Pioneer Plaque

Filters on Social Media

In the 21st century, with the rapid development of technology, social media has been deeply bound to every person. On social media, people share their photos, their lives, their thoughts and feelings, and so on. Social media can be said to be another form of human expression of self-identity. However, everyone wants to be more beautiful and perfect, and this common goal has given birth to the “filter”. The birth of “filters”. A so-called filter is a tool that can directly make the picture in the camera more exquisite and beautiful when humans take pictures and is a kind of technology that modern humans are very much in pursuit of and love.

The feeling that social media brings to human beings is like the feeling that a filter gives to human beings. On social media, you will see many different people sharing a wonderful and sophisticated life. You will see your favorite bloggers sharing their lives, excellent grades, rich practical activities, fashionable clothes, fulfilling studies, and so on. While gaining satisfaction, you will also unconsciously start to compare your own life. Because people spend the most time with themselves, at all times you are observing yourself, so it is absolutely true, then you will feel inferior – why my life is not like this. Similarly, when you take a picture with a filter, you look so good and perfect in the camera, but when you remove the filter, you start to feel sad because of the contrast.

Life under the heavy filter constitutes social media.

Social media is a new form of filter.

Introducing Human Technology

Think about introducing a traditional custom to a person from another culture speaking a different language. That would be hard, not only because not speaking a common language, but also because of the lack of shared cultural background and experience. What about introducing it to an alien who has a different language system and thinking system? 

In Story of Your Life, the alien whose body structure doesn’t have a front and back, possesses a language that is completely different from human’s. Their writing and speaking language is separate and without a linear concept. Perhaps in their culture, there is no consequence and result. Imagine how we can introduce human technology to them.

When we discussed how we are going to demonstrate what a filter is on social media and how it works, we struggled a lot on how to explain the process of “before and after” of the function of this human technology. Because in the language as well as the worldview of the aliens, they don’t consist of a linear sense. They may not know to read from right to left, nor from up to down. And of course using arrows would not make sense even though it’s the one of the most effective ways to express information in human language. So instead, we gave up the idea of explaining the relationship of consequence and result, and focused on how it would be like to perform such technology. 

We tried to explain the filter inside of a phone screen in this way:

In the image we created, we put in two faces. One represents the real self, and the one with the filter, which is framed inside a box. The latter is a “better” and “upgraded” version of the former. It has cute cat ears, eyes with long lashes, a taller nose and red lipstick on. In this sense, we hope to let the alien understand that this technology we introduce is something that can make one’s face in another space different. And there are some circles at the bottom of the box, which is a cell phone, that represent options of different filters. The biggest circle in the middle shows that it is the one being used. And we hoped to convey the idea that when it’s selected, the filter that shows on the face (or “things” that appear on the face) will correspond to the graphics in the circle.