He told us how in Europe you have to choose one thing to be, not here in Brazil or in the United States where being more than one thing is an advantage. I didn’t know about this European characteristic, and I hope that until it is time for me to enter in design market this will be changed.

Another thing that he told us is that for him is important to understand how the body works, the articulations and how gravity affects our movements so his characters can be accurate to reality. He told us “if you want to make a horse, than be one”. This had lots in common with empathy, which made me think about communication. Character design, graphic design and communication are areas that you have to understand the other. Whether is to make something accurate or something to be understood. 

I already knew that graphic design was a hands on activity until desktop computers revolutionised the way this industry works, but it was nice to see very through how each tool evaluated from the linecaster to the photocomposition. There were plenty of specific vocabulary that it was hard to understand, since they don’t exist anymore, but still, it was interesting to understand the trajectory.

There were two things that caught my attention the most. Firstly, the fact that it took a while to designers incorporate computers in their practise. It was not something that had an immediate success because they thought that what they did manually was better. Which is quite interesting to compare with our reality where we expect the new launches and it is hard to find someone that would rather stay with the ‘old technology’. 

Also, I realised that the tools that we use today on Photoshop were inspired on what was done manually. For example, the grids are blue because back then designers used a light blue pen to help to diagram the layouts since this color wouldn’t appear on the photocomposition since only the negatives were printed. So, while some earlier designers know the tools manually and couldn’t adapt to the new technologies, the new designers that do know how to use Photoshop and other softwares doesn’t know how to do it manually, even that they are the same (in essence). 

The other thing that piqued my interest was the fact that the new technologies introduced in 1990s in Design Industry was a surprise for the professionals. Apple and Adobe introduced to the future without anyone expecting some changes. And now, I keep thinking about what is the next step to Graphic Design that we are not seeing? 

I saw a clear connection between this film and my project because despite both of them talk about Design, also they talk about changes that we don’t expect. Just like I can’t think about what could be next for designers in terms of technology, it is also hard to think about what is coming next to communication systems (which is actually something that I am trying to think of solutions for). 

Briar Levit (2015) Graphic Means. [Online Video] 14^th November 2018. Available from: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/graphicmeans/157620840 [Accessed: 26^th March 2019].

Grafik (2015) Make Paste. [Online] Available at: https://www.grafik.net/category/news/make-paste [Accessed 28^th March 2019].

16 years later, a Japanese artist called Shigetaka Kurita that worked for DOCOMO wanted to design an attractive interface to communicate ideas in a more succinct way. So, Kurita made a set of 12 by 12 pixel images that could be selected from a keyboard from your mobile, which now we know as emojis. 

Emojis became very popular in Japan, so much that not only rival companies copied DOCOMO’s idea, but companies outside Japan wanted to incorporate them into their platforms. However, they depended on Unicode Consortium, a nonprofit group that acts like the United Nations but for text standards across computers. After Unicode recognised the emojis, they rapidly were spread to the world through Apple and Android. 

Emoticons can be considered a revolution on our electronic communication since they made it possible for us to show emotions that words and punctuations couldn’t. More than that, they made it possible to two people that would’t understand each other through a writing system or a speaking language. It is the new global language. 

Almost 6000 years ago, human beings were looking for a way to communicate their complex thoughts. It took centuries for us to transition between images to then images with fonems, to finally words and the alphabet. Today, we are on the opposite road: we keep looking for ways to communicate in a more succinct way. In a world that every minute counts, every words counts too, and they are not really effective in some cases. So, Emojis came as the perfect solution to this problem.

And since the idea of my project is to try to make a global language, it is essencial to understand what led to the invention of the emojis and what keep them successful, once they are the most near we have to a global language. 

Baer, D. (2015) Emoticons have basically saved human communication. [Online] Business Insider. Available at: https://www.businessinsider.com/emoji-were-invented-33-years-ago-heres-why-theyre-so-crucial-today-2015-9 [Accessed 21^th March 2019]

OpenMind (2017) Emoji, the New Global Language?. [Online] Available at: https://www.bbvaopenmind.com/en/technology/digital-world/emoji-the-new-global-language

[Accessed 21^th March 2019].

Pardes, A. (2018) The Wired Guide to Emoji. [Online] Available at: https://www.wired.com/story/guide-emoji [Accessed 28^th March 2019].

Wilkinson, R. (2015) The Father of the Emoticon Chases His Great White Whale. [Online] Available at: https://narratively.com/the-father-of-the-emoticon-chases-his-great-white-whale [Accessed 28^th March 2019].

Before the telegraph, most messages that had to be sent over long distances by messengers that had memorised them or had them physically. Also, they depended on the velocity of the horse to be delivered. 

Developed in 1837 by William Fortherfill Cooke and Charles Wheatstone, the first telegraph made it possible to sent messages over long distances in a much quicker way. The device sent electrical signals that would line up compass needles on a grid containing letters of the alphabet. 

One year later, Samuel Morse and his assistant, Alfred Vail, invented a more successful telegraph which sent messages using Morse Code. The messages were converted into electrical impulses and sent over telegraph wires, while the wire converted the impulses back into dots and dashes, and then decoded the message. 

However, the first Morse Code didn’t allow the transmission of non-English text because it lacked codes for letters with diacritic marks. So, in 1851 was created the International Morse Code, a simpler and more precise system than Morse Code.

I found Morse Code very interesting because it is a system that managed to represent letters, numbers and words through elements and sounds and visual elements other than words. If we think about it, the alphabetical characters are a abstraction of the element they represent, and the Morse Code was the next level. And since I want to find a way, through design, to transmit ideas without depending on the alphabet, the Morse Code is a great example that it is possible to do that. 

