Chris Jordan–mass phenomena

Crushed cars #2, Tacoma 2004 44x62"

Cell phones #2, Atlanta 2005 44 x 90"

 Chris Jordan who is known for his works depicting mass consumption, waste and particularly garbage. His works contain a bold message about unconscious behaviors in our everyday lives. These complicated and mass garbage that were all discarded by their owners constructed a whole, simple picture. They were treated the same as each other.

I am trying to use the same method to present human’s complicated behaviors which all have one reason or result. It’s a kind of relationship between simplicity and complexity.

work for a complex nature

Here is a video about John Maeda’s Nature series which is showed at La Fondation Cartier in Paris. The Nature series consists of a series of seven “motion paintings”.

Piet Mondrian’s abstract paintings especially these composition trees are made from nature as well.

I want to focus on visually simplifying complex nature in visaul part.

water and ink

Clean water looks simple and pure, and may be the simplest thing in the world. Once a drop of ink enters it, the most complicated image presents.That’s the most interesting point about relationship between simplicity and complexity, just one tiny step, it totally changes.

I took four photos of the process to record.

simplicity&complexity in100%Design London

Last Sunday, I went to Earl’s Court for 100%Design London. There are some interesting designs.

The most impressive products are some funitures made of paper. These complex and elaborate lines constructed by paper remind me John Maeda’s work. Both of them have complicated lines, but always in a simple shape.

shadow simplifies complexity

The most common and direct sample of simplifying complexity is shadow. 

Where sun or light exists there is always a simplicity following a complexity.

The Laws of SIMPLICITY and my thinkings

I just borrowed John Maeda’s book The Laws of Simplicity. It’s a really useful book for developing and supporting theory of my project.
My project proposal is to explore the issue that too many distractions to concentrate. Why does it happen over and over again? Because we live in a complex world, and there is full of information around us through our eyes, ears, mouths and noses.

For an example, if there is a complex, eye candy picture. Audience would say:” Oh, it’s a beautiful picture!” And the audience might forget it quickly. But if there is a very simple picture showing, audience would think about why it is so uncomplicated, does it have some special meanings behind it? Then they might look for the answers by themselves or read description. The simple one should be more impressive than the eye candy one in some ways.

As I mentioned before, the photographer,  Hiroshi Sugimoto, who did a lot of simple and meaningful works. His photos always bring philosophical thinking.

Here is a photo of his famous series “theater“,  the only thing we can see from the screen in the middle is white light and nothing else. In fact, it’s a movie which he took in one frame.  We can see every detail of theater clearly except the movie itself.