Over the years, I have gathered a small collection of every day speak: words and phrases that are eliminated from all kinds of literary structures and conventions, such as captions, notes, toilet door scribbles, signs, tropes, overheard conversations, status updates, Youtube comments, rumors… 

You Hang Up! No, You Hang Up! is the name of a seminar I am teaching and currently rounding up at the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Karlsruhe, Germany. I have asked the students to develop an awareness to the kind of text pieces mentioned above and to find engaging ways to document and visualize them. The project should inspire a sensitivity for existing content but should also trigger the students to write their own similar material.

The title of the seminar is a TV trope like "I love you." "I Love You More..." "No, I Love You More..." and is taken directly from an episode of Friends where Ross is on the sofa talking on the phone to his girlfriend Julie, while Rachel is right next to him trying to read a magazine, clearly annoyed by the lovebird's cutesy conversation about nothing. Ross and Julie end up in an extensive saying goodbye instructing each other to hang up the phone. Rachel, who obviously has enough of the chit chat, quickly grabs the phone from Ross' hands and hangs up the phone for him, assuming that that was what he wanted all along.