Greeting series (2016) 

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If you were detached from your friends, family or a lover by a distance, how would you choose to communicate with them? In the digital technology era, people use an application to talk with and see someone who lives at a distance in a second. Although such highly advanced communicative tools did not exist before this contemporary period, people still could get in touch with other people through such means as letters and telegraphs.despite the long delivery time. Transcending time and geography, there were diverse types of communication tools. The purpose of communication is to connect with those we know and love.

 

The creation of this series facilitates my coding of algorithm to visualize the letter patterns of nine different languages expressing several phrases. The process of creation follows three stages, leading to word-visualization:

 

     1) I began by collecting and translating phrases that are commonly used in text-based communication, such as a hand-written letter and an email.

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     2) Then, having collected and organized these materials, I sought to create a data set using my coding algorithm: a typed word, using nine differing language keyboard layouts, is assigned ASCII code decimal values.

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     3) Finally, the extracted value-data is used to project a graph and then the graph is reshaped on the clear panel as an abstract drawing, as is seen.

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     4) In total, nine languages were used in each pieces for visualizing the following phrases “How are you?”, “I am good”, “See you”, “I am sorry”, “I love you”, and “Thank you”. These languages were: Chinese, English, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish. 

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In total, there are six pieces in this series. And each work consists of nine layers while each layer presents one meaning in nine distinctive languages.

 

Sometimes in my mind, I write an imaginary letter to a close friend. It is just a bundle of words asking for my friend’s current news, or telling them how much I miss the time  we spent together. Thinking of the good old days is a vitamin to survive in the present time without the loved one. Looking back is a shadow of yearning for one’s early days. An immediate reflection on time spent together is like a sealed message in a bottle in the waves of memories. It goes up and down with the currents, or it can sink or disappear as time passes. And everyone experiences self-reflection no matter the culture, nation or language. Through the word-visualization, I expect to see how much commonality of each phrase’s meaning exists between languages.