by Andrew Johnson
“But the Raven still beguiling all my fancy into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust and door;
Then upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore-
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt and ominous bird of yore
              Meant in croaking “Nevermore.”
Busy week with the kids’ school and my schoolwork. So, I started off the weekend with a daily create.
By Thursday I had found some videos to try and edit for my project and gotten some good audio from Dr. Oblivion to play with. I also had viewed the eclipse with the family, chaperoned a field trip, Wednesday was no school day. Thursday appointment at the elementary school.
Thursday I also did a 3rd daily create.
Friday another thing at the elementary school. I also have had a terrible headache all day. It is a migraine headache. the double vision has been the worst. I quickly through together some of the material I have for more project so I could show I have collected some things and put it on the video project post. It is only about 8 pm but I have given up hope of salvaging my day and putting my video together. crying and going to sleep sounds more likely. My kids are fed, alive, and in bed. that is today’s win.
I heavily edited my video plan. While I would love to make the full-length fake documentary, it is just not possible for me to do that the way I want with my current skills and time constraints.
I did find an old new reel on the San Fransisco earthquake on the library of congress website that I edited. It has loads of old footage of broken brick buildings. I was able to place an Evil Brick in one frame. I already knew how to make Dr Oblivion speak with Wav2lip. I gave Dr Oblivion a question multiple times and downloaded his answers and then edited them together in Audacity to give an answer I liked best. I used the edited audio in the LipSync/Wav2lip program. On Thursday after my kids got home from school, I asked them to stand on the front steps and pretend they saw, an evil brick come to life and tell me about it. I think they did pretty well on the fly. My teenager declined to be a part of the video. I had a migraine on Friday, which is the day I set aside for the final edit to put it all together. I had a busy week with class and attending meetings for my children at their schools. Overall, I am pleased with how far my video skills have come. I went from never having made an edited video before at the beginning of the semester to knowing how to do voice overs, adding things to frames, and put words in Dr Oblivion’s mouth.
I have had a migraine all day Friday. I was unable to finish my video. So below you will find a video of a few things I have pulled together. The finished product should be posted at the top of this post by Monday. I used Adobe Premier Rush to make the video.
Hello Hello! My FAVORITE time of the week! daily creates!
here are mine for this week!
I did the Internet meme and the spiral! there were really fun to do for this week! I wanted to make my own internet meme and that was honestly all I could think of lol! I also did the spiral thing because I was so focused about the eclipse on Monday that I missed Monday’s daily create!
I hope everyone had fun with their daily creates!
-Reese Kubricki
by Greta Hammen
Favorite daily creates to do involve making art. I enjoy the websites that the prompts take us to, in order to have the desired art outcome. This week we had the solar eclipse, which is a rare occurrence and a reminder of what an amazing world we live in! I put together Daily Creates: Pockets Ablaze TDC: – According to Greta (gretahammen.com), Psychedelic Art TDC: – According to Greta (gretahammen.com) and https://social.ds106.us/@gretahammen/112248565098336091.
It has been beneficial to see and read what others in the class are able to do Comments to: Daily Create – 4/7/2024 – Creative Bytes: Exploring the World of DS106 (rishicshankards106.com), https://blog.raptnrent.me/2024/04/09/turn-around-bright-eyes/?unapproved=215228&moderation-hash=a132365dc08aa9931d, Daily Crate 04/12/24 – its_Senpai (lesenpai.com), Video Project, Troubles As Usual – Abiotic Interface and Video Project: AI in Space & Skis – Tubba Talks (tubbanoor.com). Thank you, Professor Bond, for sharing about your recent travel experience to get the best view of the solar eclipse and for recording the sounds at the time it occurred.
My video, AI For Our Future – According to Greta (gretahammen.com), can be watched here and a reflective analysis of the process is written. I plan to try the Wav2Lip application on a different clip in the near future, so that I have that sense of satisfaction that comes from achieving the goal!
I am on the verge of exploding I will not lie, the stress that I feel is immense and as I’m writing this it is not letting me export or save my video project from iMovie and I don’t know what I’m going to do!! So I’m procrastinating and starting my weekly summary (update, the moment I finished writing this sentence I WAS ABLE TO EXPORT IT tears came to my eyes because I didn’t think this would actually happen)
Here’s song of the week, of course:
love it love it love it
umm new update on exporting IT WONT WORK BECAUDSE I HAVE NO SPACE AND NOW I REALLY DONT KNOW WHAT TO DO
now I am trying to send it to my Google Drive but I have no idea if this is going to work
(update: it didn’t . . . but the exporting war will be mentioned on the original video post!!)
