"Language, according to the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, shapes our thoughts. If this is true then what might emoji’s be doing to our thoughts? Now that we’ve begun scattering pictures amongst the traditional structures of letters, words, grammar, punctuation and so on, what kind of new thoughts might be forming in our minds? Do we already find there are some things we can only express through emoji’s? How, for example, could traditional language express the exact sentiment represented by the dancing lady emoji?
Emjoiopolis explores one possible consequence of this communicative shift. What if by using pictures to augment the ways we describe places and landscapes we are also making places and landscapes? Could the agglomeration of symbols we tap into our screens take on a life of their own? If so then is this image of Emojioplois might be the kind of world that emoji-speak creates. Just as Wordsworth, through written language, shaped a romantic understanding of the Lake District’s landscape so powerfully that it still frames our own vision, perhaps the emoji characters will become building blocks of new kinds of landscape that could never have been conceived without them."
Credit: Sam Jacob Studio