08.18.20“we left language / we came back”
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There’s so much error in language
Everything we say turns out not right
Or almost right; that is, to be precise, wrong
So we left language, but there was nowhere to go so we
came backfrom The Pirate Who Does Not Know the Value of Pi, Eugene Ostashevsky
The partial poem above starts off the article “Sleep Walks the Street, Part I” by Metahaven, who argue that “metaphors, metonyms, and allegories have become scalable political technologies obfuscating, undermining, and instrumentalizing the realities they represent.”
Another quote:
- Platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube are all explicitly associated and involved with processes of political and ideological cognitive short circuiting—for example, through disinformation campaigns, hyper-targeted ads, trolls and bots, algorithmic suggestion and autoplay, as well as resultant “filter bubbles.” As such, they act as interfacial windows in which that which is visible passes for “the world.”
It is a reminder that the internet has long been a dimensional layer to world, not separate from it. For some, Facebook is their entire internet. We are still catching up to media literacy. The speed of everything is inhuman.
I viewed design often as visual metaphor. Design composition is a form of collage. Beautiful when poetic. Eventually gimmicky when clever. Insidious when deceitful. Somewhat inaccessible when innovative.
Metaphor is ingrained in how we think, speak, understand, make. Why do we find so much meaning in metaphor? Has its appropriation stained it? Can it be trusted?
When do words speak louder than actions?
Raw emotion is indigestible. We often understand it through a medium, a material, a product. It has to be processed and sold. Is that evidence of inhumanity? Or is it a result of emotion’s potency?
Storytelling and language feel essential to being a human though.
So often in design and art, metaphor is another layer to interpret. It complicates the process. What and how does it mean to be straightforward? Why has Trump’s language angered the progressives while illuminating rural white America and conservative immigrants? Do we truly listen to those who do not speak like us?