Emily and I would like to introduce the magnifying glass to heptapods. Given the striking linguistic gap between humans and heptapods, it is hard to communicate orally even in a face-to-face situation. Instead, we decided on a visual approach to convey the essence of this optical tool. In our visual representation, we carefully tried to create a frame that presented the heptapod’s perspective alongside ours based on Louise’s previous study.
On the left side of the frame, I firstly drew a human eye and illustrated the size of a heptapod as it would naturally appear to our eyes, using arrows to guide their gaze. At the bottom right of the picture is a magnifying glass, drawing the same eyes as the left in the center of the lens, indicating the function of a magnifying glass. The right shoulder pointing towards the human eye is a heptapod seen with a magnifying glass, which has been magnified. Compared with the heptapod seen from the normal distance on the left, the body, eyes and limbs of the heptapod in the lens are significantly enlarged, and the suction cups on the limbs are clearly visible. The contrast between left and right allows heptapods to understand the information on the graph without any other help, which effectively communicated the concept of the human eye enhanced by a magnifying glass.
Unlike human languages that are expressed and written in a linear way, Heptapod’ scripts are more like what Louise calls “logogram”, which is circular, in other words, non-linear. To align with Heptapod B’s non-linear, logogram-based script, we employed a left-right parallel composition in our visual representation, which is more similar to their linguistic system: the distinct pairs of subjects represented by the human eye and the eye in the magnifying glass; the heptapods themselves portrayed in two different ways as the objects; the two pairs of arrows pointing to heptapods represent parallel lines.
Furthermore, each of these “logograms” we draw represents a specific object or concept. In this context, these logograms serve as powerful tools for communication between us and heptapods with visual symbols. Even if the heptapod’s language doesn’t have linear structure like ours, the simple subject-object components allowed the heptapods to grasp our intended information that we’re trying to convey.
As for how to show this image to the heptapods, I think I will point to the different Logograms in sequence and repeat: two fingers pointing to my eyes, then to the heptapod in front of me; Place the magnifying glass in front of one of my eyes, point at the heptapod, and draw circles with both arms in a gesture that represents “magnification”. Actually, an easier way to show the magnification is to hold a magnifying glass in front of their eyes (if possible), but I would say our primary aim is to present the magnifying glass as the message itself.
Under the context of Ted Chiang’s “Story of Your Life”, our Pioneer Plaque aims to convey the essence of the magnifying glass to heptapods by embracing their linguistic characteristics. Even introducing a simple technology of human culture could be a big step when communicating with these Aliens for humans.