Daily Creates
Not much to say about these, but they were fun!! Big fan of the daily creates, they really get my brain working (which is exactly the point!) Definitely needed this before I started working on my papers in other classes this week.
Video Project
I fought a war. A war was fought. I’m still fighting the war. I don’t know what to do. (i won the war (i had to delete all of my phone storage))
Outside of the war of exporting, this was fun! It was nice talking to my family and friends about these things and hearing different thoughts. I also actually had a good time editing too. I just wish I could get it to export . . . my next option is screen recording. Will update this post if I get that to work. (update: i didn’t have to!!)
As I was commenting, I noticed a major flaw . . . people had much smaller videos than I did . . . maybe I am overambitious. It kind of makes me want to rip my skin off, I won’t lie, but the work is already done and I can’t take it back. I just need it to export.
But note for future me, it is okay to not make the most perfect video. You’re still learning, you don’t need to work so hard. Give yourself a break!!
Never again
This week, I interviewed my family and friends about their views on AI to get a sense of the differing views of this new future that’s upon us.
It was really interesting hearing these different views. It was also really hard to hold back my own thoughts, but I did, because I wanted this to be unbiased and not about me.
I put my plans in this post last week, and I wish people would comment on my posts more and tell me if I’m being overambitious, because I think I could’ve saved myself a lot of stress if someone just said, “hey, relax . . . you don’t have to do so much.” I used to get a lot of comments! I guess now I’m just sad that I only get around one or two a week.
Okay, no more negativity. I split my interviews up throughout the week due to time. I interviewed my brother, Bryce, on Saturday, my dad, Brian, on Sunday, my friend, Lorelei, on Tuesday, and my sister, BayLee, on Thursday. I had different people intended to interview, but had to drop them due to complications of their own time. It originally was not going to be mostly my family, but I had to work with what I had.
Interesting thing, my brother, Bryce, is getting married today! So that’s in my later plans for the day!
After recording, I ended up putting everything together Thursday night and Friday morning. I planned to edit this together on my computer, but then I couldn’t send the recordings from my phone to my computer, and it took literally 4 hours to send 3 of the videos to my Google Drive, and I just gave up and thought it’d be better to do it on my phone through iMovie. So I did.
Editing was fun! I have fun cropping out all the “ums,” and it was so nice watching the minutes go from like 36 minutes to 20. If I had to upload a 36 minute video, I really think I would explode into a million pieces. Editing was actually also easy. It’s not like I usually do this, or have experience with it, but I understood it. iMovie was relatively easy. Until it wasn’t.
Exporting. Never again. Never. First it said export failed, then it said I had no storage, and then . . . I deleted all of my storage AND IT WORKED!! I EXPORTED IT!! I have never been happier, oh my god this was a mess.
Overall . . . this was fun! And stressful! But, I’m just happy to have it done.
Let’s start this off with my video:
Now the story behind it:
I wanted to have my video incorporate AI and Dr. Oblivion. Therefore, I made Dr. Oblivion a CEO and Steve an employee at the company, World of Oblivion. Steve is an AI, specifically a robot who sits at his desk all day in front of his computer figuring out ways to increase his capabilities and efficiency for the company. Dr. Oblivion has recently been noticing how tired Steve is and he doesn’t want Steve to do any work wrong since his job is critical. Therefore, Dr. Oblivion tells Steve that he will be getting to go on a virtual vacation to take a break and recharge. Steve is confused at what that is but he is also intrigued so he decides to go. Steve gets to virtually explore skiing, the Eiffel Tower, and space! He has to do so virtually since he does not have the capabilities yet to endure freezing temperatures and outer space. When Steve returns he is energized and ready to successfully complete his work tasks leading to a happy boss and growing company!
My thought process:
When I was initially thinking of what to do, I knew it had to be something completely different than anything I’ve done before. That is to ensure that I can keep myself entertained while creating this and make it more creative since I’m starting from scratch. I choose the idea of vacation since it would be easy to find sound, images, and videos. I chose virtual because it could be easily displayed as well as it goes along with the AI theme. Going off the AI theme, I feel like lately AI has been utilized so much for various things. Just like when humans are working too hard and need a break, I made the story to where it’s AI’s aka Steve’s turn for a break/vacation. I started off with an intro of Steve and then went on to the actual story. Once the short story is complete, Dr.Oblivion ends the video off with a short goodbye message.
