Social Media for Social Change

Neimann: Limited Vocabulary

Posted on Friday, February 27th, 2009 at 4:41 pm by Alie in research | No Comments

I really like this one because it’s so abstract. I mean not only is it in LEGO bricks, with the “critter” being represented simply by a two-peg brick, but we don’t even get the whole person. However, once we read the description, it becomes obvious that all the important elements to make this legible are here: the feet, the yellow line, the topology, and the “critter.” He could have spent an exorbitant amount of time and bricks to make it more realistic, as artist Nathan Sawaya does:
but that’s breaking the rules and the rules are, as Nick says, makes it fun. Neimann really plays with the rules to see where it gets him, which is what I like about this next one.

By making the sushi, he saw the polish flag. Without the lego vocabulary, it’s much harder to see a connection between these two things:

To me, finding these connections where there previously were not is what is so interesting about the limited vocabulary. However, I’m starting the think it’s maybe not so relevant to the project…