[Design Project] Story of Your Life | Pioneer Plaque Design – Recursive GIF Generator

Introduction

When designing our own method to communicate with the Heptapods, we first summarize the characteristics of the aliens in order to come up with all possible ways of communication. According to the story, we learn that Heptapods have both spoken and written languages and each of the aliens has “seven lidless eyes ringed the top of the body”, meaning that they are able to see, speak, hear, and write. More importantly, their bodies have a “radially symmetric” structure, which corresponds to their written language Heptapods B that there is no “forward” direction – they write and think in a circular structure.

 

Explanation

Based on the knowledge, we think about those recursive GIFs that have no start or endpoint. Using the recursive GIFs as an inspiration, we decided to design a recursive GIF generator. As we all know, humans have a “linear” mindset, which makes it difficult for us to think or communicate in a circular way. As a result, our machine aims to help people transform a linear idea into a circular one.

To operate the machine, you first need to input several “key results”. For example, we input a portrait ellipse as key result 1 and a landscape ellipse as key result 2. (You can put in more key results if needed.)

Figure 1 Designed by Joyce

After receiving the key results, the machine will automatically transform key result 1 into key result 2, (into key result 3, into key result 4…) and transform the last key result back to the first one.

Figure 2 Designed by Joyce

In this way, the machine will output a recursive GIF where you cannot identify a start point or an endpoint, which corresponds to Heptapods’ mindset and we believe they will be able to understand.

 

Example

By applying the system we designed, we then created a sample GIF file that introduces our human life to Heptapods. For our intuitive thoughts, our life can be described by one static picture:

However, this doesn’t seem understandable to the Heptapods. For them, things don’t have a start and end, thus it is not helpful to give them a linear series of pictures. As a result, we designed the following GIF – any point can be considered as a “start”, and there will be no end in this GIF.

Figure 4 Designed by Harry

 

Limitation

The limitation of this system is also obvious.

Firstly, when converting linear information to recursive one, there is no universal solution. Because, for our human, recursive thoughts are counterintuitive – we do not have an all-purpose method to convert our information into the one that Heptapods can understand. But we would start with the part that seems like a circle and attach everything to it.

Secondly, regarding the order. Though in our recursive GIF system, we have weakened the sense of time, we cannot totally eliminate it – because the format of GIF itself is based on the existence of time. But we assume that there would be more than one way to view the GIF file – for humans, we convert it into an image sequence; but for Heptapods, they can view the frames simultaneously.