Being and Nothingness

In today's globally connected world, visual communication is an extremely important tool, as it can cut across language barriers and convey universally understood messages. To be an effective visual communicator, one must be able to identify and understand some of the commonly used elements of visual design. I recently came across this video that, in communicating its message, effectively utilizes a lot of these elements:




The video itself seems simple enough. At first, we are presented with a still, female body standing completing erect. Parts of her outline are incomplete, yet the form is still implied. There is not much depth, but a light shading gives the form some volume. As the video plays, black text begins to stream out of her mouth and cover up her body. We hear a "buzzing" of human voices attempting to pronounce the letters of the text, resulting in an unintelligible and disconcerting mumble. Eventually, the black text completely envelopes the woman's body, and beneath her feet, the text spells out an expression in French:



"L'etre Et Le Neant", which translates to "Being and Nothingness," serves as the title to a classic essay by Jean-Paul Sartre. A little research on Wikipedia reveals that, in the essay, Sartre attempts to define consciousness as an "act of negation" and a "transcendence of the given world." Looking back at the video, it becomes apparent that many of the visual elements serve to illuminate and enhance Sartre's thought-provoking concept.

The main visual theme employed in the video is that of creating tension through contrasting elements. The simple black and white color scheme conveys the sense of two opposing forces. The outline of the body is a thin, quivering line, yet the black text becomes a solid fill. The body is symmetrical and organic, yet the text is geometrically shaped and moves in an asymmetrical pattern. The shape of the figure remains flat and without much depth, yet it remains fixed in the foreground because of the volume created from the shading and from the slight quivering of the outline. There is also a interesting dynamic created in the overall use of space, with the "positive" object being surrounded by the "negative" empty space. All of these tension-filled elements seem to fit in with Sartre's theme of "the impotence of physical causality over human beings."

The visual dominance of the black text is shown in a literal sense by its complete enveloping of the body. However, what's interesting is that it's not entirely clear as to whether or not the body is becoming something or nothing. Is the black text negating the body, or is it merely turning it into a different form of being? These questions all relate to Sartre's theme of the relationship between physical reality and the human consciousness.

One of the most captivating features of the video is the rhythm created between the vibrating body, the moving text, and the buzzing sound of the human voices. This forces our eyes to follow the stream of text as it pours out of the mouth into the body, and the repetition of the pattern holds our attention throughout. The mumbling voices create and maintain a constant tension, which is eventually released at the end when we hear a man with a very deep voice say "L'etre Et Le Neant," along with it being spelled out by the text. This serves as a pronouncement, as if what we just saw was an actual visual representation of the dynamic between "Being" and "Nothingness."

Though it first appeared to be pretty straightforward, upon further analysis, the video revealed itself to have enormous depth in both form and content. It was particularly amazing how it was able to use some rather simple visual elements in expanding and building upon a rather complex idea. This really illustrates the power of visual design as a communication tool, a tool which becomes ever more useful in this increasingly image-dominated society.