Still, Morse Code can only be used with Latin scripts, which means that the other 1/3 part of the world that doesn’t communicate through this script. 

Bibliography
Camp, V. and Snodgrass, R. (2006) International Morse Code. [Image] Available at: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e9/International_Morse_code.png [Accessed 1^st April 2019].

Encyclopedia Britannica (1998) Morse Code. [Online] Available at: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Morse-Code

[Accessed 1^st April 2019].

NRICH (2004) History of Morse. [Online] Available at: https://nrich.maths.org/2198 [Accessed 1^st April 2019].

Wikipedia (2019) Morse code. [Online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morse_code [Accessed 1^st April 2019].

The work that most caught my attention was one of the spreads of Ray Gun magazine in 1994 in which he used Zapf Dingbats instead of text to talk about the musician Bryan Ferry. It is said that he found the content rather dull, so he used dingbats (a font that only contains symbols) instead to make it at least visually interesting. 

I found this approach quite intriguing because we usually see dingbats as an ornament, not as a letter to transmit (or not) a message. And since each letter had a correspondent in Zapf Dingbats, we can consider dingbats as a language too. 

Seeing the interview, it almost feel like a code that you have to unveil (which it was possible because the text version of the interview was published at the back of the same issue of the magazine). 

We are in the middle of a transition to a hybrid language where visual and audio complement alphabetic characters in a text (on the Internet). So, in order to have a system that is exclusively visual, introducing dingbats could be a way to start to represent ideas in symbols since each letter has a respective dingbat. 

And this got me thinking that maybe doing a code could be one possible solution for the problem I put myself to resolve in my project, which is a more globalised communication system. 

Encyclopedia Britannica. (n.d). David Carson. [Online] Available at: https://www.britannica.com/biography/David-Carson [Accessed 2nd April 2019].

California State University Northridge (n.d.). David Carson. [Online] Available at: http://www.csun.edu/~pjd77408/DrD/Art461/LecturesAll/Lectures/PublicationDesign/DigitalTimes/David-Carson.html [Accessed 2^nd April 2019].

Process & Skills: parsons graphic design blog (2013) David Carson and his notorious use of Dingbats!. [Online] Available from: https://processandskillsdotcom.wordpress.com/2013/04/21/david-carson-and-his-notorious-use-of-dingbats/ [Accessed 2^nd April 2019].

Ray Gun (2013) [Image] Available at: https://processandskillsdotcom.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/raygun1994.jpeg [Accessed 2^nd April 2019].

Wikipedia (n.d.) Dingbat. [Online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dingbat [Accessed 2^nd April 2019].

After struggling through years to solve this problem, in 1887 he found the solution. Instead of choosing one existing language to make it the world’s standard because this could make those who weren’t native speakers second-class citizens. So, he created Esperanto, an international language that would be easy to read, to speak and to learn.

Esperanto has 16 regular and exception-free rules and a regular phonetic spelling, which means every letter only has one pronunciation, not depending on the letters surround it, which makes it way easier to learn than other languages. There are some estimates that Esperanto only takes 150 hours to study, compared to 1,5000 for English. 

Since its creation, the International Language have been spoken by 2 million people in 120 countries, but it is hard to estimate this number once the Esperanto language is not attached to a country, but to a community of people. However, Esperanto didn’t become mainstream as expected (even though among invented languages Esperanto is the most successful). 

This may have happened because Esperanto didn’t express a culture like other languages; it was only a way of communication. And why someone would learn another way of communication if the ones you can talk too are very difficult to reach? This is a reaction that I could suffer too in my project by trying to make a global language too. But different from Esperanto, I will not be using letters, so it could be seen differently by the audience. 

Also, I believe Zamenhof was way ahead his time. He already had a picture of a global language almost a century before the globalisation happen. And now we are way more open to a global language because everything else already is. 

Bibliography
Esperanto.org (n.d.) Some Basic Information about the International Language. [Online] Available at: http://esperanto.org/us/USEJ/world/index.html [Accessed 6^th April 2019].

Eurotalk (2015) A beginner's guide to Esperanto. [Image] Available at: https://eurotalk.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/esperantoweek-3.jpg [Accessed 6^th April 2019].

HowStuffWorks (2014) Esperanto, The Universal Language: Where did it come from? | Stuff of Genius. [Online Video] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xq7mRzH5Smg [Accessed 6^th April 2019].

MosaLingua (n.d.) The Esperanto Language: What Is It and Why Learn It?. [Online] Available at: https://www.mosalingua.com/en/why-learn-esperanto-language

[Accessed 6^th April 2019].

Westmaas, R. (2017) Esperanto Is the World's Universal Language. [Online] Curiosity. Available at: https://curiosity.com/topics/esperanto-is-the-worlds-universal-language-curiosity [Accessed 6^th April 2019].

So, in order to be able to externalise what color he was seeing, he had to make a connection between the sound of the colours and its respective name. And by this, his perception of the world changed. He not only saw it, but he started to hear it. For example, instead of dressing up to look good, he dresses up to sound good. 

His relationship with color is completely different from me or anyone that see colour. He adapts the sounds of each color to each situation instead of adapting our perception of each color to the situation. For instance, if he had to go to a funeral, he would dress in B minor, which would be turquoise, purple and orange, while in these situations it is a social convention to use black, because it is perceived as a sad colour. 

While Harbisson told he would find sounds everywhere, such as clothes, objects, people’s faces and speeches, I kept thinking about how would it be to transform words into sounds (and maybe into colours then…). Sounds are a much more inclusive rather than alphabetic writing system, so if this translation word-sound worked, it could be a good solution for my complex problem. 

TED Talks (2012) I listen to color. [Online Video]. Available at: https://www.ted.com/talks/neil_harbisson_i_listen_to_color/up-next?language=en#t-100169 [Accessed 1^st April 2019].

