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.

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 David:

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