great un-splanations
Hi there,
You may not have ever heard of the artist John Baldessari. He popped up on my radar earlier this month by dying. But I'd known of him before that as the subject of "A Brief History of John Baldessari", one of my favorite short internet films of all time. It's "old"—from 2012—but I return to it regularly for inspiration, because it's not an explainer... it's an unsplainer. Here it is (6 mins, but it goes like lightning):
Sure, it's full of facts. The thing is literally made of factoids, strung together like a listicle. But their individual content is beside the point. (E.g.: "That's John Baldessari's wifi password.") Instead, the filmmakers use facts like pixels to create an impressionistic portrait that gets the spirit of Baldessari and his work across honestly.
Explainers "break it down". Unsplainers build it up. What that "it" is might not always be totally articulable, but it can still feel very clear.
Here's another example — "Counting Song" (from the Japanese TV show Design Ah!, kind of a cross between Sesame Street and the Eameses):
What was that?? I'm not sure, but I love it. One of my math-y friends says that it's about something called bijection. After looking it up, I agree—but I couldn't have told you that after watching the video. Does that matter? No. It "got through" by other means. Unsplainer.
As I start making videos myself again this year (after a nearly 3-year hiatus), I'm on the lookout for more great unsplanations. In the meantime, I'll keep coming back to the Baldessari film. I hope it brings you some inspiration for the coming year, too—even if you can't quite explain why.
Take it easy,
John