Project 1: Final Reflections

What I Made and What It Does

My guide ended up being a satirical video on how to engage with TikTok content without falling into the rabbit hole. Except it's a guide that fails. The user falls anyway.

I removed the narrator voiceover and when I presented via Zoom I narrated through the chat instead typing instructions as the simulated TikTok scroll played. The chat narration disappeared the deeper the user got until they were already too far gone watching some conspiracy theorist dissect an alien on TikTok live.

What it enables is a look into how we want access to information fast in today's world without realizing misinformation and conspiracies are hiding among all these factual videos. The algorithm doesn't care about truth it cares about engagement and it will push things that are more entertaining than informative every single time.

The Journey and the Pivots

Looking back at my research trail it's honestly wild how far I strayed from where I started. I began with weather balloons. Real weather balloons. I read Sasha Engelmann's Sensing Art in the Atmosphere and Lakoff and Johnson's Metaphors We Live By. I looked at Tomás Saraceno's Museo Aero Solar and Erwin Wurm's One Minute Sculptures. I tried to set up an interview with NOAA that got cut short because of the government shutdown.

Then I interviewed three people who had literally no idea what weather balloons actually were. Only one even knew about the China surveillance balloon conspiracy from a few years ago. That's when I realized the weather balloon itself didn't matter anymore. What mattered was how people encounter information about anything on platforms like TikTok. How quickly something scientific becomes something conspiratorial becomes something absurd.

I went down this weird research path looking at Adult Swim's experimental videos like "Unedited Footage of a Bear" and "Off the Air: Holes" and the alantutorial series on YouTube. All these things that start instructional and slowly corrupt into something else. I wanted that feeling. The sense that you're being guided and then suddenly you're not and you don't know when that shift happened.

You can see all this documented across my blog posts: starting with floating weather balloons and systems thinking, moving into conspiracy theories and metaphors, ending up in TikTok terrain. The thread is there but it's messy. Full blog archive here

What I Learned

Most people don't know what weather balloons really are. Like genuinely have no idea. And when you tell them about weather balloons they immediately project whatever they're already scared of onto them. Surveillance, aliens, government control. The balloon becomes a blank screen for anxiety.

But more than that I learned that making the thing taught me what the thing was about. I kept researching expecting the research to tell me what to make. It didn't. I had to make something and let the meaning come during or after the making process.

I also learned pacing is everything. Jackie mentioned she liked the pacing and build up which was honestly one of my biggest worries. I wasn't sure how soon to introduce the conspiracies. I sprinkled some in from the beginning where the user quickly scrolls past to make it feel like the algorithm was already pushing that content out. I wanted it to feel natural, realistic, like how someone would actually engage with their feed. Not "here is obvious misinformation" but "here is content that looks the same as everything else until you pay attention."

The Feedback and Reflections on Critique

Jackie's feedback about pacing helped me realize the slow build actually worked. Starting with seemingly normal educational content then gradually introducing weirder and weirder stuff until you're watching a guy dissect an alien on live stream and you're not sure how you got there. That's the algorithm.

But I also got feedback that made me realize what's missing. I wish I could have manipulated the TikTok interface more. Like have the user engage with comments, write their own comments, see real TikTok comment sections instead of just white text boxes. Make it more interactive.

And I would have loved to spend more time on the glitchy live content at the end. Really emphasize that moment where the user isn't even in TikTok anymore, just falling down a conspiracy rabbit hole unable to turn away from the live car crash they're watching. That psycho dissecting an alien needed to be more visceral, more unsettling, more of a "you can't look away" moment.

The critique itself felt useful because people engaged with it as both a guide and a failure of a guide which is exactly what it is. It's instructions that stop working. It's a map that leads you off the map.

What I'd Do Differently

Process wise I would have committed to the TikTok format earlier instead of circling around weather balloons for so long. But also maybe I needed to circle around weather balloons to get here? Hard to say.

Content wise I'd add more interface manipulation, more comment section chaos, more of that glitchy corrupted feeling when things go wrong. I'd make the ending longer and more disturbing. Let it sit in that uncomfortable space where you're watching something you shouldn't be watching but the algorithm served it to you so here you are.

I'd also probably figure out a better way to integrate the narration from the start instead of pivoting to Zoom chat at the last minute. The chat narration worked for the presentation but it's not sustainable for the actual artifact.

What Was Inspiring

Honestly the Adult Swim stuff. "Unedited Footage of a Bear" especially because it starts as this boring nature documentary and slowly becomes a horror film and you don't notice the shift until you're already in it. That's what the algorithm does. It doesn't announce "now you're watching conspiracy theories" it just gradually shifts the content until suddenly you're deep in it.

The alantutorial series too because it maintains this instructional earnest tone even as everything falls apart around the narrator. There's something really unsettling about someone trying to teach you something while they're clearly losing it.