I found this ad genius. They had an specific audience to reach and they found a way to do an almost exclusive ad for them. This was a great example not only as an approach that really understood its audience and managed to fit both the expectations of the agency and the curiosity of the typographers, but also as an outcome that managed to communicate through a code, in this case, dingbats. 

Just like David Carsons’ Ray Guy article, London’s Lunar BBDO recruitment ad makes me want to explore more the universe of codes and not exactly use dingbats (because they already exists and I want to create something from scratch), but something that I could simplify and turn into a code. 

Riggs, T. (2007) If You Can Read This, You're Hired. [Online] CreativePro. Available at: https://creativepro.com/if-you-can-read-this-you-re-hired/ [Accessed 2^nd April 2019].

This want ad might catch your eye, but could you understand it?. (2007) [Image] Available at: https://3v6x691yvn532gp2411ezrib-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/default/files/story_images/20070319_fg1a.jpg [Accessed 2^nd April 2019].

Ghana Wali used LEGO to make a representation of each letter in Arabic and explained each of them in form, sound and examples of words in function, in addition to the equivalent in Latin. By doing so, she not only created a way to connect Arabic and Latin, but also found a solution to spread the Arabic education.

Also, it is possible to see this work as an code made with LEGO’s, as each piece of it correspond to one or more letters. I don’t know yet what I could simplify to then use it as the base of my language, but it is defiantly an exercise that I could try. 

Wali, G. (2017) How I'm using LEGO to teach Arabic. [Online Video] Available at: https://www.ted.com/talks/ghada_wali_how_i_m_using_lego_to_teach_arabic#t-369874 [Accessed 1^st April 2019].

This Egyptian Artist Is Teaching Arabic Using Legos (2017) [Image] Available at: https://media1.popsugar-assets.com/files/thumbor/kcAOFIC7FeqU2icPC3i4BzwN1kw/fit-in/2048xorig/filters:format_auto-!!-:strip_icc-!!-/2017/09/05/549/n/38922795/tmp_UUZtDn_fb9fc54b095d860f_Screen_Shot_2017-09-05_at_2.50.56_PM.png
[Accessed 1^st April 2019].

According to Casper Grathwohl, the President of the Dictionaries Division, “Emojis have been a staple of teen texting culture of years, but it was really over the last 12 months that we saw Moche culture explode into the mainstream whether it’s Hilary Clinton asking for feedback on her campaign in three emojis or the political debates we have had over the skin tones of smiley faces”.  

The ‘Face with Tears of Joy’ was the emoji selected because it was the top sent in the world. SwiftKey reports that 😂 made up 20% of all emojis used in United Kingdom in 2015, and 17% in the United States. 

Emojis have been recognised as a language by Unicode Consortium in 2010, but it seems that it was only between 2014 and 2015 that they were really incorporated in the way we communicate. There is no division between emojis and written language anymore. It is all the same. (If even Hilary Clinton is using, then everyone should be too). 

Even though emojis may be one of the fastest growing form of language of all time, it is interesting to see that, just like every other language, it took time for it to be natural for us to use. Maybe there was some resistance with the contrast between words and emojis because, for the first time, the old language didn’t have to be replaced by the new one; both words and emojis can complement each other (and act on their own as well). 

Also, another thing that caught my attention was that, for the first time, the definition of word went further than letters together. It may seem strange, but if we look into the definition of ‘word’ in English by Oxford Dictionaries, it is not specified that a word has to have letters; it just have to be an element of speech or writing. So, is the social convention of the concept ‘word’ as a set of letters together that makes us forget all the possibilities that a word can be, including an emoji.

O'Donoghue, J.J. (2016) Emoji: The evolution of emoticons. [Online] Available at: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2016/09/17/digital/emoji-evolution-emoticons/#.XJ0GaBNKjMI [Accessed 28^th March 2019].

Oxford Dictionaries (n.d.) word | Definition of word in English by Oxford Dictionaries. [Online] Available at: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/word [Accessed 28^th March 2019].

Oxford Dictionaries (2015) Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year - Casoer Grathwohl. [Online Video]. November 16th. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivV8x2K_DSU [Accessed: 28^th March 2019].

Oxford Dictionaries (2015) Word of the Year 2015. [Online] Available at: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/word-of-the-year/word-of-the-year-2015 [Accessed 22^th March 2019].

It is impressive the work that Benenson had to translate every single line of the original book into emojis. However, I found it impossible to read it and understand it. Maybe it is because I see some emojis as a different way than Benenson (or others) or it was the extreme simplification of the ideas of the original text that made me confused. 

Reading (or trying to) Emoji Dick made me question to what extent emojis work as an efficient way of communication. Is it true that emojis had its use an huge increase, but it has been working as a complementation of the writing system, not a self sufficient language. So even though emojis is considered a global language, it may not be enough to be the only one…

In order to explore more my question, I am planning to make an experiment where I will try to communicate with a specific person during 24 hours only with emojis to have a better understanding of the difficulties and the advantages of only using emojis. 

Example of how the sentences will be arranged with the Emoji on top of the page and the English sentence at the bottom (2009)[Image] Available at: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fred/emoji-dick [Accessed 2^nd April 2019].

Melville, H. and Benenson, F. (2010) Emoji Dick; or the Whale. 1st ed. [Online] Available at: http://www.czyborra.com/unicode/emojidick.pdf [Accessed 2^nd April 2019].

Popovich, N. (2013) Fred Benenson: the man who translated Moby Dick into Emoji. [Online] The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2013/dec/11/fred-benenson-status-update-emoji-dick [Accessed 2^nd April 2019].

