As a consumer of media in the modern day, I find myself often time completely overwhelmed not so much from the number of media streamed non stop in front of our eyes everywhere, but by how dense every kind of media is nowadays.

A direct example in the videogames genre, is how the more cluttered a map or world is, the more is seen as “detailed” and “photorealistic”. As much as there is to enjoy of modern games, not everything is completely bad, we are getting often games that look something like this: Villages/cities that are ultra detailed, with props and textures everywhere, your eye can barely make apart all the chaos that is ensuing, giving you a fake sensation of “life and realism”. As soon as you step out of them, you are met with general filling. like dense forests with close to no POIs or very minor ones, big fields that are constantly broken by some kind of activity or minor POI to make the player continue engage.

There is nothing inherently wrong with doing this, and I don’t think photo-realism in games is the problem, but I feel like we are starting to forget how negative spaces and silence can many times be a lot stronger than clutter and action. I perfectly know that especially in videogames, a developer wants to send a certain image and feeling through how things appear in a world, but that doesn’t mean that in no game there isn’t space for some negative space and a more grand picture than details. In a game like Cyberpunk 2077 which I love very much personally, what I found monotonous after a bit was the core of the game itself: Night City. As nice and beautiful that city in the game is, and for how well the developers managed to give the feeling of a never sleeping, chaotic megacity, sometimes I feel like there is a lack of negative spaces and a suspended quite that can crumble at any time.

Going back to general media, which is maybe easier to notice since it touches everyday life, I personally don’t remember when was the last time that any kind of ad, information or media was offered in a minimal, laid back/tranquil way. The so called “minimalism” that apps, media and websites are going towards is nothing else than more pop ups, more ads, and nice looking menus until you actually need them, and once opened, become a cluttered mess. Negative spaces are mostly understood as a subject (positive space) being very exalted by the curated absence around him. But negative spaces shouldn’t only be visual phenomenon, but also a hearing and mental phenomenon.

What do I mean with that? Well, music, sound effects and generally an overwhelming amount of sounds are being used daily in all of media, to attract more and more; what if it was the opposite? A small silence, sounds that bring you wanting to come back for the pleasure of listening, not because a bell is ringing for your attention. As for mental phenomenon, have you ever experienced a piece of art, a concert, or even just an event in your life that was so beautiful, that you remembered forever without seeing it twice, or even wanting to see it twice? That is a kind of peace of mind and happy remembrance that gives us, media consumers, a negative space in our mind where media consumption can stay because it was worth to consume it. A stupid example that usually works on me are movies or shows that have a very strong emotional story or sublime camerawork (for example Cyberpunk Edgerunners, Wong Kar-wai movies, Nier series,…) where I am still consuming content and media like anybody else, but the delivery is much deeper and refined.

An obvious question to what I am saying is “But how and why are you comparing fast low quality media made solely to try and sell you something with works of art / artistic media?”. Well, my fear is that the fast and low effort media is becoming so central and most people are getting so used to it that they themselves are looking for it, forcing even reputable brands, artists and creators adopt it as for them there’s no alternative to maintain their art and themselves. In all genres, from photography, marketing (ads), videogames, books and almost anything else is noticable more cluttering, more stimulus, fast and quick delivery without breaks, and its becoming normality.

In conclusion, I don’t mean saying that us consumers are the only ones in the wrong. I would say it’s a 50/50 problem: On one side, we don’t want to leave our cocoon of routines to contemplate and break the dopamine rush, on the other side mass media and big companies assume consumers can’t do it and shouldn’t.

The issue was never volume, speed, or spectacle in itself. Even a dense and quick work like Edgerunners owes its emotional weight to its pockets of deliberate stillness: a quiet scene of mourning, a character staring out into the night, the silence between gunshots where people simply inhabit the same room, long gazes towards the Moon. Negative space does not require a work to be slow, it requires the work to provide a moment of contemplation where the impact can actually settle.

I hope that negative spaces, in every sense and phenomenon they can be expressed in, come back in both art, everyday life and media, because without nothing is worth remembering or keeping safe.