Walkie-Talkies 

Walkie-takies are basically “a two way portable radio”. The reason as to why my partner and I chose this is because it might be easier to explain to the heptapods since one way of communicating for them is “using sounds that the human tract can’t reproduce”. What is so interesting about how the walkie-talkie functions is that the heptapods don’t necessarily need to speak the human language in order for them to use it, they can simply making fluttering sounds to communicate. Walkie-talkies also don’t use wifi, instead it functions by using radio waves to communicate wirelessly.  This would come in handy and be easy to use and understand if the heptapods decided to take a few to their own home. Walkie-talkies also don’t have many functions so the heptapods would most likely understand if you just showed them how to use by actions and showing them which button to press. 

For my plaque, I decided to just include two humans on the opposite side with walkie talkie’s so it shows that there is distance in between them. In the middle I drew an arrow and then included the sound emoji since it further shows the distance and that there is sound traveling between the humans. Finally, I added the man speaking emoji showing that the man is producing sound which will thence transmitted through the walkie talkie for the woman to hear. The woman then has a ear emoji showing that she is listening.

In the beginning of the passage, Louise mentions how her first impression of the heptapod’s handwritten language is logographic, meaning simple emojis and images would allow them to understand what us humans are trying to convey. Therefore, my design is simple in terms of trying to explain how walkie-talkies work. I feel like if my design was more complicated or had a lot of “logos”, it would be harder for heptapods to understand since their eyes go all the way around their head which means they have no sense of direction. 

One thing  I had a hard time incorporating into my plaque was the limited distance since walkie-talkies only work a certain distance from eachother. Another challenging aspect of this is how I would be able to show more of the two way communication. Heptapods don’t read left to right and they jump around when reading so they may misunderstand the plaque. Additionally, a potential problem that came to mind was the radio waves since their radio waves on their planet may not be the same as ours. 

All in all, I do believe the heptapods would find the walkie-talkies interesting since it’s much easier to explain that to them then to explain how phones and other technologies function in our rapidly technological driven world.

Song: “Beauty and the Beast” by The Rose

Concept and Design 

When I started listening to “Beauty and the Beast”, my first impression was that it was a melancholic and sad song. The song is mainly composed of vocals, guitar, bass, piano and drums. Each one of those instruments had a vital role in the song and so I tried to create a different design for each of them. The B’s in my project represent the guitar, the semi enclosed and closed circles represent the drums, the wavy flow of characters represented the vocals and the S’s just represent how I felt in general when listening to the song. The opening of the circles face towards the wave because it draws attention to the vocal and flow aspect of the piece.

My project design reflects Gestalt theory because I used a black background and white letters, which in my opinion added to the meaning of the piece because using a white background would have made the audience have a different interpretation and view of the piece.One Black Square inspired my design because I played around with similarity and continuation. Each of the elements used in my project can be clearly group together since I used the same letters but different scaling for them. The scaling allowed me to somewhat create a 3D effect. The right side of my project has larger scaled letters than the right side. As for continuation, I made sure my design went out of dimensions of the project so it gives an illusion of the letters continuing to flow outside of the frame. 

Process

At first, it was really hard for me to come up with ideas since I focused on interpreting the song and how I was able to make my audience understand it. I later redesigned more than half of my project after the first half mid critique and after I heard what others could improve on. After realizing that instead of trying to interpret the song, I needed to focus on the composition and flow. Therefore, I was able to create other elements in my piece that connected to flow of the song which was clearly understood when it was my turn to present for mid-critque. I was also given some suggestions to play around with scaling and positioning of the layers so I ended up rescaling them in order to create more of a 3D effect rather than 2D

Conclusion

If I had more time to improve my project, I would have definitely tried to create more symmetry and or balance between the top and bottom of my piece. The B’s on the bottom have a heavier weight on them so a good idea would be to scale them smaller or get rid of a row in order to create space in the bottom right so I can include the circles I did on the top half of my piece. I think that would bring more balance and the peace/ comfort to my project

Image 

 final draft & first attempt

• Aliens vocal tract is different from human vocal tracts, doesn’t sound like they are using a larynx to produce sound
• Humans most likely cannot reproduce the same sound/ human ear cannot distinguish
• To learn an unknown language, you have to interact with native speaker 
• Fluttering sounds, “puckered orifice at the top of its body vibrate”, how they talk/ communicate
• Communicated by pointing/ gestures to understand each other since they couldn’t understand each other’s languages
• Aliens had a language of their own but it seemed very complex 
• Repeated Flutter 1 but no response
• First impression of heptapod’s written language: logographic
• “Their script isn’t word-divided”(11) humans read left to right, the heptapod’s don’t, “they join the logograms by rotating/ notifying them.” (also may connect to the way they are physically built. the aliens can read the word no matter how its rotated which might be due to their bodies’ racial symmetry.
• Form of writing was similar to primitive sign systems 
• Heptapods’ formation of physics is similar to humans but not easily understood 
• Learning Heptapod B had changed the way the narrator viewed her life/ memories
• Heptapod’s follow Fermat’s Law “light travels between two points along the path that requires the least time, as compared to the nearby paths”
• Louise’s memory with her daughter is written in future tense, might be related to how she is studying the language of Heptapods.