My brainstorming for this project started with an idea for a single image, of a nondescript person being weighed down, crushed, by a cloud of web code:
This idea stemmed from a feeling I've been experiencing a lot recently of overexposure: with a wealth of information at our fingertips, we are constantly bombarded with news, opinions, images, and other media, and it's all beginning to feel like a bit too much. This concept snowballed into a collection of ideas regarding the negative impacts we sustain in this age of information.
I'll repeat the final conclusion I came to here, because I think I want it to be the central idea of my zine:
You know how some dogs have to have special food bowls so that they don't eat so fast they make themselves sick?
We are those dogs. Information is our kibble. There is no special food bowl.
With this base idea in mind, I came up with a few more loose ideas for images.
The cigarette image described above would be based on an image something like this:
While brainstorming, I was reminded of a song I sang in high school choir, called Hymn of Acxiom. Here's a link. It's a bit of a dark concept for a bunch of high schoolers, and I don't think I really fully understood it when I first encountered it. Now, I think I have a better grasp on it. Singer/songwriter Vienna Teng masterfully combines the two sides of the internet: at times the sound is comforting, the lyrics telling the listener that they are heard and known, and at other times the sound is eerie and metallic, reminding the listener that this feeling is often manufactured to sell, and that the feeling of "known"-ness one can find on the internet is not the same as the true experience of being known. This song is a fantastic representation of some of the ideas I would like to convey in my zine, and I will continue to use it for inspiration while I work on the project.
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