Fieldwork #14 - Going Dark

I think constant visibility might be killing mystery.

Somewhere along the way, visibility stopped being a choice.

As designers, we are expected to document our process, share our thinking, capture our travels, post our inspiration, celebrate our wins, and somehow remain consistently visible in between. I’m beginning to feel that we live in a culture of constant disclosure.

Meals are photographed before they are eaten. Holidays are documented before they are experienced. We design spaces to be photographed before they are inhabited and share ideas before they have had time to fully form. Every thought, observation and encounter seems destined to become content.

But what happens when it doesn’t?

I’ve been thinking about what this constant visibility is costing us, not from a productivity or wellness perspective but from a creative one.

Does absence have value and can disappearance be productive?

As someone who builds a practice based on observation, I have become increasingly interested in what happens when we stop documenting everything we see.

For most creative industries, visibility is currency. And if I’m honest, I’ve become fluent in the game. I know how to document the process, share the work, and stay present in the feed.

The problem is that I’m no longer sure where observation ends and performance begins.

In a culture obsessed with visibility, what happens when you deliberately become less visible? When experience is no longer immediately converted into content. What I’m intrigued by is what happens to creativity when we stop performing it publicly.

I’ve decided to become the guinea pig in this experiment, to disappear for a week. So for the next seven days, I’m going dark.

Not disappearing entirely - just becoming less visible.

What going dark means:

No posting.
No checking engagement.
No visual consumption spirals.
No documenting daily life.

Perhaps even reduced camera usage since the experiment is not just about producing content, but consuming less of it.

The goal isn’t to do a digital detox. In fact, this is more a social experiment and design inquiry into paying attention to what changes when I stop performing my attention publicly.

Less content consumption might result in boredom, probably withdrawal, definite discomfort and awkward silence. It could however also have a positive effect in creating heightened observation, clarity, focused attention and hopefully less comparison.

What I’m grappling with is:

Will I notice more?

Will I remember more?

Will I feel relieved?

Or will I simply discover how deeply visibility has become woven into the way I navigate my world.

There is another thought that intrigues me.

I wonder if constant visibility is slowly eroding mystery.

Mystery in our work, in our spaces, in our identities and even in the stories we tell about ourselves. Since we document everything, explain and reveal everything, nothing is allowed to disappear.

I’d like to think the most interesting things in life have always required a distance. A gap between experience and explanation. A space for interpretation.

Maybe not everything needs to be shared, seen or understood immediately.

Perhaps we no longer leave enough unsaid.

For the next seven days, I’m treating this as a field study on visibility, mystery and creative attention and trying to understand what constant visibility does to perception, atmosphere, memory, desire, and creative practice.

I’ll be taking notes.

Observing what disappears and what returns.

I’ll report back in a week.

Until then, I’ll be somewhere in the dark.

See you next week,