Even though I only managed to read a couple of chapters of this book, Marcel Danesi brought up very interesting points about the evolution of the alphabet writing and how emojis are different from the rest of the languages so far. But the thing that got me most intrigued was when he questioned if the future global language going to be hybrid (picture-phonetic), which is also something that I have been thinking about it. Inspired by that, I decided that the first experiment of my project will be to test if emojis got what it takes to be a hybrid language, in other words, if we could communicate clearly only using emojis. 

Danesi, M. (2016) The Semiotics of Emoji: The Rise of Visual Language in the Age of the Internet. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.

In this set of works, he explored different sizes of dots, varied in colour (sometimes the painting was colourful, sometimes monocromatic) and used different distances between each dot. Because of that, even if they have the same graphic elements, each artwork was unique. 

One of the spot paintings that most caught my attention was Chlorpropamide (1996). The equal distance between each dot in both vertical and horizontal orientations allude an idea of balance and order, which is a characteristic that is very appealing for me once I am a perfectionist who values symmetry in mine and others work. 

Also, another important characteristic in this work is the colour. Since Hirst used different hues and tones, there is many points that caught my attention, and because I didn’t know where I was supposed to  look, it felt a bit confused. However, the interesting for me is that even that it seem a bit confusing, each dot have its individuality intact in the composition. 

Last but not least, as Gagosian analyses “the spot paintings evoke various psychological and perceptual dichotomies: they are both calming and unnerving, beautiful and ordinary”, and since it is hard to see such opposite feelings together, it is hard to get enough of the artwork because in every look you feel something different. 

Artnet (n.d.) Damien Hirst [Online] Available at: http://www.artnet.com/artists/damien-hirst/ [Accessed 20th April 2019].

Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. (2015) Chlorpropamide [Image] Available at: http://damienhirst.com/chlorpropamide [Accessed 20th April 2019].

Gagosian (n.d.) Damien Hirst [Online] Available at: https://gagosian.com/artists/damien-hirst/ [Accessed 20th April 2019].

I got very intrigued when I saw some of her works that she made a pattern by mixing different thickness and colours of bars, such as Achean (1981), Ecclesia (1985), RA 2 (1981). They reminded me a lot of barcodes, which was my inspiration for the first test of my language, so I thought I could inspire myself on her to make another test for my language. 

The problem with the alphabet that I made was that without unit, it would be hard to anyone understand which letter is which without a scale or a ruler. So seeing these artworks made me realise that a solution for my alphabet could be using a thin bar as a unit so that the representation of A would be one bar, the representation of B would be two bars, until Z that would be 26 bars. Plus, inspired by the bright colour palette used by Bridget Riley, I could associate each letter to a different colour, which would make it even easier to identify them and also more visually interesting. 

Bibliography
Achean by Bridget Riley (n.d.) [Image] Available at: https://arthive.com/artists/62362~Bridget_Riley/works/493961~Achean [Accessed 19th April 2019].

Artnet (n.d.) Bridget Riley. [Online] Available at: http://www.artnet.com/artists/bridget-riley/ [Accessed 19th April 2019].

Artsy (n.d.) Bridget Riley. [Online] Available at: https://www.artsy.net/artist/bridget-riley [Accessed 19th April 2019].

The first work of him that caught my attention was Alchimie 366 (2017) because of its colour palette. He painted with bright tones of red, orange, yellow, green and blue on top of a black background. I found this combination of colours very interesting because the colours really popped out and they had a harmony together. In this work, black doesn’t have the attention of the audience, but it is the element that makes the colours stand out to the audience. 

Having in mind that black is the colour associated with mystery and the fact that it is very successful as a background in order to make the other colours stand out, I think using it as the background of my poster would work very well. 

Artsy (n.d.) Julio Le Parc. [Online] Available at: https://www.artsy.net/artist/julio-le-parc [Accessed 21st April 2019].

Artsy (n.d.) Op Art. [Online] Available at: https://www.artsy.net/gene/op-art [Accessed 21st April 2019].

Galeria Nara Roesler (n.d.) Julio Le Parc. [Online] Available at: https://nararoesler.art/en/artists/43-julio-le-parc/ [Accessed 21st April 2019].

Julio Le Parc: 9 + 3 + RV (2017) [Image] Available at: https://nararoesler.art/en/exhibitions/123/ [Accessed 21st April 2019].

I am still looking for a technique that would make it possible for me to print my squares sharply and aligned. As some of Demarco’s works he makes geometrical patterns very much aligned, especially the ones I mentioned above in which the pattern is made with squares, I thought his technical choice to make these works could be the solution for my problem. However, since he either paints or screen print them, I don’t think any of them could be possible for me. 

Artnet (n.d.) Hugo Demarco. [Online] Available at: http://www.artnet.com/artists/hugo-demarco/ [Accessed 13rd May 2019].

Hugo Demarco | Vibration (1959) [Image] Available at: https://www.artsy.net/artwork/hugo-demarco-vibration [Accessed 13rd May 2019].

But what most caught my attention in this work was the precision of the lines and how he made this possible because I am having trouble to find a media or a method to print my poster because its design is so precise and aligned that a slightly mistake would be crystal clear for the audience. 

I found out that this work was actually a airbrushed print on aluminium, but unfortunately I don’t believe I will be able to use this method to print my poster once I have never airbrushed before, so I should practise a lot before doing something so precise and important, and I don’t have this time because the deadline is in two weeks. And even if I could, it would need some sort of stencil to do it, and it would be very hard for me to do every square exactly the same.

John M. Armleder | Ion IX (2003) (n.d) [Image] Available at: https://www.artsy.net/artwork/john-m-armleder-ion-ix-1 [Accessed 13 May 2019].

