The Innocence of Unknowing by Ryat Yezbick investigates the history of news media coverage of mass shootings in the U.S. since 1957 through a feature-length news media archive film; an exhibition including additional video installations, CGI, and interactive AI elements; and a website. The centerpiece film, Cover Me, sources footage entirely from YouTube as a public archive of mass shooting news coverage. The film will be edited to reflect the platforms on which we have witnessed social atrocities over time – from TV to phones and social media – including suggested viewing content, provided by YouTube’s algorithm in the research process. This project is the first of its kind to examine our historical relationship to eyewitness news through the lens of a social media algorithm.
The film will start in the present and move back in time. Yezbick will examine patterns in the footage, for example, instances in which people are exiting buildings with their arms raised in positions of surrender, rewinding the footage so that it appears the victims are being moved back inside repetitively as time reverses. The shooters will be completely removed from the project to focus on the relationship between the State, the victims, news viewers, and the media.
Additional exhibition works will include an interactive, AI-generated video that transforms footage from the film into new emancipatory futures. Audiences will interact with the installation by feeding the AI text prompts at kiosks regarding future worlds they would like to manifest. The AI will turn the text into images, sourcing additional imagery from mutual aid movements and protests, algorithmically transforming footage from the film into imagery of protest, community building, care, and regeneration.