledge and information are bound to material, formal, economic con ditions and ideological dispositions — and engage with texts and other materials in META. Through the conjunction of a portable server, special print materials and a website, META switches between screen and paper, digital and analog, networked and confined, visible and nonapparent, tangible and withdrawn, private and public, commodity and commons. The device at the core of the project, a custom designed and programmed microcontroller integrated in the special aluminium case containing the book both receives wireless signals and also provides wireless internet connection as an open access point, thereby granting access to the META online platform and archive. At the same time, an algorithmcontrolled UV light mounted
    on top of the device lights up the special ink and gives access to the texts in the book.
    For the book, eight authors from a wide range of backgrounds — scholars and researchers from science of communication, linguistics, economics, architecture, digital culture and digital media studies, environmental studies, philosophy, art history and artistic publishing  — were invited to contribute texts for META. The texts approach the project through different lenses and from different perspectives, as
    well as reflect on the endeavor of such an artistic and publishing project itself. In conjunc- tion with the materials provided on the online platform, these texts in the book build the core and starting point for a growing platform of reflection, as an attempt to address the complexity and manifold aspects and arguments that need to be taken into consideration when confronted with what could be called
    a »wicked problem,« without the aspiration to be complete or allencompassing.
    By way of presenting very specific arguments within an approach that combines theoretical and tangible information and experience, the project is located at a metalevel of reflection. The title META makes reference to the Greek prefix, in English epistemologically used to indicate a discussion or reflection about its own category, »an X about an X,« a concept that creates distance to the subject itself by zooming out and providing the possibility to reflect on the bigger picture and the relations and connections in which the subject is embedded.
    In Spanish, the title META plays with the double meaning of »meta,« which also means »goal«
    or »aim,« referring to the goals and aims behind the how, why and when information is given, revealed, manipulated or suppressed.
    Art and artistic research is a way of producing knowledge. Not in a scientific way, and not necessarily in a structured and easily accessible way. It is a discipline and method (s) inspired and driven by the need and motivation to better understand the world and our lives, what is happening on micro and macrolevels of the natural or artificial systems in which we are embedded, yet also creating or shaping.
    META is a project located at the intersection of scientific and artistic knowledge production and reflection; its goal is to take into account
    the thoughts, knowledge and information that acclaimed scholars contribute to the questions
    at stake, and creates a platform to arrange and rearrange them, a lens through which to experi ence these materials rather than to consume them. Comparable in its motivation to works like Fluxus artist George Maciunas’ Learning Machines — a collection of diagrams and cartographies of knowledge and information structured and arranged by the artist, which
    not only made connections between different fields and references, but in their often three dimensional quality and structure added also
    a layer of physical experience to that pure provision of information — META is an attempt to both comment on and grasp the complexity necessary to consider this context, yet aware of being always partial, always already outdated, and always subjective in such an endeavor.