In an interview that Grasser gave to It’s Nice That, he said “while it might be hard to imagine anyone ever being able to read in Color Dot, we have managed to get our head around various structural conventions that have become ubiquitous across many cultures”. This is something that I do not only agree, but — only— the premiss of my whole project. For me, we live in a globalised world where everything have become universal: culture, money, relationships, just to mention a few, except for the languages that sometimes act as a barrier jeopardising not only the communication between different people but also their perception of the world. In regard to this matter, the solution is an universal letter. 

And Repeat (2019) Google (Via Color Dot). [Image]. Available at: https://www.itsnicethat.com/system/files/052019/5cd16bd77fa44c12980044c7/images_slice_large/color-dot-typeface-martin-grasser-graphic-design-itsnicethat-04.jpg?1557228596 [Accessed 1^st May 2019].

Baines, J. (2019) Say hello to Color Dot, a typeface that wants to make the internet friendlier. [Online] Available at: https://www.itsnicethat.com/news/color-dot-typeface-martin-grasser-graphic-design-080519 [Accessed 1^st May 2019].

Han, G. (2019) The Color Dot Font Communicates with the Language of Color. [Online] Available at: https://design-milk.com/the-color-dot-font-communicates-with-the-language-of-color/ [Accessed 28^th April 2019].

Still, is nice to see more iniciatives (specially when Brazilian) to make the communication more inclusive because Braille is not only important to communication, but essential for blind and impaired children so they can improve their life skill and improve their life quality in the future. If the systems of communication have an impact on how each of us — that sees — perceive our environment, imagine how much more important is Braille to the ones that can’t. 

Glette, G. (2019) Brasil recebe projeto que ensina braille à crianças deficientes visuais usando Lego. [Online] Available at: https://www.hypeness.com.br/2019/04/brasil-recebe-projeto-que-ensina-braille-a-criancas-deficientes-visuais-usando-lego/?fbclid=IwAR2K8YJdEdkJGkgOOvl68OEApEoEPI8kliYgbXr3mepdQSp7nmU2L5tDbss [Accessed 26^th April 2019].

LEGO® Braille Bricks (2019) Introducing LEGO® Braille Bricks. [Online] Available at: https://www.legobraillebricks.com/ [Accessed 26^th April 2019].

Two examples of LEGO® Braille Bricks (2019) [Image] Available at: https://static.boredpanda.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/braille-lego-bricks-17.jpg [Accessed 26^th April 2019].

I like the aesthetics of the barcode because they can vary not only in their numbers below but also with the combination of thick and thin lines. Since I wanted to make a language that worked as a code, maybe if I could make 26 variations of the bars so each of them would represent one letter. Plus, bars are, essentially, a rectangle, and rectangle is an universal shape, which would make sense to use it as an unit in an universal language.

Bibliography
Barcoding, Inc. (n.d.) The History of Barcodes. [Online] Available at: https://www.barcoding.com/resources/barcoding-basics/the-history-of-barcodes/ [Accessed 6th April 2019].

UPC-A barcode image (2018) [Image] Available at: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:UPC-A-036000291452.svg [Accessed 6th April 2019].

Wikipedia (2019) Barcode. [Online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barcode [Accessed 6th April 2019].

Dr. Paul Ekman, the pioneer in the study of micro expression, defends that they are universal. In other words, no matter where you live, your age or your culture; everyone makes the same micro expressions, specially the 7 most famous ones: anger, fear, hapiness, contempt, surprise, sadness and disgust.

anger: eyebrows down, lip in a hard line and chin up to display confidence; fear: raised eyebrows, stress in the forehead and mouth in natural position (to either scream or taking a big breath of oxigen); hapiness: wrinkles around the eyes; contempt: smirk (only one side of the mouth is raised); surprise: eyebrows are raised in a rounded shape and the mouth gets loose; sadness: eyebrows make a vertical line and the lips are pressed against each other with the corners downwards; disgust: presence of lines below the eye; cheek is up and there are wrinkles below the nose.

If we think about it, this discovery actually unites us humans in a different way other than the species because it is an involuntary characteristic, which means no one can control, and every one has it, which makes you feel that you are not alone or is the only one with this characteristic. On the other hand, it is also frightening to know that even or deepest and maybe even consciously unknown emotions can be seen by others. 

Babich, N. (2016) How to Detect Lies: Micro Expressions. [Online] Available at: https://medium.com/@101/how-to-detect-lies-microexpressions-b17ae1b1181e [Accessed 7^th April 2019].

Center for Body Language (2016) MICRO EXPRESSIONS in 4K - LIE TO ME Style Analysis - Micro Expressions Training like in Lie To Me. [video] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGhOuA3rr1k [Accessed 8^th April 2019].

Paul Ekman Group (n.d.) Micro Expressions. [Online] Available at: https://www.paulekman.com/resources/micro-expressions/ [Accessed 8^th April 2019].

Paul Ekman Group (n.d.). Seven Universal Facial Expressions. [Image] Available at: https://www.paulekman.com/resources/universal-facial-expressions/ [Accessed 8^th April 2019].

Paul Ekman Group. (n.d.). Universal Facial Expressions. [Online] Available at: https://www.paulekman.com [Accessed 8^th April 2019].

Science of People (n.d) The Definitive Guide to Reading Microexpressions (With Examples). [Online] Available at: https://www.scienceofpeople.com/microexpressions/. [Accessed 5^th April 2019].

I watched some episodes and it was very interesting to understand a bit more about micro expressions “live”. In each episode, there are real examples, specially of presidents and famous politicians, which gave me a reality shock because it is possible to see that the micro expressions really existed. Also, Dr. Cal Lightman is very didactic because he is teaching the new member of his group (Lightman Group), so I really did learned about micro expressions. 