The tools I used:
This video has a mix of audio, videos, text, graphics, and AI-generated text-to-speech all edited into one video. I used Dr. Oblivion’s video for the parts of him speaking. To retrieve all of my videos and sounds, I used the site Pixabay. For my text-to-speech, I used an AI generator, TTSMP3. Lastly, I used Canva to put all the clips together and make one cohesive video. Additionally, the images/graphics on the slide along with the text was also from Canva.
Overall, I am proud of my video and I was able to do it the way I had planned to last week. I only wish it would be longer, but I didn’t want to keep adding on to the story to where the viewer wouldn’t know the main point. One thing I wasn’t able to get was Dr. Oblivion’s exact voice for his voiceovers. However, I did manage to find a voice online that sounded almost like him. Let me know what you guys think of it, hopefully you aren’t tired of seeing Dr. Oblivion by now!
I started these early so I get to post this before Friday!! Woooo!!!
On Tuesday, 4/9, the prompt was,
“Twist the colors to make some Spiral Art. Use “advanced mode” for deeper settings. Go to Spiro Artwork by Zazow. What will you turn into art? Share it out. (and maybe listen to some Spiro Gyra as you work — get it?)”
So I played around with this for a few minutes and came up with this!
Nothing super interesting about the work to this one to be honest, but this was just fun and satisfying to just click around and see what it did. I like how the closer you look you can see more individual lines. It’s so cool!
On Wednesday, 4/10, the prompt was,
“Write a nonet about your daily creative practice. What’s a nonet? I discovered this form thanks to Sam. A nonet is a nine-line poem. In the nonet form, each line contains specific, descending syllable counts. The first line contains nine syllables, the second line contains eight, the third line contains seven, and so on. The last line of nonet poetry contains one syllable. The nonet is a poetic form that can contain any rhyming scheme and cover any subject matter.  How to write a nonet.“
You know I love when I’m tasked with writing something . . . that’s how I really get my brain going! I went to the first thing I could think of to write about, which was interesting, my computer’s fan, and I wrote,
The fan in my laptop screams at me
But I am barely using it
Maybe it is getting old
But it still works like new
Oh, it is calm now
Faint whispering,
it cries out,
“Upgrade
me”
Whoaaa, when I make that centered it looks really cool because of the descending syllables.
Anyways, this wasn’t too hard like I thought it would be. I just told the story of my laptop’s fan yelling at me and how maybe the laptop is getting to a point where she needs an upgrade . . . needs to be put out of her misery, perhaps. She was pricey though!! I’m not ready!!!
On Thursday, 4/11, the prompt was,
“This famous New Yorker cartoon comments on the anonymity of going online. What else is true about the Internet?“
And there really wasn’t a lot to think about here for me. I ended up posting,
“what else did you know about the internet? it’s listening to you . . . every word you type . . . it takes in . . . for the algorithm !”
I wanted it to be kind of eerie, so that you feel the hesitation, like, no . . . this can’t be . . . the Internet . . . it’s listening to me!! But, like, it’s normal, it’s not something we should be super concerned about because it has always done this with cookies and stuff (unless we should be concerned!)
That’s all for this week!
by Greta Hammen
My video project is of Grant, an AI image generator of a man talking straight into a camera. I uploaded this image onto studio.d-id.com and gave him a profile with name and a pdf of text that he might say, if asked questions. Then, I was able to create the video on that site with my text and the lip syncing is done with the click of a button. I am happy with the results!
I originally worked on a video titled, Frank talks AI, FranktalksAI.mp4.3gp. I spent approximately 5 hours on the process of the video during this week. I downloaded it from House I Live In, The : Ross (Frank) Productions, Ltd. : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive, then I uploaded it to YouTube, I thought that I should do it that way, but there are other ways of doing it. I imported it into Premiere Pro, cutting it down to a minute. I created the audio on AI Voice Generator & Text to Speech | ElevenLabs. Then, I did the Wav2Lip process four times. I got the green checks on the left for the uploads, but the syncing was unsuccessful and did not output a video.
You can view a clip of it here: https://www.youtube.com/clip/UgkxdFmw8ntaiysQjTrtQe3NYWPirGKF9RVj
The lesson learned here, is that on occasion, even with considerable troubleshooting, sometimes you have to create a new plan and proceed.