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The form of whiteout (“white surface whiteout”) referred to by the Privy Council and which contributed to the crash is the insidious optical illusion present in polar conditions where white surfaces exist. It leads pilots to believe they are flying in clear air and so can see any obstructions ahead; when in fact, although they are in clear air, any obstructions have been rendered invisible. This phenomenon would make an obstacle a few feet ahead invisible if the obstacle were white, even in reported visibilities of 40 miles. --From the Air NZ Mt Erebus crash investigation1
UK based artist Wayne Clements presents a new variation of his un_wiki project specifically for Window. Clement’s Neutral 3 script filters through electronic encyclopedia Wikipedia’s recent pages log, ignoring hundreds of edits on boyfriends, tech trends, and local events, in search of something more sinister. The software contains a list of ‘shadowy editors’ – from defense departments in the US and Australia through to corporate giants like Deutsche Bank, Shell Oil and the Ford Motor Company. Using tracing technology developed by Virgil Griffith, the artist is able to link the editor with the edited. Like the visual phenomenon discovered after the Erebus crash, the digital landscape of Wikipedia appears clear, sharp, stable. Clement's work extracts white from white - bringing into relief an undulating terrain where every few minutes reality is sculpted and shoved, articulated and extended. In response curator Luke Munn presents a series of news bytes from recent press on the subject. “Air New Zealand was thrust on to the defensive when it was found that a Wikipedia entry about this country's worst air accident - the crash of an Air New Zealand plane on Mt Erebus, Antarctica, with the loss of 257 passengers and crew - had been tweaked from a computer on the national carrier's network.”2 “Australian Defence Department staff have been blocked from editing Wikipedia after claims that they have made more than 5000 changes to various entries”2 “A computer linked to the Israeli government was used to doctor critical articles about the West Bank wall’2 “Aerial and satellite images of the US prison for terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were removed using a computer traced to the FBI”3 “If you believe the NSW Premier's Department's version of history, a profanity-laden outburst Morris Iemma had at a media conference last year never happened.”4 “The Republican Party edited Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party entry so that it was made clear that the US-led invasion was not a "US-led occupation" but a "US-led liberation."5
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