On the other hand, one thing that I did not liked in the show is that it makes it seem that everyone is lying all the time and this is not true. Recognising a micro expression is not an exact science, and even that could be precise enough, sometimes we don’t know exactly what are our emotions. Plus, in certain points of the show I felt that it was a universal truth that lie was bad, but in my opinion not all lies are bad because there are the ones that we make to protect something or someone (maybe even ourselves), so it is not something that I agreed on. 

Lie to Me. Seasons 1 and 2. (2009-2010) Fox Broadcasting Company.

The contrast between the background and foreground colours is very important to reading, so choosing the right colour is if I want the hidden word in my poster to be unveiled by the audience. And since I am having a bit of trouble to decide the colours I am going to use in my poster because the combinations that I tried did not make the squares of the word legible enough (or with sufficient attraction to the audience). I believe that I can use this theory to help me on get to the colour palette where the colour of squares of the word stands out from the black background and the rest of the squares. 

Contrast value of each colour and its relationship with other hues. (n.d.). [Image]. Available at: https://www.designworkplan.com/wp-content/arthur-passini-color-wayfinding-01.png [Accessed 26^th April 2019].

Design Work Plan. (n.d.). Signs and color contrast - /designworkplan wayfinding design studio. [Online] Available at: https://www.designworkplan.com/read/signage-and-color-contrast [Accessed 26^th April 2019].

These method of learning inspired Narayanan to develop Avaz, an app in which the kids select different pictures, and these are sequenced together to form sequences, and these sentences are spoken out. It is a translator from pictures to speech. 

However, even though he figured out a way to spread the learning of words to children with autism through the world, Avaz couldn’t teach grammar, and it is something very important to a language because they structure the words to have a meaning. And without meaning there is no communication. But then, he find a solution: “Instead of arranging words in an order, in sequence, as a sentence, you arrange them in this map, where they're all linked together not by placing them one after the other but in questions, in question-answer pairs. And so if you do this, then what you're conveying is not a sentence in English, but what you're conveying is really a meaning, the meaning of a sentence in English. Now, meaning is really the underbelly, in some sense, of language. It's what comes after thought but before language. And the idea was that this particular representation might convey meaning in its raw form.”.

So, by that, Avaz is not useful for children with autism, but could be also helpful for the communication between people that doesn’t speak the same language. I think this is very impressive because sometimes we focus so much on the grammar and to get the words write when the meaning is all the matters to a communication. 

This was a nice reference to remember me that communication problems not only happen when we don’t speak the same language, but also when we don’t understand the meaning of the message transmitted. Plus, this showed me the importance of the pictures when you are learning a new language so they become your new reference, so is defiantly something that I will have on mind on my next steps in the project to make sure the audience will be able to learn the language I created.

TED Talks (2013) A word game to communicate in any language. [video] Available at: https://www.ted.com/talks/ajit_narayanan_a_word_game_to_communicate_in_any_language [Accessed 30^th April 2019].

Narayanan, R. (2013) Demo of Avaz - AAC App for children with Special needs. [Video] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC61zSmavs0LRGmsUVysz0yQ [Accessed 1^st May 2019].

In that time, Enigma was considered impossible to decrypt because its settings changed daily, at midnight. So even that the mathematicians could make a machine to decrypt Enigma, it would have to do it in less than 24 hours. However, the machine created by MI6 wasn’t able to do this task successfully until Allan Turin realise that there were patterns in all massages, which were already decrypted before by the machine. Consequently; if the machine focused only on the variables of the message, it could reduce the time of decryption, which means that they would have access to the German protected communication. And it did work.

Seeing this movie was very interesting because at this point of my project I am exploring the universe of codes to then create one that could be used as a new communicating system. And is important to have a reference such as this to understand how codes worked in our society. 

The Imitation Game. (2014) Film. Directed by Morten Tyldum. [Streaming Video]. US: The Weinsten Company.

Wikipedia (2019) Enigma machine. [Online] Available at: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enigma_machine [Accessed 4th April 2019].

They are: 

Lewis, B. (2017) 16 Must-Know Words and Phrases For Any Language. [Online] Available at: https://www.fluentin3months.com/basic-phrases/ [Accessed 3^rd April 2019].

There are some methods that can improve the learning and the memory required to learn a new language such as:

My idea of final outcome is to create a complete experience with my language, and for that to work, it has to be effective enough for the audience to learn — if it is just a bit — of my language. Understanding the best approaches to learn a language is something that I have to consider in order to make my language easy to learn, not something that the audience will see and forget in the next minute. 

I am not sure I can apply all these methods together because it is something that needs a lot of time and — unfortunately — I don’t have enough for that until the exhibition. But I think I could combine using repetition with mixing new and old words somehow. Maybe I could do a game that would make the audience play a little by making the association between the square language to English, for example. 

Plus, having this game would make the audience used to my language, and hopefully, they will be able to unveil the word unveiled in the poster.

Cooper, B. (2014) The Science of Learning a New Language (and How to Use It). [Online] Available at: https://lifehacker.com/the-science-of-learning-a-new-language-and-how-to-use-1579130048 [Accessed 26^th April 2019].

Typical Forgetting Curve for Newly Learned Information (2014) Iimage] Available at: https://lifehacker.com/the-science-of-learning-a-new-language-and-how-to-use-1579130048 [Accessed 26 Apr. 2019].

About (n.d.) SP-Arte [Online] Available at: https://www.sp-arte.com/en/about/ [Accessed 4 Apr. 2019].

Another thing that caught my attention was the care of the artist to use a black wall so that the structure and wires of the installation could fade in the perception of the audience, leaving all the attention to the pictures. (In the image below the wall seems to be brownish, but this happened due to the flash of the camera).
 
