gosh, is that all there is to it?

Emotional Emilia. All rights reserved. Posted with permission.

Gosh, is that really true? Is it that easy?

I have been told that it would be a good idea to restructure the entrance to barebones communicattion. And that is just what I will try to do in this post.

The barebones communication universe consists a number of posts that are linked to a number of themes and/or resources. Often held together by a single tag. This is still going to be the basic structure, but for reasons of a more clear understanding of this structure, and the ease of navigating in it, I will introduce a slightly different way to keep things together on the blog.

And to create a new overview. This overview will also be reflected in the blog pages. I need to fix that.

Here are the different babebones sections that we will refer to in the future. Sections consists again of a number of barebones modules, that are constituted by a number of barebones blog posts.

Barebones Sections:

Barebones Basics:

Barebones Basics consists of a number a research areas that are of high value for communication. Each of these research areas are barebones modules consisting of inspirations from among other things

gestalt psychology, hermeneutics, naturalism, phenomenology and semiology (semiotics)

I may introduce other basics as the blog progresses. You will get a good understanding of these different areas if you just google them for more information.

Barebones Enhanced:

Barebones Individuals consists, so far, of the two modules: barebones pitstops and barebones notebook. These again consists of a number of barebones posts.

The idea of barebones enhanced it that you need to work with barebones on your own. Here are two clues of how you can do that: pitstops (basically open “questions” and ideas of new combinations of things), and notebooks (more structured and closed “questions” that you can work with.

Or combinations of both. Is it important that you don’t see barebones communication as a point of termination, but as a platform of beginnings.

Barebones Creatics:

Creativity is imperative to communication.

Particularly if you have the intention of being heard, which is increasingly difficult. Think of the 200 million profiles on facebook chatting away in public space, and the same number of proper blogs worldwide. If that number will do it?

The ability to do things in a different way, and in new combinations of ideas, is very, very important. You can grow your ability for creative thinking by knowing and using creative techniques. That is what barebones creatics is all about.

Barebones Specific: Advertising:

I have singled out a barebones modul which main concern is advertising. There is no particular reason for this other than I have a history “in advertising”, and therefore some knowledge of that area.

That sections consists of a number of moduls held together by the CET System.

Barebones Advertising is concerns with the efficiency of communication. It, therefore, has much larger implications than those of mere advertising. Please be aware of that simple fact.

Barebones Specific: Photography:

Barebones Photography is concerned with the visuality of communication. It, therefore, has much larger implication than those of mere photography. Visuality has particularly to do with connotations.

For photographs and their use in barebones based communication, you will find plenty of information and principal handling on this blog. Start to reflect the twist the picture above makes on this blogpost. Right .

For many more pictures you could go to the barebones light’s photostream at flickr. “barebones light” simply means that I have been less critical with what is loaded.

Barebones Grid:

Please also note that the different barebones sections do not exist in isolation. It is only in theory, and in introductions like this, that it is meaningsful to speak of them as separate parts. In the real world they are not.

Let’s say that you are working on a piece of advertising for a client, you need not only read and understand Barebones Specific: Advertising. You will need to read and understand the other barebones sections as well.

The reason for this it that advertising is only a part of the larger communication area. I may have some special characteristics, but it brings along content from other barebones sections as well. Think, for instance, of the importance photography (read: visual communication) plays in advertising.

A separate post on Barebones Grid is in the making.

Linking Up

And yes, I will link this post up properly. Stay tuned.

If you are curious who the little girl in the photo is, her last name is Skjærven. Posted with permission from her parents.

Barebones Light at flickr

barebones light at flickr.

Barebones Communication now has its own photostream at flickr. Images have been loaded today and late yesterday.

There are many shots that you probably have not seen before. The stream is called barebones light. Click the image above and you will be connected to flickr.

Barebones light is part of the barebones communication community.

Enjoy.

Obama: Window of Opportunity.

Obama: Window of Opportunity. Copyright 2009: Knut Skjærven. All rights reserved.

Do I have to comment on this shot? I don’t think so.

Yes, I am rather proud of this visual “combination of elements”. This is, imho, barebones photography at is best. Simple, straight, no fuzz.

Enjoy.

Barebones On Sight Photography.

On Sight Template. Click image to link.

Welcome.

