Tina's Documentation Blog

Best Lover By 88rising & BIBI: https://open.spotify.com/track/0iWFz0Q5Qha9bx325ocFWq?si=2f36bdd1131146f0

The song that inspired my Sound Visualization Project was Best Lover by 88rising and BIBI. I chose this song as it instantly brightens my mood every time I listen to it. Aside from the lyrics, the music was smooth, bouncy, and light with ripple/echo effects. With noise-cancellation headphones, it’s like you’re in space where sounds loop around you which is why I embedded of what looks to be galaxy esque loops. Although my design may seem a little disorganized, the way the music was composed is also random as it introduces new sounds and rhythms to every other beat. Most of the backtracking alongside the artist produced soft sounds, therefore I steered away from hard jagged shapes. Most of the designed used were falling off the page as I wanted to reinforce the idea of a spatial dimension as it cannot all fit into one page. 

Gestalt Principles Used 

Bottom left circle

• • law of similarity and proximity 
  • repeated same letters and overlapping to create gradient effect and unison 

Circle of Z’s 

• • Law of Pragnanz and closure 
  • Z rings are only attached to one part of ribbon-like structure 

String of letters across the board 

• • law of continuity and closure 
  • line is meant to fall through the big ring on the bottom

 

Creating the one black square design taught me to keep things simplified as we had a scarcity of paper in that project. 

Personally, this project had some difficulty. Thus, there were failures and successes. The failure was keeping the draft as the final draft. Although I had the big picture in mind, I stuck with the designs I had already inputed into Adobe. As a result, my first attempt at the visualization was much more chaotic and random. In general, I felt a little lost working on this project, but after an office hour with Professor Zhang, I did more brainstorming and came up with this final design. It was suggested that I be careful with the fluidity of the whole piece and repetition of designs. I think it’s better now that my design is more minimal to convey a cleaner message to the viewers. The comfortability ties into how I feel about the song. 

If I were to do this project again, I would like to add more to the background and fill in empty spaces. I would also like to explore more of the tools Adobe Illustrator has to offer as this was my first time working with it. I’m sure there are many cool features that can elevate my work. 

 

We would like to introduce a piece of technology from Earth called virtual reality goggles. They allow us to see a realistic visual field without being physically present. Once you have the goggles on, it feels like you are living in a different dimension. It allows you to experience all types of scenery which is why we are recommending this technology. As Heptopods are discovering more about human life and Earth, it will give them an insight into how humans perceive the world and close to a first-hand perspective on Earth as transportation between the two worlds may be difficult. These VR goggles provide audio as well. There are different sounds from different planets and galaxies which are affected by their respective atmospheres such as pressure, gravity, and other factors. 

Heptapods can bounce back and forth between the future and the present. VR goggles are similar in a way that what it is showing is timeless. The virtual dimensions do not have a time that Heptapods do not perceive anyways. We thought this would be a perfect technology to introduce to Heptapods, so we created this pioneer plaque to convey our message. 

As seen from our pioneer plague, there is a man wearing VR goggles outside of a building with a fence and two trees. This is his current setting. If you look closely at the VR goggles, you can see two special star-like buttons, these are the different modes on the goggles so that one may choose where he wants to be. With a click of either button, the VR goggles will bring this man to new sceneries. We represented this concept via arrows and the same star-like buttons. As shown in our diagram, the top button will take the viewer into the wonders of nature in a mountain whereas the second button will take the viewer to explore the unknown world of outer space. Now in this reality, he feels one place but sees and hears another. On the left-hand side, we have embedded Heptapods’ semasiographic language that specifically translates to “learn” and “human”, in hopes of the Heptapods to understand our message that this is a human technology that we want them to learn more about. Lastly on the top, we showed the planets in alignment to convey how easy it is to experience planets just from where you are. We hope that this is a comprehensive piece the Heptapods will understand. 

 

This is a fictional story written by Ted Chiang. The story navigates the life of Louise Banks. She is a linguist working for the government. As alien spaceships land on Earth, Louise explores their way of communication and tries to break that barrier. Throughout the narration, Louise reminisces the past and future with her unborn daughter and the aliens.  

The aliens are called Heptapods which have 7 limbs and a symmetrical appearance. Their skin is dull-grey and smooth. Through much time working with the Heptapods, Louise discovers their language is drastically different from ours. Their spoken and written form of language follow different grammar rules. Heptapods experience their reality differently from humans as they bounce between the past and present. This is significant to their language because their mode of communication is not linear. Their language is written like a circular sound wave; it’s semasiographic and logographic. 

In the end, the Heptapods leave Earth without explanation. This leaves Louise with a different life approach. She perceives the past and present simultaneously as that’s how her brain had to function to understand their language.