Category: communication lab

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communication lab projects

sound visualisation project

music: “I Saw Her for the First Time” by Dr. Dog

by Anna Zhukova

the process

the idea behind this project was to depict the atmosphere of the music, utilising only letters (text tool) in Adobe Illustrator.

for me, the struggle i faced was the choice of the song as I firstly was trying to find something like R&B as it seemed easier to me to convey all the soft beats and melodies, however later I realised that it was too complicated for me to choose the right shapes and curves as I got the feedback for my first draft. the music I chose was “Mrs.” by Leon Bridges:

from the feedback I also realised that the reason behind having multiple letters should be the variety of voices, however in my draft i did that unintentionally, which was the first issue. also, i kinda misunderstood the assignment and used gradient on the sides. besides numerous mistakes, i really liked the way circles shaped by the letters were interacting with the overall composition. moreover, i believe that the flow created by the curved lines of letters. so even though I decided to start from scratch when creating the final version, I adapted some of the elements that I came up with during generating this draft:

  1. circles constructed with letters
  2. “flowing” lines 
  3. different fonts 

for the final draft I have chosen a song that has a very beautiful and gentle melody, subtle tempo and a steady voice. in my design I was trying to reflect all of this elements, as well as the idea of the song: the feeling of falling in love. 

speaking of the final draft, there are some details that I would like to elaborate on a bit more:

  • “undone” circles (small gaps between letters): i decided to leave a tiny space between the first and the last letter on the path to maintain this light atmosphere. I used similarity to show that they represent the same thing. 
  • flowing lines to reflect the nice and subtle melody and the idea of experiencing a very soft and soothing feeling towards the loved one. 
  • differently sized circles were used to portray the sound of violin at the background as it brings out a certain liveliness and vibrancy to the composition
  • the flowing lines do not lead to the corners so that they are not excessively emphasised. i also used similarity to show that they all represent the flow of the voice and little high notes the artist takes.
  • differentiating boldness of the letters to make the composition more vibrant.

from my perspective, most of my intentions worked out perfectly, however I have some suggestions on how I could make the design a bit better: i could have rotated the circles so that the gaps don’t align with each other to create a coherent line. that would eliminate the unnecessary repetition. overall, I am quite satisfied with the way this project worked out. I loved the process and the experimentation I’ve done. of course, there is no limit to perfection, so I am planning to continue experimenting with this kind of medium further on my own. might be posting some of my explorations here 🙂

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“story of your life” by Ted Chiang communication lab

“story of your life” by Ted Chiang

when reading this novella I was absorbed by the way one of the main characters – Dr Louis Baker – was trying to establish contact with the aliens and learn about their way of communicating. I found particularly interesting the fact that heptapods were experiencing events and how time worked for them: instead of perceiving life in a sequence of events and thoughts, they “felt” all the events at the same time, simultaneously. this drastically differs from the way humans experience life and reflects the difference between ours and their’s language.

as for the way their language is structured, for me it occurred to be somewhat similar to Chinese: chains of semagrams on a two-dimensional surface for written language and another language for speaking. although the key difference is that the spoken language does not have any reference to the written, whereas in all human languages, as far as I know, language that we write with always somehow relates to what we are saying. moreover, the pictographic language that heptapods used as the written way of communication was way more complex than Chinese as it embedded almost inconsistent grammar structures. 

speaking of the appearance they had that was described in the novella, heptapods have radically symmetrical features, including eyes pointing in all directions, which reflect their way of experiencing events in a non-sequential manner. there is no such thing for them as looking “forward” or “back”, which also refers to their way of communication in the written language as they follow the rules of their unique visual syntax. humans, in contrast, have an imperfect symmetry: though we all have a pair of eyes, arms, legs, ears, the two sides of our bodies are still not the same. we use our arms to point at things, express using common gestures and even our facial expression often conveys a variety of emotions. this change of body positions and face reflects the way we experience life as well: we live and think in a certain sequence. 

again, I would like to talk a bit more about the relationship with the future that these aliens had: their way of perceiving events was drastically different as it followed a non-sequential path. this made me think about if our brains can reach that level of awareness of both the future and present. I keep wondering how that ability could change our behaviour and the way we communicate our thoughts. but that is for another post. 

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communication lab

my first communication lab post

hey lovely people! just trying out some features of this publishing thingy. right now struggling with finding materials for the class tomorrow. who would have guessed that Abu Dhabi is out of black paper and white plastic boards? hope that i will find some solution. less than 18 hours left.