As much as necessary - as less as possible

Summary

I want to find out how a varying extent of content is changing the mediation of communication. Further questions, that may arise while working on this topic are:

• How much communication is necessary?
• And necessary for whom? For the sender, or the recipient?
• What defines, what is exceeding the needful, what is unnecessary or what is missing to the needful?

These questions I do not only want to restrict to the written communication, but also extend to the visual communication. How is simplification or excess changing the visual appearance of content? From which point of the reduction or maximisation of content is distorting the content itself? On the example of translators - like for every other communication that is involving a third party - there is a risk, that para- and nonverbal signs may be terminated or corrupted. In which extent are there changes in the visual communication , that may have great impact on the reception? Whatever it may be: illustration, photography, moving image, interactive work and so on. These work results I want to visualise adequately. Afterwards I want to influence the reception by specifically changing the substance and therefore putting myself as a designer to the test.

Research

From ancient times to the modern era the rhetoric has been the binding and constant guideline of communication. Nowadays there is less new in the rhetoric, even though the complexity of content has increased. Also, there seems to be a dominance of the visual in the „screen-“ or „display culture“.

The brevity-dialogue itself is of course nothing new, but reaches back into the Roman age. In that a complete different speech situation was dominating: the monologue was letting the audience focus on the speaker. Nowadays this circumstance has turned due to the easy possibility to create ones own stage with YouTube, Podcasts or Instagram-Stories: The „User“ is „Producer“ at the same time – formally known as the audience. Aristoteles demanded in his rhetorics not categorical brevity, but in an appropriate manner – similar to Cicero and Qunitilian are defining the oration. Not the good or bad, but the moderate oration. Indoxa shall be skipped, because the listener can easily complete them. Since the argumentatio requires the narratio over the course of the classical argument, there are following rules for the speaker: it has to be short, clear and presumable so that it can build up its instructive dimension within the speech, that aims on persuasion. Cicero on the other hand is defining brevitas on the values „as much as necessary“ and „not more than needed“. Therefore brevitas is existing if not a word more than the necessary is being used. To keep the listener mesmerised a middle course shall be kept in the narration. But who is defining what is necessary? When is a word or a passage an abtum or a decorum? For Cicero the diffuseness, or the garrulity of a speech is a danger. After all the attention of the recipient shall not be lost. For Quintilian the shortness is a danger: instead of shortening everything at the cost of understandability, one shall rather bring up more content. Shortening would be a selection- and manipulation itself, according to Quintilian. Instead the following could be used as a rule: reduction of complexity, that is meeting the requirements.

How concentrated is the reception of content happening nowadays? After the journalist and book author Kenneth Goldsmith is being confronted with the statement, that in general less is being read than the years before, he is setting up an interesting hypothesis: he is claiming, that it is not being read less in general, but the omnipresence of digital media is causing the opposite. He is stating, that minute by minute mails or short messages are being read. Daily news, Facebookstatuses or the fast Twitternotification on the smartphones of the users are making everyone read more, like no print medium would have been able to. That is why the amount of reading would have even increased; only the way of reading changed. Kenneth speaks of „(…) skimming, parsing, grazing, bookmarking, forwarding and spamming language (…)“. Therefore the author is describing a time, which is shaped by changed production- and reception habits. Almost like an information overload.

Short messages, eMail, Chats and Twitter – these and other mass-media did bring up a mode of correspondance, that is setting the „virtus dicendi“ because of time- and type economy. Emoticons and the more or less creative abbreviation culture (from „fyi“, to „btw“, from „TFG“ to „JRHNBR“) are some symptoms of this maxime.

In the meantime even carriers of important positions are using just 140 characters to send out information of big scope. Donald Trump was therefore even called „the master of simplification“. These messages are unfiltered, uncensored thoughts or comments of one of the most powerful persons in the world. They are probably not being checked on mistakes, reading flow or reasonable sound by spokespersons nor by speech writers. Just think of the famous „covfefe“-Tweet of May 31st 2017, on which the whole world was trying to solve the mystery what covfefe would be. Are these messages therefore more authentic? Closer to the person? Or does it instead just reveal a polarization, that has been less visible before? By using short statements one can react often and quick. But quantity has the tendency to cover quality. Since November 8th 2017 the number of characters – that can be used on Twitter – has been brought up to 280 characters. In times of social media influencing politics; of hyperpolarization and debatedysfunctionality Twitter is withdrawing somehow of dealing with this problem.

Even in the scientific communication a row of new forms of mediation have been introduced: in addition to „classic“ publications like books or magazine articles, blogs and social media are appearing. Evening-lectures are being expanded to Science-Slams, Pecha Kucha-nights or FameLabs. Conferences are increasingly using sharing-concepts and participative formats like fishbowls, roundtables or barcamps. This tendency is often perceived critically by scientists and recipients. Because these new formats are intensifying a basic problem of scientific communication: the urge, to cope with a topic within a limited mass of text or in a limited amount of time – the constraint to a short, concise form. Which formats can scientists, in the sense of serious mediation, be taken responsible for? Isn't scientific content too complex, to be displayed in just 140 (or even 280) characters, in ten minutes or six pictures? Or is science loosing public relevance if it is refusing the demand on brevity and participation?

