🔽 Quick summary 🔽 ✔ "Urban and young" society that we live in is changing constantly and fast ✔ What is the significance of the visual culture today ✔ A book to learn about seeing and being seen
★★★★★ Our society is overloaded with info, and our visual culture is at its core. Most of us live in "urban and young" society that is faced-paced. Power of seeing and showing. A guidebook on our visual culture.
Today's visual culture is not the same as the one from 10 years ago, or even 2 years ago.
The other day I went to a seminar on packaging, and what really got me was the idea that "people living in a city can "read" a product through package design, so if they read it differently from what you want them to see, then regardless of the quality, your product won't sell" You probably have max 1 second to convince your potential consumer.
The book starts off by saying how more and more people live in cities. And by living in the environment that is "urban and young" our life is fast-paced, whether you like it or not, but not only that, living in a city means you are constantly being looked at. It doesn't simply mean that people are looking at how you dress, it means you are monitored.
Seeing and looking also means taking control. By seeing an object, or a person, you THINK you are controlling them. But it is not one way. The object, or the person, also has power to show what they choose to, too. So things get more complicated, you can see, you can be seen, you can be showing, and can be forced to see.
Finally the author talks about visual activists. Today young activists will keep demanding changes as long as they have a camera phone, not a pen. They have the power to see and show.
It might have been written more than 10 years ago, and we might be in a next phase, but still relevant.
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