ted chiang/arrival/animals and language

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I had a deep browse around ted chiang (author of Story of Your Life, which was made into the amazing film Arrival) and his conceptions of time, space, and just everything sci-fi was so fascinating and definitely bent my mind in ways I didn't think was possible - like the idea that Time to aliens is circular (????) not linear etc. below is the work 'The Great Silence which was a collaboration:

Allora & Calzadilla, The Great Silence, in collaboration with Ted Chiang



















































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Author Ted Chiang discusses the making of The Great Silence

'Author Ted Chiang discusses the making of The Great Silence as well as other works addressing interspecies communication, including "Story of Your Life", the novella which was adapted into the 2016 feature film, Arrival. Artists, dancers, writers and scientists gathered at the London Zoo to consider animal, human and artificial consciousness, language, and interspecies communication. See below for participants. Participants include writer Ted Chiang, artist Michela de Mattei; dancer Claire Filmon (performing Simone Forti); artist Rasmus Nielsen; dolphin cognition researcher Diana Reiss, as well as a remote participation by Internet pioneer Vint Cerf and a screening of The Great Silence by Allora & Calzadilla (in collaboration with Ted Chiang).'



















































































https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Story_of_Your_Life

"Story of Your Life" is a science fiction novella by American writer Ted Chiang, first published in Starlight 2 in 1998, and in 2002 in Chiang's collection of short stories, Stories of Your Life and Others. Its major themes are language and determinism.

'....Attempts are also made to establish heptapod terminology in physics. Little progress is made, until a presentation of Fermat's Principle of Least Time is given. Gary explains the principle to Louise, giving the example of the refraction of light, and that light will always take the fastest possible route. Louise reasons, "[a] ray of light has to know where it will ultimately end up before it can choose the direction to begin moving in."[7] She knows the heptapods do not write a sentence one semagram at a time, but draw all the ideograms simultaneously, suggesting they know what the entire sentence will be beforehand. Louise realizes that instead of experiencing events sequentially (causality), heptapods experience all events at once (teleology). This is reflected in their language, and explains why Fermat's principle came naturally to them.

Soon, Louise becomes quite proficient at Heptapod B, and finds that when writing in it, trains of thought are directionless, and premises and conclusions interchangeable. She finds herself starting to think in Heptapod B and begins to see time as heptapods do. Louise sees glimpses of her future and of a daughter she does not yet have. This raises questions about the nature of free will: knowledge of the future would imply no free will, because knowing the future means it cannot be changed. But Louise asks herself, "What if the experience of knowing the future changed a person? What if it evoked a sense of urgency, a sense of obligation to act precisely as she knew she would?"

One day, after an information exchange with the heptapods, the aliens announce they are leaving. They shut down the looking glasses and their ships disappear. It is never established why they leave, or why they had come in the first place. The heptapod languages changes Louise's life, and once she knows the future, she never acted contrary to that future. Gary and Louise start spending time together and eventually marry. When Gary asks Louise if she wants a baby, she agrees, knowing that they will divorce, and their daughter will die young.'

'In the "Story Notes" section of Stories of Your Life and Others, Chiang wrote that inspiration for "Story of Your Life" came from his fascination in the variational principle in physics. When he saw American actor Paul Linke's performance in his play Time Flies When You’re Alive, about his wife's struggle with breast cancer, Chiang realized he could use this principle to show how someone deals with the inevitable. '

'In a 2010 interview Chiang said that "Story of Your Life" addresses the subject of free will. The philosophical debates about whether or not we have free will are all abstract, but knowing the future makes the question very real. Chiang added, "If you know what's going to happen, can you keep it from happening? Even when a story says that you can't, the emotional impact arises from the feeling that you should be able to."

Chiang spent five years researching and familiarizing himself in the field of linguistics before attempting to write "Story of Your Life."'


Arrival Premiere with Writer Ted Chiang































































OSCAR-Nominated ARRIVAL Screenwriter Eric Heisserer extended interview











Science vs Cinema: ARRIVAL