All of these issues have been explored in the written rhetorics. But I also want to find answers to these questions in the visual communication.

„How is the image becoming its sense?“ Roland Barthes is asking in his essay „Rhetorik des Bildes“. And further: „Where does this sense end? And if it ends, what is beyond this end?“ (Barthes 1964, p. 159). Basis of this structural analyses is the thought, that even non-spoken information is inheriting speech-analogue structures. That means that pictures can be statements. That is when they have their own rhetoric and it is even more the case for combination of picture and text. Barthes discovers in, „nature“ and „history“ always being confused with each other, a „ideological misuse“ (ebd. p. 7). Who wants to get to the bottom of these things, has to understand that in our culture and our society nothing has to be as it is right now. Everything could also be different. And in many respects it is desirable for it to being different. The production of visual mythologies can prevent from thinking about that. If the world is, as it is, and will stay like that forever; if the signs are assigned to the things by nature, then it is not necessary to think critically about the order of things and signs.

On the other hand it is the task of communication designers to contain the fundamental ambiguity of isolated text or imagery to a specific purpose. This is a specific form of communicative rationality, a visual economy, that – because of it being created for that purpose – is radically varying from the practice arts. According to Thomas Friedrich, this containment of ambiguity does not necessarily have to lead to unambiguousness. Communication can be designed the way, that it can be read in various styles. This ambiguity should not be dysfunctional in terms of communicative purpose. One would have to differentiate functional from dysfunctional ambiguity. Only the last should be avoided – and the communicative practice is showing, that it is not always easy, because unintentional connotations can occur.

Literature

BARTHES, Roland, 1978: »Rhetorik des Bildes« [1964 a], in: G. Schiwy (Hg.): Der französische Strukturalismus. Mode, Methode, Ideologie, Reinbek bei Hamburg, S. 158–166

FRIEDRICH, Thomas u. SCHWEPPENHÄUSER, Gerhard, 2010. Bildsemiotik – Grundlagen und exemplarische Analysen visueller Kommunikation, – Basel, Boston, Berlin.

HÄRTER, Andreas. 2000. Digressionen : Studien zum Verhältnis von Ordnung und Abweichung in Rhetorik und Poetik; Quintilian - Opitz - Gottsched - Friedrich Schlegel - München : Fink.

HOFMANN, Norbert. 1980. Redundanz und Äquivalenz in der literarischen Übersetzung : dargestellt an fünf deutschen Übersetzungen des Hamlet. – Tübingen : Niemeyer.

JÄGER, Dr. Maren 2007. Brevitas: Kürze in Rhetorik und Poetik MNDL/EUL-3: – 2011, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz.

NÜSSLEIN, Theodor. 2014. Rhetorica ad Herennium : lateinisch-deutsch [E-Book] herausgegeben und übersetzt von Theodor Nüßlein. – 2. Auflage. – Berlin : De Gruyter

PAPE, Wilhelm. 1914 (bearbeitet von Max Sengebusch) Handwörterbuch der griechischen Sprache. Griechisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch. Band 1: A-K, Band 2: Δ–Ω. 3. Auflage, 6. Abdruck, Vieweg & Sohn, Braunschweig.

ROSA, Hartmut. 2016 Beschleunigung und Entfremdung: Entwurf einer kritischen Theorie spätmoderner Zeitlichkeit – 5. Auflage. – Berlin : Suhrkamp,

STREHLE, S. 2012. Zeichenökonomie und symbolischer Tausch. In: Zur Aktualität von Jean Baudrillard, VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften.

Thoughts

Thoughts from and with Steve:

Tony Scott influencing cinema with fast cuts.

Shaun of the Dead as a backlash against the prevalence of this fast-cutting, gimmick-laden style.

Economy of public information animation vs. fast commercials coming from the limitations of typesetting or telegraph

Kate Briggs > This little art > a translator of Roland Barthes

John Ceary (following John Duraeus)

Summer as summary > Summers of available text -> collected by muslim philosophers

Signal vs noise ratio

The anxiety of missing something

Walter Ong > idea of redundancy > Redundancy, repetition of the just-said, keeps both speaker and hearer surely on the track.

Claude Shannon > information theory

Ray and Charles Eames > The Communications Primer (1952) > https://archive.org/details/communications_primer

Thoughts from and with David:

Pieter Bruegel the Elder as an example of excess (or more fittingly as debauchery)

How far can you crop the „Creation of Adam“ in the Sistine Chapel to still keep the message itself (are just the tips of the fingers still expressing the same message)?

Interesting to deal with this topic in the „social media“ age. For example digging out the essence of imagery/videos on a Facebook timeline. Removing decoration, accessories, etc. Finding the „corporate identity“ of someones account.

Thoughts from and with Barend:

Malevich's try to free the art from the weight of things with his painting „Black Square“. Kind of the most minimalistic approach to art.

Curious about the visuality and thereby on my personal thoughts on the topic. What is the „modest“ or „appropriate“ amount of communication?

Connection to the „Commuters of the Erasmusbrug“ project.