I am sure that all of you following the barebones communication blog, for a long time, have been aware that photography takes a special place on the blog. Not only to liven up and illustrate individual posts, but also in a much more profound way, as an example of the barebones communication concept itself. There are several posts on the blog, that indicates the latter. One of the posts  linking barebones and photography is titled picturing the communication process. There are more.

This being the case I will take the consequence of it. So, what is announced here, is a new series of blogs on pure photography. I call the series On Sight Photography. On Sight Photography is a series of photographic blogs that all are in the making. The first one being Berlin On Sight.

What you see above is a screen shot of that new site. Just click the image and it will take you there.

By pure photography, I mean that there will be only pictures in these blogs. Very few words apart from the where and when of the individual picture. There is no mystery in using the notion pure photography. No purification comes with it. Just to make that clear.

Why Berlin On Sight as a starter? Well, why not? It just so happens that I have a lot of photographs from Berlin. Simple as that. No mystery there either. In fact I have a couple of more On Sight sites up running as well : Architecture On Sight, Flowers On Sight, People On Sight. There will be many more. At the moment al these sites are under construction.

I will follow the barebones structure in dealing with the On Sight blogs. All of them will have certain common denominators. One of them being simplicity. An other one being a common framework. All of them will have a specific theme like Berlin, like Copenhagen, like flowers, like architecture. Pretty banal really, but now you know.

A last word on the project. Each site will only hold a small number of photographs. Maybe 10 photographs. Maybe 15.

Stay tuned to barebones. Much more still to come.

NEW: Reflections On Sight.

Barebones Pitstop Puzzle

Pitstop Puzzle. Copyright 2009: Knut Skjærven.

I just did you a favour.

From time to time I have posts that simply consist of a quote. Often an image added. These posts are all tagged “pitstop”, but unless you go for that tag in the tag cloud, you will never find them in one go.

I have collected them all for you. Linked from the same blog post. This one.  If you visit the blog page pitstop puzzle you will find the same linked there. I will update that page whenever I publish a new pitstop  post.

The idea with the pistop posts is simply to give you a break. Read them, or leave them.

Each pistop is a breath of fresh air. They all stand on their own and can be read in isolation. However there is an intention with these pitstop posts. Not expressive written down, or instructed. They are pieces of the same puzzle. They are pieces of the same picture. The are pieces of barebones.

Take a closer look at the photograph above. It is one single shot. Not a compilation of many. By viewing them all together you get a picture that is different from viewing each “piece” in isolation. You get THE picture.

Your turn now. Here are the collected pistop posts. Collected for you. You must make the picture by piecing them together.

Here you go: The Barebones Pistop Puzzle.

Minkowski’s Measure.

What Persists Unseen.

Lost in Translation.

Gain and Loss.

The Pose.

And Nobody Can Do Anything About It.

The Language of Facts.

A Mode of Familiarity.

This Feeling of Gratitude.

Out of the Bits and Pieces.

The Unsurpassed Elegance of a Stork.

From Solid Ground.

The Principle of Relevance.

Open Possibilities.

For Me Simply There.

No Substitute For Original Thinking.

Pitstop 05.

Pitstop 04.

Pitstop 03.

Pitstop 02.

Pitstop 01.

Good luck with it. I never told you it would be easy.

The good news, however, is that these pitstop posts do not only fit into one particular picture. They fit many. Could even be yours. There are stuff in there that will last you a lifetime. You need to fill out the blanks.

For once, I have listed things in a chronological order. Bottom up.

Minkowski’s Measure

Minkowski's Measure. Copyright 2009: Knut Skjærven.

“I say that I am expressing myself in an inexact manner. This is true. This imperfection, however, is not due to the insufficiency of the means at my disposal but result from the fact that becoming does not try to be expressed. What I mean to say is that, in its mysterious power, becoming leaves no island upon which we can set foot in order to arrive at a definition or a judgement in its regard. With its waves is covers over all that we might be tempted to set over against it. It known neither subjects nor objects. I has neither distinct parts, nor direction, nor beginning, nor end. It is neither reversible nor irreversible. It is universal and impersonal. It becomes chaotic.  And yet, it is quite close to us, so close that it constitutes the very base of our life. We would almost like to say that it is the synonym of life in the broadest sense of the word.”