The work itself is not relevant for my project because it does not talk about communication neither use an alternative communication system. However, I really liked the trick to use the background colour the same as the things you want to hide, so this may be useful for me when I am going to think about the exhibition. 

Faing, J. (2011), OLHARencaixa, [photographs on light boxes], MAC USP, São Paulo. 

I don’t know how I could use these elements in my project because I am not exhibiting pictures (or nothing like it), but in case I do something static and want to make it look dynamic, using different size of canvas could work as a solution.

Guilhermina, A. (2019), Impermanência, [Mineral pigment print on cotton paper], 207 x 72 cm, R8, São Paulo. 

Even though the piece is a bit confusing for me because of the combination of colourful letters on top of other colourful squares, I found it very interesting because it seems like something that have a message that needs to be unveiled. And even if it don’t, this feeling got me standing there for quite a while just in case there was something hidden. 

I still don’t know if this will help me on my project, but if I do something that have a hidden message, I would probably use the colour contrast present on this work to caught the attention of the audience (and also to confuse them so it won't be so easy to figure out the hidden message).

Boetti, A. (1988), OGGI VENTICINQUESIMO GIORNO OTTAVO MESE DELL ANNO MILLE NOVE 100 OTTANTOTTO ALL AMATO PANTHEON INCONTRI E SCONTRI, [Embroidery on fabric], 102.9 x 110.5 cm, Gladstone Gallery, New York. 

There are three main elements in the exhibition: the title of the piece with a brief explanation; the alphabet; the 3D piece with a word written. All these elements together makes it very easy for the audience understand their intentions with the work, but at the same time, I wanted it to be a bit more mysterious so I, and all visitors, could have an active role in the work. Because the title of the work happens to be the word that was written in the 3D piece with the system of communication created, there is no space to find the word by ourselves. 

This made me realise that if I do something like Detanico Lain as my final outcome, I am probably not going to put a title that would hand in the mystery behind the work. But at the same time if there is no title or hint other then the alphabet, this segments my public because not everyone will be willing to try to figure out the message. It is defiantly something that I will take in consideration in the Exhibition Proposal and the elements of my final outcome.

Detanico, A. & Lain, R. (2018), Matahari, [Gold-plated woods], Sp-Arte 2019, São Paulo. 

If I want the hidden word to stand out on the piece but still be hidden, I could also try to use one colour (or one hue but with variations of tone) for the extra dots on the background that doesn’t take part in the word and another colour for the dots that writes the message. 

Cuming Associates (2012) Diethyl Malonate - 1, 3-C [Image] Available at: http://damienhirst.com/diethyl-malonate-13-c [Accessed 20th April 2019].

I don’t intend to create an optical illusion on my final outcome because this effect can confuse people sometimes, and since I want the audience to succeed at unveiling the hidden word, this could make it harder, or even impossible for them to find it. However, Séquences ambivalentes showed me the importance of using a colour with a secondary role in order to make the protagonist one pop in a pattern environment, which is very important for me to consider as I want to make sure that the word hidden can be read by the audience. 

Séquences ambivalentes (n.d.) [Image] Available at: http://www.julioleparc.org/surface.html [Accessed 21st April 2019].

The software that articulated the real time video with the piano was part of the exhibition, so we could see the image that originated the sound. However, because the sounds don’t play non stop, as I first thought it would, I only understood the software when I accidentally looked at it and a sound was generated.

Even though I don’t see this installation as a direct reference for by project right now, it reminded me of my previous idea of outcome that would be an installation in which each letter would have a correspondent key on the piano. 

Bowen, D. (2014), Cloud Piano, [Software, robotic device, piano], Cybernetic Consciousness [?] Quantum Horizon, São Paulo. 

David Bowen (2014) Cloud Piano. [Online] Available at: http://www.dwbowen.com/cloud-piano [Accessed 24th April 2019].

Cloud Piano (2014) [Online Video] Available at: https://vimeo.com/101857804 [Accessed 24th April 2019].

This work clearly is not a direct reference for my project, but still, it was a nice experience. 

Cantoni, R. (2019), Quantum, [Installation], Cybernetic Consciousness [?] Quantum Horizon, São Paulo. 

Actually, I found out that Quantum Garden is a lot more than an art sculpture. According to the official site of the project, “(The Quantum Garden) collects data which then will be used to shed light onto this problem which is closely related to the implementation of quantum simulators. At each touch of the visitors the Quantum Garden collects the signals from all touched springs, converts them into the parameters of the problem, runs a simulation and displays the solution.”. 

When I went to the exhibition I couldn’t think of a way that this work could inspire me in my project, but now that I am researching for my language’s software, I think I could adapt the colour change that happened at every touch to the colours that appear on my software. If I could make it possible for at each new word/phrase written a new colour appear, this could encourage the audience to explore more the software (just like we did when we experimented Quantum Garden), consequently, they will train my language more, and even memorise it more easier. 

Baumgarten, R. (2018), Quantum Garden, [Circuit boards, Arduino micro-controllers, Spring door stoppers, LED rings], Cybernetic Consciousness [?] Quantum Horizon, São Paulo. 

Dracott, E. (2018) Artist uses 228 spring door stoppers to create vibrant interactive artwork. [Online] Independent.ie. Available at: https://www.independent.ie/world-news/and-finally/artist-uses-228-spring-door-stoppers-to-create-vibrant-interactive-artwork-37553653.html [Accessed 24th April 2019].

Quantum Garden (2018) How does it work?. [Online] Available at: https://quantumgarden.net/how-does-it-work/ [Accessed 24th April 2019].

Hershman, L. (1998-2002), Agent Ruby, [Artificial intelligent web agent], Cybernetic Consciousness [?] Quantum Horizon, São Paulo. 

