Vassily Kandinsky: Kleine Welten IV (1922)

Gallery Descxription
This lithograph is the fourth in a series of prints entitled Small Worlds published in 1922 at the Bauhaus, the famed school of art and architecture in Weimar, Germany, where Kandinsky taught from 1921 to 1933. In each of the abstracted compositions Kandinsky utilized a theory of art he had developed as a leader of the Blue Rider artists' group a decade earlier. Each form and color in the composition is governed by a principle of inner necessity that is supposed to speak directly to the soul of the viewer. In this work, the yellow acts as an aggressive color, while the green and purple are more restrained. Tensions arise from the interaction of geometric and organic forms. The result is a microcosm governed by its own laws and rules of engagement.

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"I'm seeking it's proper use and place by Unscrolling."

A recent guest column in the New York Times reported on the author’s experience with Unscrolling, for she, too, had grown concerned about what she referred to as “devoting too many hours to an embarrassing medley of political commentary and makeup application TikTok videos.” She went on to report how her condition seemed more like a kind of obsessive-compulsive disorder than full-on addiction, but she copped to the fact that she had been spending something over eight hours each day immersed in her phone, navel-gazing. Then she came across a small suggestion that she reports made an immediate and significant difference in her daily smartphone usage. She changed her phone’s color palette from Kodachrome to greyscale, a simple switch that made a huge difference.

A friend and reader sent me the article and I immediately switched my phone to B&W. Suddenly, that alluring world turned into midwinter Kansas before Dorothy was transported to Munchkinland. Everything remained, but everything sure seemed subdued. My eye was not so easily attracted since what used to be garish had turned rather bearish. The colors no longer screamed for my attention. I’ve always preferred black and white movies to the color varieties, insisting that no color film had ever come close to bettering the best of the black and whites. When we were exiled to DC, the American Film Institute’s landmark theater in Silver Spring used to play a 70mm version of It’s A Wonderful Life each Christmas. I’ve never experienced a more immersive film experience!

My iPhone remained just as functional, but I found myself leaving it places, no longer as interested or obsessed with needing to have it close. I even took to shutting it down between uses, rather than just sleeping it. The technology had advanced, with the latest iOS releases, to being genuinely user-hostile, anyway. For instance, I have not been able to find out how to make the phone reliably ring. Sometimes it rings and sometimes it doesn’t. I need to remember to check my messages because I’m more than likely to have missed a call, more likely several, since the calls now often automatically miss me. Other similar tangles were introduced to make the phone a lot less functional than it once was. It seems to be on an evolutionary path to eventually turn into a Bakelite brick.

My email queue just went over seven thousand messages again, an essentially impossible backlog. Facebook recently installed an update that makes it formally impossible to track engagement, something I was only barely able to do under the prior arrangement. Somebody must have gotten word that users were getting ideas about how many active readers they had, a number that apparently must remain a closely held secret. The algorithm has become anything but helpful for the typical user. It has taken to hiding certain authors I follow, making it virtually impossible for me to routinely follow them. I might happen upon something they’ve posted, but never on anything like a regular rotation. I could easily find a hundred reasons why I should have just given up on the pipe dream of mobile communication, since it has proven to be virtually impossible in practice. It remains securely theoretical, and largely unproven, yet it seems to have become more popular than ever, though it’s largely comprised of electronic bilge water.

About the only reliable thing mobile communications has had still going for it was the Kodachrome user interface. The color could hypnotize better than any content ever could, apparently better, even, than functionality. The glow must be reassuring because the results of “surfing” usually aren’t. I’m surprised that engineers have not found a way to properly correct spelling errors. The tiny keyboards projected on those minuscule screens guarantees a high number of one-off entry errors. I usually have to retype any request I enter a minimum of three times, when an active editor could have checked and made reasonable corrections in-stream, as I was entering them. Often, even if I slow way down and get supremely deliberate, I still can’t enter an entire word without one-offing something in it. This amounts to a first-degree interface failure, yet we still tolerate it. We flock to be fleeced!

My brother sends me sunset and sunrise pictures every day. Those now arrive in glorious greyscale. I celebrated an old-fashioned Christmas this year with everything in proper sepia tones, like in Victorian times. I came close to reading a book in one sitting last night, my eyes finding ample local color portrayed there in the usual black on white typeface. My phone use is way down, too, though I’ll have to wait until I get a new report to see if I’ve been fooling myself on my actual usage. I don’t know if I had become addicted or, like that author, just obsessive-compulsive. I received a proof of my next book’s cover art and layout, which I reviewed in black and white. This helped me focus on the layout rather than the artwork, which I’d approved before submitting. I’d rather be writing than watching TikTok videos. I’d rather be typing on a real keyboard, with my full two and a half typing fingers, than trying to communicate using one apparently crooked finger on my iPhone. iPhones might be more ego than technology, more status symbol than useful, anyway. I’m seeking its proper use and place by Unscrolling.

©2025 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Unscrolling, #PureSchmaltz