End Censorship

Screenshot of the web app running, shows books being sent into a void one-by-one, each with a notification (clickable, searches for book)

Inspiration

We were inspired by the timeless media of written words and books. When we think of media, we think of spreading ideas and perspectives. To inspire knowledge and acceptance, we need to embrace new ideas and remove regulations and control over book consumption, especially when it comes to younger generations. One of our team members is currently studying education. Her classroom experiences show the difficulty of today's students trying to access censored materials and different viewpoints. In federal education regulations, these books are required by the curriculum, yet challenged in schools. This has been a disheartening trend, especially in recent years.

What it does

Our project displays book bans as they occur (given by PEN America's Index of School Book Bans dataset) to visualize the overwhelming increase in book bans in schools over the last few years. As a book ban is shown, a book pops up and flies into a void on the screen. An informative message shows what book has been banned in what school district, as well as the state it took place in.

How we built it

We used Three.js for 3D visualizations and coded the application in JavaScript. The biggest technological challenge was creating the book meshes; we did this by randomizing the size of the book faces, and splicing them together to create the look of a spine, covers, and individual pages. We have a domain "EndCensorship.us" registered with GoDaddy and a proper virtual machine with Google Cloud.

Challenges we ran into

We ran into challenges when trying to host our project on Google Cloud. We attempted to use Google Clound Run to deploy the web app in a containerized environment and connect the domain name using a Regional external Application Load Balancer. However, when you enter the authoritative name servers for Cloud DNS in the name servers section of Google Domains, it can take 48 to 72 hours to propagate. We also tried to use a virtual machine instance to run a basic Apache web server, but the hosting was taking to long to properly connect given the time constraints.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud that we created a working interactive web app that displays important metrics in today's world and learning environments across the United States. This is an idea our team is passionate about, especially considering one of our team members is currently a third-grade student teacher and is a first-hand witness to how book bans conflict with the curriculum she is required to teach. We are proud to inspire discussion about media censorship and freedom of speech.

What we learned

We learned how to code in JavaScript and implement Three.js. We also gained insight into the process of splicing a model and creating 3D faces. We also got a lot of experience with google cloud hosting, containerization, networking, and other web-related technologies.

What's next for End Censorship

We will connect our app to our domain, "EndCensorship.us" and host it using our virtual machine running in Google Cloud. We would like to submit this interactive art installation to the True / False Film Fest to further communicate ideas of freedom of speech and media censorship. This local festival celebrates real stories from around the world, saying "we recognize that to create an inclusive and intellectually vibrant community, we must understand and value both our individual differences and our collective similarities. All ideas are welcomed as part of a culture of creative initiative bolstered by close collaboration, fierce debate, and rigorous vetting." Our visual application is exactly what media is about: communicating ideas.