“Sinicization” is a term used to describe policies aimed at erasing cultural differences and historical traditions of various ethnic, linguistic and religious minorities in the People's Republic of China.

Enacted through legal policy as well as political pressure, these assimilation measures primarily affect public spaces. Alterations can be found in urban architecture where shop signs and symbols are altered, covered or painted over. Adaptations of culturally significant buildings leave visible traces. Glue stains and construction marks bear witness to removed ornaments.

Documenting the effects of these policies is becoming increasingly difficult as journalists are denied access and researchers lack representative data. To understand the scale of these measures, the project Total View focuses on developing new forms of visual investigation.

Baidu is China’s most frequently visited website. Best known for its search engine, the technology platform offers a big variety of different digital products and services. Its Street View tool, called Total View, lets users digitally navigate through urban environments using panoramic imagery.

To capture these images, Street View cars equipped with 360-degree cameras drive throughout the country, reaching even the most remote and rural areas while documenting landscapes, urban architecture and everyday life. In order to keep these images up to date, Street View cars drive by the same location over and over again, thereby creating a publicly accessible digital timeline.

By utilising pattern recognition technology, Total View algorithmically analyses these images and compares them to other pictures taken at different points in time. Thereby, thousands of changes can be automatically detected and documented on a nation-wide scale.