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Here are the color schemes that I create, inspired by famous movies and drawings, using Adobe Illustrator.

 

Reading the Story of Your Life, by Ted Chiang, I found some very interesting theories/assumptions about the communication ways of the aliens.

The aliens’ usage of language and communication skills are different from human beings. They have two language systems, one is for speaking and one is for writing. The two language systems are quite different from one another, and play different cultural or cognitive roles that using separate languages makes more sense than using different forms of the same one. The storyteller, Louise, clearly considers their writing language an advanced language system. The aliens’ writing language is uniquely two-dimensional without any interaction with the oral language that could count as another dimension. There’s a high degree of integration in their writing, and the whole sentence or paragraph seems to be whatever number of semagrams they wanted to join together, which showcases the “teleological” mode of thinking.

These kinds of unparalleled ways of communication of the aliens are shaped by the strong influence of their body structure. In the beginning of the story, Louise described the physical structure of the “heptapods” when she saw them for the first time. ” It was radially symmetric, and any of its limbs could serve as an arm or a leg (5).” “Seven lidless eyes ringed the top of the heptapod’s body (5).” And they do not need to turn their bodys to see different directions, because “with eyes on all sides, any direction might as well be ‘forward’.” So this special physical structure enables them to think in a way that adapts to the perspective they observe and feel the world. For example, they experienced all events at once, and perceived a purpose underlying them all. Or, as Louise demonstrated, the priority between different thoughts or concepts are the same, thus they don’t seek for a causal logic to explain things. However, human beings can only see things that are in front of them and feel things with their two hands, which means that they can only sense a part of the world at one moment. And that caused the result of the linear thinking mode of people.

Inspired by a traditional Chinese dance called 相和歌, this project requires players to observe the dance and decide when to click on keys to play the different beats of the drum. Let’s take part in creating the music by adding beats to the original music!

Yuyang Hu

Title: The Harmony of Dance and Music

Subtitle: Dance responding to music

Presentation
    Inspired by a traditional Chinese dance called 相和歌, this project requires players to observe the dance and decide when to click on keys to play the different beats of the drum. Let’s take part in creating the music by adding beats to the original music!

https://github.com/Yuyang-Hu/rebecca_B/settings/pages

https://yuyang-hu.github.io/rebecca_B/

Yuyang Hu

– Title
    The Harmony of Dance and Music – Subtitle     Dance responding to music

– The elevator pitch
    This is sort of an interactive music game that showing a traditional Chinese dance form called “相和歌” to the audience or players. The video of the dance can help users to understand the feeling of the song. Users need to click on the button to play the different beats of the drum, they can take part in creating the music by adding their favorite beats to the original music according to their understanding of the song.

– Abstract
    In my website, there are two links in the homepage that respectively lead users to the page that introduce the dance and the page that introducec the game. In the game introduction page, there’s another button called “Get started!”, it will bring users to the game page.     The game require players to observe the movements of the dances and pay special attention to the movement of kick, rub and step. Besides, players should press the corresponding keys to create the sound of these movements.

Reflection

– Process (Design and composition)
    I wanted to explore the topic of the harmony of dance and music because I watched the video of the dance “相和歌”, which was a populer dance in ancient Chinese times, especially in Han dynasty. This particular form of dance is special for me since the dancer has a drum when performing, and can create sound of the beats by stepping, kicking and rubbing the drum and so on, reaponding to the music not only by their movements, but also by creating beats to make the songs more complete. The word “相和” refers to the responding of the dancers to the music, I found this kind of performance so interesting and attractive. 

– Process (Technical)
    I met a lot of obstacles in the making process, for example, I wanted to create a p5.js canvas on the homepage as the background image of my website, but I failed to add a picture on the canvas, it won’t show up on the html page, only color worked. What’s more, I wanted to make some connections between p5.js and html web pages, and to Identify the correct rhythm by timing the video from the time it plays, and thus determine whether the player is pressing the right key at the right time, but I also failed to manage that.  

– Reflection and Future Development
    To create the motivation for players to play the game, for example, make some connection between the video and the p5.js code, and examine whether the player pressed the correct keys in the proper time. What’s more, maybe I can change the keys into some other keys that are easier to press, so it can be more convinient for fist time players.

– Feedback from my audiance and instructors
    My instructors gave me lots of constructive suggestions after my presentation. First of all, the layout of my website should be more uniform, I used different fonts in different html pages, but if I use the same font, it will make the web page look cleaner. Second, I should consider more about the user experience, one of the good ideas is to add a button for going back to the homepage in the introduction and game interface. Besides, in terms of the introduction of the game, I was suggested to add some photos of the different movements of dancers, so that players could know what to pay attention to in advance.

     

Now I have made some improvements according to the suggestions above, I’m really appreciate for every kind feedback!