TYLER SCHULTZ






“Nothing to See Here”


Research Through Making





THE PROJECT


This project investigates how visual communication—through design, media, symbolism, and performance—is used to challenge dominant power structures, mobilize resistance, and shape public perception in both constructive and destructive protest movements.

THEMES +  CONCEPT


The project centers on the tension between presence and absence in protest communication. It asks:
  • What happens when the message is erased?
  • Who controls what we see, and what we’re allowed to remember?
  • Are our first amendment rights being threatened?

Censorship and Visual Suppression—Protest visuals and language removed through redaction, editing, or state/media control.

Erasure as Strategy—Power systems that shape history and public perception by deciding what stays visible.

Audience Complicity—The ways in which the public allows, ignores, or even prefers erasure for the sake of comfort.

Absence as Visual Rhetoric—How what we don’t see—or no longer see—can speak just as powerfully as direct imagery.




A to-the-point, tension-filled installation that examines deliberate erasure in protest messages. The audience is asked to consider what has been omitted, cut out, or rewritten—and to question their own complicity in not noticing. It’s not about overwhelming the audience with content; it’s about revealing what's absent and allowing that void to resonate.












































Nothing to See Here is an inquiry into nothingness—into what we delete, forget, or refuse to see. Protest does not necessarily disappear into smoke and sirens. More likely, it dissolves quietly: cropped from the frame, redacted from the record, swallowed by silence. This body of work the contours that erasure. It asks: when a message is removed, when a body is blurred, when a story is buried—what remains? And who gains by forgetting? Every word that is missing, every damaged surface, every empty space refers to a system that works to defend power by draining resistance of its voice. This is not accidental. It is not passive. Nothing to See Here shows no finished picture, no finished story. Instead, it leaves you with fragments, remnants, hints that need your participation. You are a witness. You are a participant. You are implicated. Forgetting, too, is a choice.