Category: Communication Lab

Members: Siwei Chen, Jim Liu

This is an illustration of the GPS System on earth that serves to introduce the technology to aliens. GPS system, as we all know, is a satellite-based navigation system that allows users to determine their precise location, speed, and time, anywhere on or near the Earth’s surface. 

To better understand the illustration, the characteristics of our subject, known as “heptapods” in the story, must be understood. They are described as having a very different physiology and perception of time than humans. They do their communications using a complex system of visual symbols, which they call “semagrams”. These symbols are circular, with multiple rings that represent different layers of meaning. The heptapods can manipulate these symbols in various ways to convey different messages. Furthermore, they have a non-linear perception of time, which means that they experience time all at once rather than in a linear sequence as humans. They are able to perceive past, present, and future events simultaneously. 

Honestly speaking, it is quite hard to imagine how they perceive the world without the causal mindset, which we, as human beings, have been mastering in using it for millions of years and regard as something indispensable to our way of thinking, just as air and water to our living. So it’s quite difficult to imagine how the alien will understand the illustration. Thus, we tried to make the illustration as clear-cut to be understood by aliens as possible. 

In the middle of the picture to the up-right is the earth. The drawing we think is pretty representative because the first thing of our civilization that aliens driving their spaceship perceive must be the earth, and the drawing vividly depicts it. And on the right surface of it, there is an object on the mountain. Then, an artificial satellite scans the surface of the earth and creates a piece of positional information, which is externalized using graphs. The information could be internalized and used by human beings on earth. We use a circular mode to represent all of this, instead of using a linear one. This is because according to “Story of Your Life”, it matches aliens’ mindset of thinking, which is kind of circular. 

On the left corner of the picture, there is an illustration of the earth whose equator is highlighted, signalizing aliens to orbit around the earth. Next to it is a map of the earth. The former two things signalize what a map is, which can further illuminate how to understand the maps created by the GPS system. This illustration of how to understand a map is crucial to aliens’ understanding of the information given by the GPS system because human beings have been so familiar with the language of maps but aliens possibly aren’t. 

On the right corner of the picture, it shows how the satellite scans the area to make map information, which further illuminates the idea. 

The three parts of the picture, as a human being would understand, should have a logical order to express the whole idea. If the picture were written for human beings, we would add some logical symbols such as arrows to represent it. However, they would be useless and even distracting to aliens in the fiction, who see the picture as a whole. 

However, we still think that there’s room for improvement. For example, we still divided the illustration into three parts, which is also something human beings have accustomed to doing when illustrating something. It would be more understandable to aliens if we come up with another great idea without using parts and logic. 

Name: Siwei Chen
Title of the music: 骤雨の狭間 (Shower)
Artist Name: Silentroom

When I first heard this music, the beginning of the piece gave me a heavy percussive feeling. It has a darker style, like a heavy and noisy rainstorm hitting the roof, striking the ground, and falling into the water. The drums and beats are very complex. But when I heard the middle section, I heard the lush, smooth sound of the saxophone, accompanied by the strings, as if the dark clouds had been cut away, the sun had been revealed, the sunlight had fallen, and all the scenery was bright. It was a sun shower.

So in my work, I am going to draw the ripples of rain hitting the ground and add random elements to express the complex drums of the piece. These ripple patterns, although composed of words, are still recognizable, and by Gestalt psychology, the viewer can perceive and recognize these elements and thus associate them with the scene of heavy rain. I also used approximate and closure principles to form the close text circles into a ripple pattern. These ripple patterns are independent and not connected, showing that although the music is complicated with drums, the drum beat does not affect each other and still proceed in a regular manner. From the previous One Black Square assignment, I learned how to use simple black and white to represent abstract objects, and also learned to use appropriate interspersed black and white to give the viewer a sense of visual impact. Therefore, in this assignment, I used black and white to fill the background in a symmetrical way to make a strong sense of contrast, which corresponds to the quick and strong rhythm of the song. The black and white background also corresponds to the contrast between the darkness in the first half of the song and the light and brightness in the second half. 

In the mid-critique, I received some suggestions: the pattern of the ripples looked like “cells”; the pattern was not complex enough to show the complexity of the music; the font was a bit monotonous, and so on. So in the final work, I changed the arrangement of the original pattern and used different fonts to outline the ripples in a circle, and then changed the shape a little to create the feeling of raindrops falling. Then I used the letter “O” and the letter “I” to make water droplets and raindrops, which fell randomly in my work. I also used a string of randomly typed letters as a random element at the corner. That’s how I finished my final piece.

I received some suggestions such as the black background and the white background doesn’t need to be completely symmetry, so I consider that if I had more time, I will try to enrich the background, for example, putting the black background at the top and bottom of the work, and the white one in the middle to make the white background interspersed with black, which brings a better visual effect to the viewer.

The first draft and the final work:

The story of your life–Ted Chiang

The whole piece of fiction is interspersed with two stories. One is the story of the author’s communication with the aliens, conducted in a human writing style. The other is the story of the author and her child, recounted in Heptapod writing style.

When speaking, Heptapods’ pronunciation is different from humans. Humans cannot pronounce the word they said. So it is hard to communicate orally.

They write in a semagram style, their written language is a composition of complex symbols that convey meaning in a nonlinear fashion, which can be unordered.  And as they can know the future, so they know how would the composition of their writing be before they write, which is impossible for humans.

The way Heptapod thought is also different from humans. When they said: “process create-endpoint inclusive-we”, means  “let’s start”. When it comes to understanding the travel of light rays. They thought it was because the path that the light choose is the shortest and quickest for it to travel. They thought in a way that they have seen the future and the end before the action.

The physical structure of Heptapod is that they have seven limbs, which enable them to use a complex combination of symbolic characters. The structure also affects the way they speak, their vocal tract is substantially different from a human vocal tract so they pronounce differently from humans. In contrast, humans use nonverbal communication cues, such as facial expressions, body language, and tone of voice, to convey meaning and emotion.