Arts Thread

'Imagined Immigration' is a collection of woven posters exploring the tension between British public perception of immigration and concrete immigration data. These experiments focus on the media’s impact on public discussion. By reporting warped and distorted data or information about immigration and immigrants in the UK, the media feeds the public’s misunderstanding of the phenomena impacting political agendas and policies. By highlighting the media's role in designing our collective perception, the project aims to re-define information making as a type of human craft. These experimental posters were crafted from woven lines of data and information. By weaving research-based information into distorted common assumptions, it visualises how the British media’s reports on immigration are biassed and intentionally crafted as such. The handcrafted aesthetics allow the investigation into the human-made nature of information and point a finger at the British media which holds responsibility for negatively framing the subject of immigration. The weaving technique allowed me to visualise the process of information making as a metaphor, and to communicate the media’s tendency to shape information and data in a biassed and intentional way. Using weaving as a form of graphic communication design allowed me to illustrate the power of repeating words and imagery in popular media on the public perception of immigration. By weaving into patterns and shapes that represent common assumptions using repetition of a word or imagery, one could start understanding the power and recklessness of the British media.