I know… my visual essay is way too long… But from what I’ve learned and questioned during this project is that simplicity and condensing content is not always the right way to go. Of course sometimes it can be helpful to keep it concise about what you want to convey but sometimes being concise can be dangerous because it makes problems look easier/simpler than they are which could also suggest easier and quicker solutions. Being percise about information sometimes can just be reached by finding the right amount of content for what you want to communicate. Benjamin Bratton said in his TED Talk “New Perspectives – What is wrong with TED Talks” that problems are complex and difficult and can’t just be resolved in an instance by just rearranging existing pieces. Making everything simple, condensed and boiled down so that it can be “swallowed without chewing” (Bratton, 2013) doesn’t challenge transformation and innovation. Complexity over simplicity.
Nowadays we consume images within milliseconds without even questioning if we decrypted and interpreted the image how it was intended to be. The potential of complexity is lost since we train our brains just to crave fast-food information. My visual essay is counter-content, a revelation against condensation and spoonfeeding what is conveyed. The content is complex and by simplifying it the message and meaning would be buried in generalised terms and images without even rudimentarily touching upon what has been explored.
Keep it complex!