Landscape and gaze to the modes of describing events is a software that aimed to visualize and analyze discourses hidden behind narratives of Chilean online media, and with it, influence the socio-political environment.

Furthermore, the conceptual part of this project was interested in addressing three issues: creation in design as a form of disciplinary reflection, software development as a vehicle of connection between design and the question of contemporary media, and design of graphic representations of interpretations and interfaces as aesthetic-political mediations.

Through software development; understood as an action for creation; the project raises an interface and graphical representations of interpretations on the ways in which digital news in Chile says what they say, and publish what they publish.

Regarding Landscapes

In Landscape and Gaze at the Modes of Describing Events, the metaphor of the landscape is used as a vehicle for conducting the discourse that the project presents. The decision to follow this perspective is based on the understanding that historically it has been the question of landscape and geography, which has led the modes of deployment of the aesthetic and political image of Chile.

Originally this was carried out through painting, which sought to describe a way of seeing and understanding what this nation was. This was done eminently from a male, white, and proprietary perspective and therefore, the image of Chile was built from the vision of European men, who normally belonged to the dominant socio-economic classes. They looked at Chile through the landscape, and within it, they located the beings and events that they saw or thought they saw. This exercise was carried out mainly in a relationship myself-it or myself-that, that is, portraying or representing the other: and imposing, from the perspective of the subject that is shaped, a regime of vision on the object of representation.

Now, the central point is given by the transfer of this perspective from painting to the press media in Chile, which has led to the permanence of this vision over time. By this we mean that the local press develops the same type of hegemonic view on the national landscape that painting installed in the 19th century, thus capturing that image of a country characterized by a vision of otherness. It is true that in the contemporary press the view of the landscape is not literally present; However, we consider that a symbolic geography still exists in their editorial views that place them in one place (those who publish), and the rest in another place.

This is why the project wanted to withdraw this gaze from the landscape as a visual activator for the deployment of discourses, which although this time is textual, at the same time constitute images, as Jacques Ranciere would seal. Thus, the graphic representation that our software contains, presents forms that somehow speak in code of mountains, convulsed skies, icebergs, and marine textures. All this is built in a tone of abstraction for two reasons: First of all, because the project is framed in a context of contemporaneity and mediality, so we consider that the visual language should be consistent with it, but without ceasing to refer to the naturalistic perspective. On the other hand, we wanted the gaze of the landscape to be always present, but not literally; a kind of omnipresence, as we consider to be the case in the local press nowadays. However, what we are looking for is that this new-old landscape image speaks and that in some way it speaks in the same way that it has done for more than two hundred years, and finally, our software, (re) mediating, makes it possible to bring here these relationships.

_{(Extracted from the document [Spanish]: Paisaje y Mirada a los modos de Describir Sucesos, Representación Gráfica de Interpretaciones: Medios de Prensa Online Chilenos)}

This project was funded by the Vice-rectory of Research and Development of the University of Chile and designed and developed by:

Diego Gómez-Venegas, project director.
Marcela Antipán Olate, design assistant.
Katterine Molina Campos, design assistant.
Óscar Llauquén Levi, programming.
Hermes Gamonal M., programming.

References

Drucker, J (2011). Humanities approaches to graphical display
Gómez, D (2011). Central Monitor – Central Node
Heidegger, M (1954). La pregunta por la técnica
On, J (2004). They rule