Eugène Minkowski: Lived Time. Phenomenological and Psycopathological Studies, translated by Nancy Metzel, Northwestern University Press, Evanston 1970 page 18.

Library Thing. More on pitstops.

Down by Burden

Down by Burden. Copyright 2009: Knut Skjærven.

Ever felt that you had too much to do? Not being able to raise you head for a breath of fresh air? Or tend to your favourite blog as often as you would like to?

Well, in the meantime you need to look for additional connotations in this photograph. Is that ok with you? For the moment?

Stay tuned. Plenty of more posts to come And photographs.

Your Basic Travel Kit

Timid Tulips. Copyright 2009: Knut Skjærven.

I have been away for a couple of days, and have not been able to post. However, the beauty of barebones are that you can take them with you. By this, I do not only mean that you can access the internet from any foreign hotel lobby, and even have it as room service. This is rather obvious nowadays.

I have something else in mind as well

Do you remember the post on creatics? It was posted not than long ago as an introduction to a new barebones themes on creativity in communication. The process of getting ideas seems to go like this:

1) gather relevant material, both general and more specific

2) masticating the material

3) forget all about it (this is your basic travel kit)

4) wait for the ideas to turn up “out of nowhere”

5) be critical in reviewing the ideas

If you have done, or are in the process of 1) gather relevant material, it is pretty easy to take the rest of the process with you when you are on travel, and mostly see the inside of hotel rooms, and what is going on in the near vicinity of that room. And so I did. I took barebones with me.

And I was rewarded, by amongst many other things, this shot of timid tulips. I made a critical review of it, and guess what? It passed.

There is another important principle at stake here as well: you need to learn to use the experiences of your everyday live (Lebenswelt is the phenomenological term for it) as an important (re)source of information related to what you are doing in your more “professional life”. You need to use your mind’s capacity for combining elements actively by setting that little, but important, button in your mind to default. So that it is always there, always turned on.

What can timid tulips do for barebones? How can they be used to exemplify barebones themes? Here are a few examples: remember the first dot in the CET-Test for efficient advertising? The one demanding One Unified  Impression? The photograph above is an example of such a unified impression.

Are there more barebones stuff to be had out of this photograph? Much more. What about gestalt factors similarity, and proximity? What about Roland Barthes’ connotation procedures?

I’ll leave it to you to answers the questions. You could use the gestalt factor closure when you look for answers. Now that I have pointed the way you simply close it.

You know what? These timid tulips are not timid at all. They are just big pretenders. Doing their work for barebones.

Roland Barthes on Text and Image

I am going to continue a bit with Roland Barthes.

Not because his name is Roland Barthes, and since he already has made a name for himself within the broader field of communication. But for two other reasons. The first one being that the posts tagged “Barthes” seems to work pretty good on this blog, and secondly because he is central for the barebones themes in that he works with both verbal and visual communication.

A section in his famous article The Photographic Message is about Text and Image. Barebones want to make the points Barthes addresses, in that section, operational, and  show how they can be used both proactively when constructing a message e.g trying to communicate a thought, and reactively when deconstucting a message for e.g. analysis.

Barthes addresses three points in the combination of text and image. There are probably many more, but we will start with blog posts on these three:

1) Text as parasite to an image (post coming up)

2) Text as innocent to an image (post coming up)

3) Text as contradiction to an image (post coming up)

Even if the wording here is esoteric the content of what Barthes is saying is not that hard to grasp.

I will treat these three points/procedures in separate posts. Now you are warned. The separate posts on text and image will be linked to this introductory post.

And remember: reading blogs are not a substitute for reading books. And reading books are not a substitute for reading life. If you want to know more about Barthes, go get the book. If you want to know more about life, buy a camera.

You could start with the link below.

Library Thing. (Roland Barthes: Image, Music, Text, Fontana Press 1977, UK. Essays selected and translated by Stephen Heath).

For more posts on Roland Barthes go here.

Barebones Got Brains

Barebones Brain ScreenShot. Printed with permission from The Brain.

Here are the good news: Barebones Got Brains.

And it has so with The Brain: A system for Visual Information Management. Go for the link and read all about it. There will be much more about this in the weeks to come.

And what a great idea this is. Barebones will use The Brain as a tool in the future, and you will be able to set your own Personal Brain to work. Download your own personal brain. It’s free. And you can say that you have got one.

Stay tuned.