Fact Check: Video claiming to show Huangzhouan Interchange bridge is partially fake
A video showing a multi-layered and complicated road system is in circulation with the claim that the video shows Huangzhoun interchange bridge
InterchangeBridge
A video showing a multi-layered and complicated road system is in circulation with the claim that the video shows Huangzhoun interchange bridge constructed in China and is an absolute engineering marvel in the world. The video starts showing roads overlaid in a zigzag manner.
The narration of the video goes on to claim that the amazing interchange bridge of Hauangzhouan will leave everyone spellbound. One wrong turn might lead to a Chongqing adventure.
Users of several social media are sharing the video with similar visuals and narrative, explaining that the visual marvel seen in the video depicts Huangzhouan Interchange bridge.
Fact Check:
The claim is Partly False. Many of the visuals shown in the video were digitally altered. Only a few visuals in the middle of the video are real.
When the key frames extracted from the video were searched using Google reverse image search, we found various results that confirm that most of the visuals seen in the video are digitally altered.
Let us check frame by frame to understand which visuals of the video were altered.
Screenshot 1:
When searched for this screenshot, we found that it is from a musical and audio-visual video named ‘Repetition’ published by Musician Max Cooper.
The post published on Facebook page of Max Cooper, on September 12, 2019, states that new music video out today - 'Repetition', applied musically and visually with scenes of future cities, brought to life by the amazing visual artist Kevin McGlouglin.
It's all part of the new audio-visual project 'Yearning for the Infinite', about our endless pursuit of "stuff', it doesn't really matter what, but we repetitively keep going towards strange ends as this video tries to show. But it's not all bad news, we tried a darker approach musically and it didn't seem to fit, there's something beautiful in our repetitive pursuits. Watch here: https://ffm.to/
A website named the ‘awesomer’ states that visual artist Kevin McGloughlin teamed up with musician Max Cooper for this mind-bending audio-visual collaboration. Reminiscent of the work of the great Philip Glass, Cooper’s repetitive and driving sounds are reflected in surreal scenes that were digitally copied, tweaked, and pasted to repeat endlessly.
The visual seen in the viral video can be seen at 3.58 minutes in the video published by YouTube channel of Max Cooper.
Screenshot 2:
When observed carefully, we can find that the visual is the repetitive loop of the same bridge video and is not the Hauangzhouan Interchange bridge.
Similar visuals were viral with the claim that they show Nanpu bridge in Shanghai which was debunked by Soch Fact Check in 2022.
After checking these visuals, when we searched for the aerial view of the Hauangzhouan Interchange bridge, we found very interesting visuals, some of which can be seen in the viral video, but do not resemble many of them.
Here is the video of the bridge published by People’s Daily, China.
Here are some visuals of the bridge published by the Adobe stock website.
Hence, several digitally altered and replicated visuals are used in the viral video to make the audience believe they all belong to Huangzhouan Interchange bridge, an unbelievable engineering marvel, which is not true. Though a few visuals in the video do show the bridge, many are digitally altered. The claim is Partly False.