civilized ku # 2453-62 ~ no direction home
Tuesday, February 12, 2013 at 12:04PM ;)
Information overload • click to embiggen;)
Signs ~ Plattsburgh, NY • click to embiggenA little over a week ago, I wrote about introducing my new body of work, tentatively titled, information overload. For one reason or another, I have been negligent in doing so. Consequently, operating on the assumption of "better late than never" .....
In a very real sense, this work is about my growing reaction to the tower•of•babble-ish surfeit of pictures, some good / most not so good, to be found and seen on the internet. A situation which which leaves me feeling as though I am awash in a sea of mediocrity, at best, or, more often than not, in a sea of indifference inducing picturing pablum / pap.
My reaction, albeit expressed in pictures, is not unlike that of Joerg Colberg in his essay, What is a stake? (a very good read), wherein he writes:
Let’s face it, the tedium of seeing the sheer endless stream of photographs on Tumblr .... is just depressing.
Like Colberg's words, my pictures are not meant to profer an answer but rather to pose a question or questions, not the least of which is, when is enough, enough? or, when does too much create of fog of confusion? A fog which, for better worse or worse worser, obfuscates any solutions, answers, and/or meaning.
Unlike Colberg's essay, which deals exclusively with medium of photography, my pictures are also intended (metaphorically) to indict the information saturated mediums with which our culture is infused. Because, IMO, massive amounts of indiscriminate, unedited, and often incongruous information has little value other than its ability to confuse and obfuscate. Finding or discovering a grain of truth therein is akin to searching for the proverbial needle in a haystack.
All of that said, my picturing intention with this body of work is to make individual pictures of what might be labeled as visual confusion. Pictures which evidence a visual complexity which borders on information chaos. Then, to further enhance that complexity, presenting those pictures in a 3×3 grouping.
While the first-blush sample composite picture published with this entry is comprised primarily of pictures of road / highway signage, I also intend to picture roadside shopping strip signage and scans of printed materials which depict visual confusion. Each category of visual confusion will be presented as
discrete composited prints.
Additionally, my objective is to create a body of 10 individual composited prints. In order to do so, I will be required to make 90 "final" individual pictures. Consequently, I envision a rather lengthy picturing endeavor.
Reader Comments (3)
Sign, sign, everywhere a sign
Blockin' out the scenery, breakin' my mind
Do this, don't do that, can't you read the sign?
Immediately popped into my head... not a profound song, but the hook stays in your head.
FIVE MAN ELECTRICAL BAND "Signs"
Interesting. But one problem I see from the sample work you posted is that a 3x3 of your work looks more like what we woud see in a Flickr or 500px gallery of your work and not like the random overload of images you speak of. The overall style is too consistently your style. Where's the super HDR? The tilt shift? The expired film look, etc. that adds so much to the visual overload of images on the web?
Why bother?