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Hi, alien friends! I am from the blue planet far away from your homeland–the Earth. After reading the book ‘the story of your life’, I have a basic understanding of you and your linguistic system. I am so curious about your characters. Thus, based on that, I made a pioneer plaque to introduce our characters, more specifically, Chinese characters to you.

According to the description by the author, your written language is more like several logos which represent different meanings joining together to create an image instead of writing from one side to the other. Therefore, we apply your mode of writing to our Chinese characters. We separate 4 characters in one sentence which are ‘家’, ‘国’, ‘天’ and ‘下’ and reunite them together to make a logo in your way. As you can see, the outcome is shown in the middle of the plaque. Different from your words which mostly are pictographic characters, this is an associated compound. The meaning of the associated compound is that it is not made by the appearance of a specific object but by people’s understanding of the concept. Thus, from my point of view, it is quite interesting to introduce this to you since, in this way, not only can you get to know our written language but also get to know how we perceive the world. Besides, you can also have access to our values.

The first word ‘家‘ which should be pronounced as ‘Jia’ in the Chinese language represents family. The upper part is ‘宀’, which should be pronounced as ‘Mian’ stands for the physical structure of a house. And the lower part ‘豕‘ stands for ‘pigs’ which in the past in the main source of meat. So with the meat and the house, it becomes the family. And the second word is ‘国’ (Guo). The rectangle stands for the meaning of domain. And the middle part shares a similar meaning of territory. The third words ‘天’ is representing a man who stands straight. People in the past considered the sky the part above the top of a human’s head. And the last word ‘下‘(Xia) is simply two lines. The upper line is the zero line and the location of the other line compared to the zero lines is the meaning of ‘下‘. Nowadays we combine ‘天’ and ‘下’ to show the meaning of the whole world.

So the overall meaning of the four characters is the unity of every stage of units in the society. However, when we refer to the word, we always think of the whole country or the whole earth. However, when we meet you, friends from the mystery space, it is time for us to expand this concept to a broader range–the universe. A bigger unity–the unity of the whole universe.

 

Initial Color Scheme

(1)

1:  R=148 G=184 B=186 

     H=183 S=20% B=73%

2.  R=249 G=151 B=117

     H=15 S=53% B=98%

3.  R=218 G=190 B=163 

     H=29 S=25% B=85%

4.  R=67 G=92 B=55 

     H=101 S=40% B=36%

(2)

1:  R=187 G=211 B=226 

     H=203 S=17% B=89%

2.  R=211 G=217 B=211

     H=120 S=3% B=85%

3.  R=176 G=165 B=174 

     H=311 S=6% B=69%

4.  R=246 G=224 B=191 

     H=36 S=22% B=96%

(3)

Film ‘Emma’

1:  R=136 G=128 B=118 

     H=33 S=13% B=53%

2.  R=182 G=170 B=160

     H=27 S=12% B=71%

3.  R=209 G=204 B=197 

     H=35 S=6% B=82%

4.  R=164 G=173 B=147 

     H=81 S=15% B=68%

(4)

                                                   ‘Portrait de la jeune fille en feu’

1:  R=78 G=120 B=127 

     H=189 S=39% B=50%

2.  R=137 G=169 B=161

     H=165 S=19% B=66%

3.  R=212 G=209 B=181 

     H=54 S=15% B=83%

4.  R=176 G=180 B=144 

     H=67 S=20% B=71%

（5）

‘Laurence Anyways’

 

1:  R=159 G=178 B=155 

     H=110 S=13% B=70%

2.  R=149 G=158 B=143

     H=96 S=9% B=62%

3.  R=110 G=121 B=102 

     H=95 S=16% B=47%

4.  R=125 G=139 B=121 

     H=107 S=13% B=55%

（6）

‘Little Women’

1:  R=114 G=131 B=158 

     H=217 S=28% B=62%

2.  R=226 G=159 B=116

     H=23 S=49% B=89%

3.  R=169 G=159 B=173 

     H=283 S=8% B=68%

4.  R=225 G=197 B=192 

     H=9 S=15% B=88%

(7)

‘Dragons’

1:  R=69 G=47 B=28 

     H=28 S=59% B=27%

2.  R=110 G=56 B=36

     H=16 S=67% B=43%

3.  R=190 G=100 B=75 

     H=13 S=61% B=75%

4.  R=154 G=111 B=87 

     H=21 S=44% B=60%

（8）

1:  R=135 G=150 B=103 

     H=79 S=31% B=59%

2.  R=240 G=226 B=178

     H=46 S=26% B=94%

3.  R=148 G=120 B=91 

     H=31 S=39% B=58%

4.  R=127 G=87 B=69 

     H=19 S=46% B=50%

（9）

1:  R=201 G=135 B=147

     H=349 S=33% B=79%

2.  R=195 G=127 B=136

     H=352 S=35% B=76%

3.  R=145 G=89 B=97 

     H=351 S=39% B=57%

4.  R=174 G=148 B=166 

     H=318 S=15% B=68%

（10）

1:  R=94 G=115 B=140 

     H=213 S=33% B=55%

2.  R=140 G=100 B=109

     H=346 S=29% B=55%

3.  R=181 G=151 B=162

     H=338 S=17% B=71%

4.  R=163 G=167 B=125 

     H=66 S=25% B=65%

 

Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence.

Ryuichi Sakamoto 

0:55～1:14:(soft and slow) narration

2:52～3:09:(strong and fast) frustration and struggle

3:10～3:25:(mix) peace and deep thinking

black and white–fantasy and reality

overlapping & extension–the process of deep thinking & reflection

square–rational thought

 

 

 

 

 

Story of your life

  For the first question ‘How do aliens in the story language and communication style different from the human language?’ From my perspectives, the biggest difference happens in the written language. Firstly, of course, they don’t speak English or any human language. Our language type are different. Then, just as mentioned or assumed by Louis, the aliens have many eyes around their body. Thus, they don’t have a sense of the front. In other words, all the directions could be the front. It, in some way, affect their writing system. They don’t write from left to right like we do. If we want to right the sentence ‘How are you?’ We should start from writing ‘How’ then go to ‘are’ and the last one, ‘you’. But fot the aliens, they are different. The way they write sentences is more like joining everything together and make a whole logo. The advantage is that, they could get information more efficiently if all the messeage are piled together. And another thing that I found interesting is that since all the words or logos are joining together, it is hard to define which is the subject and which is the object. So they come up with the ways to write a mark. If the mark is parrallel, it is the subject and vice versa. By this way, the written language seems to be a more concise and easy way to communicate or convey information. As a result, the written language become the prime language used by the aliens and the oral language become the second, which is different from us.

  As for how do out body structure influence the way we communicate. For out human being, we speak with our mouth. But for the aliens, they don’t have mouth. Therefore, as mentioned in the novel, they speak with their holes. We have only two eyes in at one side of the body. As a result, we right from left to right. Aliens, as mentioned before, write logos together. The similar things that we share is that we all have some gesture and eye contact which should also be part of communication.