Sound Visualization Documentation

        I am Chenhan Xu. Here’s my work of Sound Visualization of music “Sogno di Volare” by Christopher Tin:

        And the music is here:        https://open.spotify.com/track/1miPwGI7xUKfHj6vIpMfP3?autoplay=true

Concept and Design

        From the music. From the progressive harmonies in the lower registers, the elegant violins in the upper registers, and the solemn orchestral group, I felt a strong sense of power. At the same time, the repetition of the melody is a bit cyclical, with ups and downs as if sailing on the sea. It reminds me of Columbus exploring the unknown. The whole piece of music is purposeful and rising, leading up to the climax, which in my imagination is the discovery of an unknown continent, where people from all walks of life come together to fight and write new glories.

Process

        With a rough sense of the music, I began to compose. I started with a rough distortion of the letter c, to make it look more like a wave, and placed it in the center, in the sense of sailing on the sea.

        After this, I felt that the power of the wave was relatively not so strong, he was a bit too soft, and I preferred to reflect some graphics full of power in my work. Therefore, I made four straight lines similar to light beams, which converge at a point to the left of the center, which may represent the unknown new continent they discovered. The four rays of light spread out in all directions, and here I think I should borrow a little bit of the style of painting similar to the Sun King, emphasizing a kind of power and dominance. This is my first draft:

        After this, I felt that the white and black generics were not evenly distributed, and were a bit too blank in some places, so I wondered what I could do to compensate. Therefore, I placed the letter d in the lower right corner, with a curved graphic to show some rigid-flexible softness, which of course can be interpreted as a boat. At the same time, I added some short dashed lines of the right length next to all the straight lines in an attempt to indicate the sense of speed of these beams. And then it was done!

Conclusion

I think I did a pretty good job on most of this assignment, but there are still some shortcomings. I think I’m not very skillful in using Adobe Illustrator, so some of the details in my assignment may not be handled very well.

        This is my Pioneer Plaque：

        What we can see in this motion picture is a man drilling a tree branch for fire. According to archaeologists, humans started using fire about a million years ago. This is an extremely historic moment, before that, people could only eat raw meat, and cold food, which not only tastes bad, but is also prone to parasites and other safety issues. After drilling wood to get fire, people began to be able to cook with fire, defend themselves against wild animals, have activities at night, and have the help of warmth in winter. The advent of fire took human evolution to the next level, so to speak. Oh, have to want you to explain what fire is, from a chemical point of view: the fire we see is a luminous heat phenomenon in the form of a flame when a combustible material undergoes a rapid oxidation reaction with oxygen. The color of the flame is related to the temperature of combustion and energy changes. For example, sodium atoms get energy at high temperatures and turn into an excited state, but the excited state is not very stable and will automatically release energy back to the ground state. It releases energy equivalent to 589.6nm and 589nm two wavelengths of light, so the sodium burning flame is yellow. From a physical point of view: fire is the light and heat generated by the combustion of substances, its nature is the expression of energy and electron jumps

Returning to the main topic, I would also like to emphasize that fire also played a very important role in the various revolutions that followed in the following thousands of years, such as the mechanical revolution. Perhaps you will have heard that there was a Greek named Prometheus who brought fire to mankind, but this is from mythology, that is, a story, and we can’t be sure whether it’s true or not.

        The current human technology I’d like to pick is, as you can see, GIF. I understand that the logic of your language is synchronized and concurrent, whereas we earthlings speak in a linear progression, which can make it inconvenient for you to read. And gifs are a great way to solve the problem. With just the animated content of a GIF, we earthlings are able to understand what the sender is trying to convey through the motion picture, possibly explaining a concept, or expressing anger or helplessness. Of course, it will be a bit difficult for you guys to understand the deeper meaning behind the motion picture, but I believe that you should have no problem simply understanding what the picture brings. Although we have only two hands and two feet, which is different from you, you will be able to understand by analogy what would happen if you were to change from a seven-legged hand to a two-legged one. I see that you can convey the meaning of our words through a single symbol, and that is very impressive!

So I was looking for a similar medium on Earth, and I found theGIFs!

                                 This is My First Blog