And honestly TikTok itself. The actual experience of scrolling and how easy it is to go from cooking videos to true crime to conspiracy theories to drag performances in like two minutes. The platform flattens everything into the same visual format so it all looks equally valid. That's terrifying and inspiring at the same time.

Connecting Back to the Prompts

The assignment asked for a guide with a critical lens and a specific audience. My guide is critical of information consumption on social media platforms. It's for anyone who uses TikTok but doesn't think about how the algorithm shapes what they see. The tone shifts from instructional to uncertain to absent which mirrors the experience of algorithmic drift.

The audience is people who think they're immune to misinformation because they're "just scrolling." People who don't realize engagement is algorithmic training. People who might not distinguish between "interesting to watch" and "worth amplifying."

The critical lens is about how platforms structure our relationship to information. How the algorithm doesn't care about truth it cares about keeping you watching. How conspiracy and science and art all get the same visual treatment so they all feel equally real.

Research vs Experimentation

I definitely overbalanced experimentation. I did a ton of research but most of it was dead ends. Some had tangents that led me here but deep down I always knew I was going to make a weird unsettling video. It was easier to make and have the meaning come during or after the making than to put meaning behind the work first and make with the meaning attached.

Research is harder for me because I get stuck in it. I keep reading and reading waiting for the research to tell me what to do. But experimentation lets me find out what I'm trying to say by making it. The problem is I probably could have cut my research phase in half and spent more time iterating on the actual video.

To focus more on research I'd need to set hard deadlines. Like "you have two weeks to research then you stop and start making." Otherwise I just keep researching forever because it feels productive even when it's not moving me forward.

Documentation

COMING SOON[process photos, screenshots of the TikTok interface, iterations here] 1st Edit before I cut stuff down:

Slides

The early versions were way more narrated. I had this whole voiceover explaining everything. But it felt condescending like I was telling people "this is bad content, this is good content." When I removed the narrator and just let the content speak for itself it became more honest. The algorithm doesn't explain itself to you. It just serves you content and watches what you do with it.

The other reason I removed the narration was because when I was voicing it myself, my voice blended into the voice of the psycho conspiracy character I was performing as. There was no distinction between the guide trying to help you and the conspiracy theorist trying to pull you in. Which maybe says something about how thin that line actually is.

The Zoom chat narration happened last minute but it worked. Typing in the chat as the video played, having the instructions slow down and stop as the user fell deeper. By the end there's no guide anymore just the user alone with increasingly unhinged content.

The Through Line

Looking back at all my blog posts the through line is actually there even if it's messy. I started curious about weather balloons as scientific objects. Then I got interested in weather balloons as conspiratorial objects. Then I realized the real project was about how objects move between those contexts. How information moves. How platforms like TikTok accelerate and flatten that movement until you can't tell what's what anymore.

The weather balloon became a case study but the actual subject is algorithmic information flow and how we navigate it or fail to navigate it.

Where It Landed

I'm still not totally sure what I made. It's a guide that fails. It's a warning that arrives too late. It's instructions for how to avoid a rabbit hole that end with you at the bottom of the rabbit hole anyway.

Maybe that's the point. Maybe you can't avoid the algorithm. Maybe the best you can do is notice when it's happening and even that's hard because it all looks the same. Content content content scrolling forever.

The project exists now and I'm curious what people take from it. Whether they see themselves in the user falling down the rabbit hole. Whether they think about their own feeds differently. Whether the guide actually teaches anything or just makes you anxious about how much the platform knows about what you want to see.

Either way I made something weird and unsettling that hopefully makes people think twice before they mindlessly scroll. Or maybe it just makes them anxious. Both feel valid.

Feedback

If you have thoughts or feedback on the project, you can share them here: https://forms.gle/aY3LKwqDmW3vTV92A

Bibliography

Engelmann, Sasha. Sensing Art in the Atmosphere. Routledge, 2024.

Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. Metaphors We Live By. University of Chicago Press, 1980.

Sun, Prophecy. "Objects Wrapped in Dreams Wrapped in Objects!" PDF.

Studio Tomás Saraceno. "Museo Aero Solar: for an Aerocene era." https://studiotomassaraceno.org/museo-aero-solar-for-an-aerocene-era/

"Erwin Wurm's One Minute Sculptures." Public Delivery. https://publicdelivery.org/erwin-wurm-one-minute-sculptures/

"Critical Experiences Research Guide." NYU Libraries. https://guides.nyu.edu/critical-experiences

"Looking for USA NWS Weather Balloon Tracking." Reddit, r/RTLSDR. https://www.reddit.com/r/RTLSDR/comments/irlnoe/

alantutorial. YouTube. https://youtu.be/MKNYiEJielE

"Off the Air: Holes." Adult Swim. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwbF3i84YxA

"Unedited Footage of a Bear." Adult Swim. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRYW_LmUPNc

Various weather balloon and conspiracy theory videos. YouTube.

Project Blog & Documentation. Critical Experience Course Blog. https://www.abarbayianis.com/blog-1/categories/critical-experience