As an instrument of –not the core of the power structure that initiates– reduction, the graphical languages in the economic flowcharts we referenced confined eels and shrimps in the box signifying “Resource Availability.”
As information designer Jaap Knevel critically referred to during the conversation with us, the violence of graphical representation originates from the simplistic rule of reduction in the process of abstraction. What we problematize is not abstraction itself, but its tendency to reproduce normative political status quo, muting the nuances and diversity that are considered peripheral.
The issue of reduction is present not only in the principles of modernist graphic design that idealizes universalism, but also in every designed interface that mediates and distributes political power. The apparatus of the attention economy, for example, reduces the intricacy of social interaction into mere “likes” and “views.”
💧Diagramming Diversely
💧Diagramming Like a Carrier Bag
💧Extraction by Grahpic Design
💧Commodification by Grahpic Design
💧Taxonomy
💧ISOTYPE