Category: Communications Lab

Stephanie Yip 

Brutal by Olivia Rodrigo

Concept & Design: 

            My sound visualization project is based on the song Brutal by Olivia Rodrigo. It is an upbeat, loud and chaotic song that I chose to represent through this project using the letters “v”, “s”, “q”, “g”, “j”, “x”, “b” and “o”.  The main part of the song that I wanted to emphasize was the loud beats before the song begins which is why I included layers of the letter “G” to represent the loud beats. I used letters to represent the sound made such as for the beginning sharp, almost sad part of the song, I used the letter “V” and “S” as the sound kind of swirls and becomes hard to follow but still increases in pitch. And then I used the letters “j” to represent the strumming and deep sound that plays after the loud beats and the letters “B” and “O” to show a bouncier sound that follows. I also used Gestalts theory to fill up the space on my design and since the rhythm of the song after the chorus repeats itself, I used proximity and motion to show the beats going in a full circle and going back to the loud “G” beats. The black square project helped me with this project through the use of similarity and motion I depicted in both projects. With the use of similarity and proximity for certain letters, I think I was able to make my sound visualization project more dimensional and easy to follow. 

Process:

             At the start of this project, I was very confused on how to depict sound and wasn’t very clear on the assignment at hand. For instance, in my mid-critique I realized that I was supposed to use letters instead of shapes and also wasn’t allowed to use gradients. Although I liked the look of my mid-critique work as well, it didn’t clearly represent the music well as it was rather all over the place. So instead, for my final product, I sat down and scraped the whole thing. I started from listening to the beginning of the song and piece by piece, came up with letters and techniques that fit that certain part of the song until it all connected. For example, for the part of the song that went to the strumming of a guitar, I used the letter “j” lowercase and slowly extended it to show the “jumpy” like sound getting deeper and deeper. By slowly listening to the song and matching it with different letters, I was able to depict the song better than when I did during mid-critique.

Conclusion:

             Although I am pretty satisfied with the outcome of my project, I believe that I could have played with usage of negative space in that I could’ve used a black background in my work as well as attempt to disguise the letters more into depicting an abstract image. In my work as it is now, it is very clear what letters I used which could’ve been hidden somehow by making it look more like sound rather than letters. 

 

              For this assignment, the human-made technology that we chose for our project is phone calls, a method of communication through mobile devices that sends an electronic signal to the recipient no matter their location. To begin, it is important to allow the aliens to have a better understanding of how humans communicate with each other, which is why we believe phone calls would be the best form of technology to introduce. The photo attached below is a visual representation of how phone calls work, and also a way to teach the Aliens or Heptapods how this human technology works. In Story of Your Life, the aliens seem to be able to understand descriptions of events or items through pictures, which is why we tried to make the illustrations for our plaque designs as easy to understand as possible. In our illustration, we first depicted the idea of speech and communication, which can be shown through the two figures trying to have a conversation with each other from across the world. We then have to explain to the Aliens how this is all possible, because of something called a cell phone or telephone, which we depicted through the different illustrations of what a cell phone or telephone looks like while using symbols to depict that these devices are used for communication purposes. We then have to show the aliens how this device is all possible thanks to signals or cellular services, which we depicted using an illustration of a cellular tower. We then illustrate how these cellular towers are used to receive and send signals from cell phones, which then transmit directly to the nearest satellite. Through the satellite, the data of the call can then be received or transmitted, which allows people to make short or long-distance calls. By introducing the technology of phone calls to the Aliens we will not only be able to teach the heptapods about a piece of advanced technology that we use but also highlight a different way that humans communicate with.

           Based on the short story, the heptapods adopt a semasiographic writing system where their spoken language differs from the language they write in. After observing how the heptapods understand physics, Louise Banks, the linguist of this experiment, was able to see that the heptapods follow Fermat’s principle of least time which means they see the whole picture and all the components right from the beginning. This means that when the heptapods first view our pioneer plaque, they will see the whole picture and be able to analyze it based on their first impression. Upon seeing the pioneer plaque, it is clear it is some form of communication utilized by humans that allows them to converse worldwide. In addition, the bottom images of the cell towers and satellite provide some context for a signal to pass through the two and to the images of cell phones that the humans will use. There is also no clear form of punctuation, similar to the heptapod writing language, which shows the connection between the images could be read from any direction/angle and still hint to the same general mode of communication. Overall, it is clear for heptapods to see through our pioneer plaque that humans are able to connect globally through a signal that reaches from device to device. 

While reading the Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang, it is evident of the distinction between aliens and humans through the research conducted by Louise Banks and Gary Donnelly. Shown by the observations they made, aliens communicate through two different ways in comparison to the one language humans have. Aliens have a different language for writing and speaking where for writing, there is no written punctuation and each stroke represents a different verb and for speaking, there is a free word order. The heptapod/alien would also need to know what to write first before placing down the first stroke. This is different from the human language because we can write and speak the same one language as well as can make up stuff to discuss/write as we go without necessarily planning it ahead of time. In addition, the way us humans are formed affects how people perceive us and how people communicates toward us. For example, one’s age or gender changes how someone else may talk to you like if you were younger, someone might talk down to you as oppose to if you were older. However, with the aliens, it is still unclear how their body affects their behavior or if it has any correlation at all. Much about the aliens still remains unclear but the story provided a creative comparison between us humans and the heptapods that leaves room for speculation and further investigation if the story were to continue.   

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