Skip to main content

languages - Are there any tools or code for analyzing Arrival logograms?


I've read in several places that Mathematica was used in some of the analysis of the language used in Arrival.


Do the logograms carry any actual meaning as a language, and if they do, are there any tools that can be used for analyzing or generating them?





Answer



The analysing part:


Christopher Wolfram, who was in charge of analysing the alien language, did a stream1 explaining the code he used.





Update: I have contacted the guys at Wolfram Foundations, and they responded. The code for the stream, along with 38 logograms with their meanings, can be found at GitHub, licensed with CC-BY-NC 4.0. I guess I have to retract my previous statement about Wolframs, though they could have made all this more accessible.


1: It's supposed to be available at the link, but it didn't start to play for me. One workaround for this is to create an account, and start a free PRO trial. That way you will be able to download the stream (1.4 Gigabytes).





The creating part:


To summarise, it appears that the logograms were hand-made by the creative team. Certain elements of those logograms have a defined meaning, that they share across different logograms.


Some background information about the creative process


There's a series of tweets by the writer/producer Eric Heisserer, which explain the creative process briefly.


It appears that the alien language was initially bound to be created by Patrice Vermette, the production designer. He was dissatisfied with his own work, so his wife, Martine Bertrand, helped him by designing 15 sketches.



[Vermette's original design] felt too human. Then one night, Vermette’s wife, artist Martine Bertrand, offered to sketch some ideas. The next morning, Vermette came downstairs to find 15 inky logograms on the kitchen table. “I said, ‘eureka.'”
from Wired



Then the creative team made up a dictionary of those inky blots:




Vermette and his team assigned meaning to the inky tendrils that project from each ring, developing a dictionary of 100 symbols.
from Wired



So the actual language was invented without the science:



“We created a dictionary, a logogram bible,” [Vermette] said. “There’s 71 used in the final version of the movie, but we created over 100. They all make sense.”
from Inverse



And then the Wolfram people stepped in and brainstormed how all this could be made to look all sciency:




[Christopher Wolfram's] basic strategy was simple: just ask “if we were doing this for real, what analysis and computations would we be doing?”. We’ve got a list of alien landing sites; what’s the pattern? We’ve got geometric data on the shape of the spacecraft; what’s its significance? We’ve got alien “handwriting”; what does it mean?
from Stephen Wolfram's blag



Here are some pictures apparently showing the code used to analyse the writings and other patterns related to aliens:


enter image description here


According to Stephen Wolfram, Christopher Wolfram (who coded all this stuff) just received the paintings from the creative staff and analysed them like a real linguist would:



The movie-makers were giving Christopher raw data, just like in real life, and he was trying to analyze it.


. . .



In the final movie, the screen visuals are a mixture of ones Christopher created, ones derived from what he created, and ones that were put in separately. Occasionally one can see code. Like there’s a nice shot of rearranging alien “handwriting”, in which one sees a Wolfram Language notebook with rather elegant Wolfram Language code in it. And, yes, those lines of code actually do the transformation that’s in the notebook. It’s real stuff, with real computations being done.


from Wolfram's blag



The generating part:


There's a related question on Mathematica SE - finding which we owe to @Rand al'Thor - that allows one to generate similar looking stuff. Though it doesn't create the actual logograms used in the film, I'd say they look pretty close:


enter image description here


Tinkering with the code and fiddling with the dials may yield some nice results.


Post in comments when done :P


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

futurama - How much time is lost in 'Time Keeps on Slippin''

In time Keeps on Slippin' , Farnsworth creates a basketball team which he matures by abusing Chronitons. This leads to time skipping forward by random, but ever increasing amounts. How much time was skipped in this way? Answer Unfortunately, I don't think a good estimate can be made for this, for two reasons: Many of the time skips move forward by an indeterminate amount of time. At one point, the Professor mentions localized regions of space skipping forward much more than others. We then see two young boys on the street below complaining about having to pay social security, only to suddenly become senior citizens and start complaining about wanting their money. Thus, each individual could have experienced a different amount of time skippage.

harry potter - How could Expelliarmus beat Avada Kedavra?

I want to be very careful about how I ask this question – I am not asking How did Voldemort die? [CLOSED] Below the text is the relevant passages from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows if anyone wants to review them (I'm sorry for the amount of text). How did Expelliarmus beat Avada Kedavra and kill Voldemort? I feel the reason Harry's Expelliarmus overpowered Voldemort's Avada Kedavra curse has to do with who was master of the Elder Wand and how the Elder Wand works. I've always had trouble understanding fully how the Elder Wand works, though. How much did the fact that Voldemort never truly won or mastered the Elder Wand factor into how Expelliarmus reacted to Avada Kedavra and caused Avada Kedavra to rebound and kill Voldemort? An answer based in book canon would be especially welcome, but any canon source really is fine. Harry heard the high voice shriek as he, too, yelled his best hope to the heavens, pointing Draco’s wand: ‘ Avada Kedavra !’ ‘ Expelliarmus !...

Is there good canon evidence for the "Nightmare Matrix"?

On the Matrix wiki, there's an article about the Nightmare Matrix which says: The Nightmare Matrix was the second prototype Matrix, designed by The Architect after the massive failure of the Paradise Matrix in the hope that human minds would more readily accept an imperfect world with suffering. Unlike the first version, this Matrix instituted a basic cause-and-effect programming and forcibly made those connected to it accept the program. Vamp Prime, a possible remnant of the Nightmare Matrix. It also featured programs that resembled mythical evil creatures in various human mythologies such as vampires, werewolves, zombies, aliens, etc. It also failed, but many of the programs who were designed for it survived deletion in exile. The Merovingian and his wife, Persephone may have had their roots in this version of the Matrix. Upon its failure, the Merovingian started a smuggling ring of programs and information to provide a haven for exiles that would last for 6 cycles in the final ...

story identification - Anime with a boy hiring a creature from a stone, meets a man named Dante and starts a journey to collect crystals

I am from India, this anime or animated series (I can't remember this was made by the Japan or other countries) was aired between 2009 and 2012 probably in Jetix/Disney XD (but I'm not sure). This anime starts with a boy (the main character, I forgot his name) who find a stone (or crystal like thing) in his dad's property, his dad was missing that time. Some day he accidentally hire a creature/monster from that stone. Other day some creature attack him and he was saved by his creature and the story begins. In his journey to solve the mystery he meets a middle aged man 'Dante' (probably that was the name; this is the only character name I can remember). He had also some stone. After that they meet with one girl and a women (one of the girls is same age with the main boy character and probably will become his partner as the story goes on). Another women probably Dante's partner. Four of them started their journey to collect all the stone/crystal. They are collecti...