Navigating Tongues
Client
Content
Services
Content
Industry
Content
Year
2022
Credits & Tool
Content
TL;DR.
“How do we interact with the ‘other’ through multifarious tongues:
using our own multi-sensory / multi-modal methods?”
The project is an archive of experiments that translates memories from personal letters into AI-generated visuals, shared through a tactile graphic, book and a linked website.
The prompts that are used to generate these images also function as alt text, showing that using different “tongues” together is integral to cultivating community.
Presentation
Hello! This is Angie, and I’m presenting my thesis, navigating tongues for you today.
I’m not talking about this tongue.. my project is a series of experiments to navigate various options for multi sensory communication.
Context
Little TMI for the context.. I was having some issues last few years. I was working hard to keep a relationship while being far away from my family, friends, my ex bf and.. and I was thinking a lot adjusting to personal ability and preferences with communication methods.
And last year, one day, I got some handwritten letter from my friends and family, which evoked intense nostalgic feelings that
I have forgotten while using digital communication platforms.
Initial Questions
Then I started to form an initial question:
How do we communicate?
Why was the letter so special to me?
what elements are missing or gained
in digital communication compared to traditional forms?
From the question I planned on research - focusing on what communication methods are we using, which platform and language do we use, and which senses are engaged in them.
The initial research has two parts - one is understanding my language and one was understanding others around me.
Letter writing practice
To understand my ‘language’ first, I started to write and receive handwritten letters to get back of the feeling of the behavior.
Then I archived the data to see the difference of language and translation between myself, original content and digital devices.
Survey
Then to understand others, I conducted a survey to see which communication methods that others are using. The questions focus on what methods people use the most and why and why they like or dislike about them. Also I asked them about handwritten letters - to know how, when, and why they write them.
Insights
30 lovely people responded with their own handwritings, and from the two research process I was able to get insights.
For handwritten letters - people say letter writing is more of an event, an experience. They say they like it because it engages more senses, time and effort. It’s an emotional and personal effort that you invest and uniquely create for someone special to you.
For digital communication, People use social media the most as it’s fast and direct, and easy to reach people
But a lot of people love to communicate with video calls saying that it’s more authentic, in the moment, feels most human.
It’s because it provides a whole glimpse into a persons' life with more senses, including visual movement, background visual, sound, voice and the nuance.
However, the most interesting thing that I realized was everyone has their own preferences and different reasons for those. Which includes time, effort and their own ability and preferences of utilizing ‘senses’.
From their I was starting to focus on the secondary questions - which are more geared toward translating different and unique sensory languages - the ‘tongue’.
What it means to ‘have’ Tongues?
how we communicate and interact with the ‘others’ with our preferred senses?
Project Goal
To navigate different tongues, I aimed to translate different sensory languages to make ‘options’ to utilize different “tongues” together as an integral process to cultivate a relationship and eventually ‘community’.
Personal Goal