unknown words
“Emotions are celebrated and repressed, analyzed and medicated, adored and ignored — but rarely, if ever, are they honored.” — Karla McLaren
relevance
The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows is a compendium of invented words. They were not necessarily intended to be used in conversation, but to exist for their own sake. These words identify unnamed emotional states, and offer both a poetic term and a contemplative introspection. Whether or not these words are incorporated into the language, many of them seem familiar, and terrifically crafted to put in words the untouchable.
Most of the Dictionary’s terms go beyond an unambiguously melancholy—hence “obscure sorrows.” Sometimes, we know that these alluring and mysterious emotions exist but are hard to be captured without clichés. The dictionary creates a path to new possible realities, settle them on our own terms, our language, so we do not get too lost in our human complexity.
metaphor
To prepare the stage and the context, the lines combined create a drawing, a container to the emotions. Therefore, the user can grasp a glimpse in which kind of situation the emotions appear or are felt.
On the other hand, the colors of the bubbles represent the emotions, be them simple, complex, or a mix. These colors will be selected considering how they affect the viewer psychologically according to Eva Heller’s book.
argument and intention
Since the user has probably already felt or noticed the feeling or sensation before, the order of the elements in the video is key. At the beginning, the user can visually identify himself/herself with the situation and the feeling; afterwards, he/she can learn the word and concept behind it. In sum, this infopoetry project is a figurative way to represent these emotions and share these new born words.
intended meaning
If it is complex to transmit thoughts without the words, conveying feelings could be even harder. The intended meaning of the infopoetry is to invite the user to question if he/she has already felt the emotions represented and, knowing the words after experiencing the "Feelings to be named", if it is easier to convey them to another person and close the gap left on the language.