Lynn Hershman (n.d) Agent Ruby. [Online] Available at: http://www.lynnhershman.com/agent-ruby/ [Accessed 24th April 2019].

For me, one of the more interesting characteristics of Detanico Lain works is that the representation of words are so visually interesting that even if they didn't have an writing system behind the idea, it would still caught the attention of the audience. Because of that, they can please the ones interested by the alternative writing systems and the ones that aren't. 

My goal in this project is to create a system of communication non based on letters or any graphic elements already used as a character because I believe the world need a universal language that would make it possible for everyone be able to communicate using the same elements. And because of that, Detanico Lain is my main reference since their work consists on creating, for each series, a different system of communication that give the word a shape. 

Bibliography
Varella, P. (2018) Conheça a dupla de artistas Detanico e Lain. [Online] Available at: https://arteref.com/arte-no-mundo/conheca-a-dupla-de-artistas-detanico-e-lain/ [Accessed 26th March 2019].

I found this work very interesting because they represent very well the idea of a dialogue because of the overlapping elements and colours. Plus, they created a conversation that extrapolated the time limits by bringing together authors from different ages. 

This work made me think about experimenting to represent a conversation only using the square language so the work could make others see that it could both represent logic (letters) and emotion (emojis) because of the code behind it and the infinite colour possibilities it could have.

AMN do Projeto Sobre Cor, 2011 (n.d.) [Image] Available at: https://www.galeriavermelho.com.br/pt/exposicao/3506/det%C3%A2nico-lain-sobre-cor [Accessed 29th April 2019].

Galeria Vermelho. (n.d.). Detanico Lain - Sobre Cor. [Online] Available at: https://www.galeriavermelho.com.br/pt/exposicao/3506/det%C3%A2nico-lain-sobre-cor/texto [Accessed 29th April 2019].

I found this series not only interesting because of the symbols behind it, but also because of the aesthetics created. Detanico Lain’s pieces looks like a deconstructed and minimalist version of the real painting, and you can only connect the real paintings with theirs when putting them side by side. 

Actually, when I first saw this work, I didn’t know all the history behind, so my first thought was that they created a system of communication using variations of speech balloon, which made me think it was a work about miscommunication as if each balloon could represent different people. Even though the work was not exactly what I thought, the idea of speech ballon inspired me to create a version of my square poster with the hidden word using them. Since my work is about miscommunication, using speech balloons as the unit for my alphabet could give a bigger meaning to my outcome.

A Long Dress (n.d.) [Image] Available at: https://galeriavermelho.com.br/sites/default/files/artistas/pdf_portfolio/DETANICO_LAIN_bx.pdf [Accessed 22nd April 2019].

Galeria Vermelho (n.d.) 27 rue de Fleurus - Detanico Lain. [Online] Available at: https://galeriavermelho.com.br/pt/exposicao/10284/27-rue-de-fleurus/texto [Accessed 22nd April 2019].

I think this work is very interesting because it made me think about the way we usually see the world represented and wonder why we don’t use one that have on the centre North and Latin America or Asia, for example. Or a map that would put all time zones in the correct order… 

Sometimes the order that we structure ideas, elements or even a map could make it a complete disorder. This work made me think that sometimes we get so used to how things usually are, and in which order they appear, that we don’t even try to change it or see it from a different way. Sometimes the order that we structure ideas, elements or even a map could make it a complete disorder. 

Detanico, A. & Lain, R. (2019), Alguma Coisa Está Fora da Ordem, [mural painting], Espaço Cultural Porto Seguro, São Paulo. 

The sculpture itself is very intriguing because the bars were arranged in different directions, which is way more interesting than if it was a linear arrangement because it does not look like a word. But the most interesting part was to make a route through the sculpture in the right order so I would see the word written, and while I would be writing ‘Percurso’, I am actually doing a route. This connection of the theory and the outcome blow my mind. (link to the video showing the sculpture: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NI8eyYOCzBbUjoPNZ2T5FiomthvWRmB_/view?usp=sharing)

Is important to say that I got completely surprised by the coincidence between this work’s alphabet with then I created based on barcodes, but it was nice to see how a the same alphabet could represent completely different things. 

Bibliography
Detanico, A. & Lain, R. (2019), Percurso, [metalic structure], Espaço Cultural Porto Seguro, São Paulo. 

After a few months, the act of reading become so natural that you can’t remember the time you didn’t know how. More than that, it becomes impossible not to do it because recognising the letters and connecting them to a meaning and a sound happens way faster than the thought of not doing that. 

Even though we are surrounded by letters, I only started to really pay attention to them when I discovered typography. I already knew that each letter could have a different shape depending on which font was is written on, but I didn’t know all the possibilities of it. Knowing about serif, kerning, letter spacing, baseline, aperture, cap-height, stroke, descender, just to mention a few, changed the way I see the world. Reading still is a natural movement, but now I stop every time to pay attention to the types. For example, when I read the stop sign in the streets, I not only recognise the meaning, but I also see that is a monospace sans serif font. So, reading for me turned out to be more than recognising the letters and connecting them to a meaning and a sound; it is also the act of identifying the proprieties of each type.

Just like when we learn to read and we can’t get back to just seeing shapes, learning typography is something that changed the way I see the world. And now, in my part 3 project, I want to do this again. 

My aim is to see the universe as if it was made by letters. I’ll be looking for them in everything that surrounds me, such as architecture, objects, shadows, foods, sky, metro lines, nature, monuments, etc. For example, instead of seeing an orange, I want to see it as an ‘O’; or see the Eiffel Tour as a huge ‘A’. 

We live in a time where everything happen really fast and we barely pay attention to small details that surround us because we are too busy trying to process all the information that we receive. So by seeing the world in a typographic way, I want to really pay attention to what surround me everyday and give different meanings to them.

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