This week I chose to complete the audio assignment Chrome Music Labs. and since we had to incorporate our characters in these assignments I gave Dr. Ravioli the credit for making this beautiful master piece. Dr. Ravioli thinks this song really speaks to his heart. He is constantly moving fast and the the three beats in the middle represents his 36 ex wives hindering him from his master mind genius. He is loud and proud and thinks this song really shows his true colors… Orange. He used this site to create the beautiful song chords.

For week four we were tasked with creating a sound effect story. I decided to go with a thriller type story where an office building catches fire and one of the office workers tries to put it out but to no avail. This took a very long time to complete but was very fun to experiment with. I think I definitely need to learn how to use Audacity more effectively but I think I am getting the hang of it. My sound story can be accessed below. I did realize once I finished it that it has words in it but it it very short and I wasn’t sure how to fix it without having to redo the entire thing. I used sounds from http://freesound.org which was super easy to get the hang of.

For this week I was tasked with creating a radio bumper for the Ds106 radio. I decided it would be funny to impersonate Jennifer Coolidge for this. My radio bumper can be accessed Below. This was a really fun experience and I got to learn more about using Audacity and got to practice using my Jennifer Coolidge voice which might still need some work.

For my design reflection I watched the three videos and I took notes. It was really interesting to hear about how different types of movies make their posters. I never knew white was mainly associated with comedy until I watched these videos. It makes sense now but It never really clicked. I really enjoyed learning about how the Stranger Things logo was made and how they got inspiration from 90’s related films and added imperfections to the actual T.V. show to make it seem older than it actually is. My design reflection can be seen here.

Secondly I completed the 20 minute photoblitz which was probably my favorite thing we did this week, it can be accessed here. It was really fun getting up and looking around my dorm for things to take pictures of that would fit the themes. I wanted to make each one or at least some of them have some sort of funny aspect. I chose to do the close up picture of the deodorant because I thought it would be funny and intimidating which did get the desired effect as I got a comment on it.

The Middlebury assignment was super interesting and I learned a lot about AI generators, it can be accessed here. I found out that not all of them are good to use and not all of them can create the desired image. I found Bing to be better than Stable Diffusion. Stable diffusion was only good at following one direction while Bing was able to include everything I said. I really liked experimenting with these photo generators and even incorporated them in my assignment banks for the week since AI is a subject we have been focusing on. I chose to complete a design task first and used Dr. Ravioli as my muse. The task was to create a game home screen with a character you created. So I asked Bing to create a game home screen with an orange can named Dr. Ravioli riding a moped and it made the best thing I have ever seen. The assignment Banks tasks can be seen here. The second one I sort of misunderstood but I liked my results so I posted those instead of doing a new assignment. The task was to “Make a collage of the 4 seasons: Winter, Fall, Summer, and Spring.” but I accidentally read collage as college and made season themed universities instead.

The daily creates were really fun this week. I did three but one was a little late. The first one I got to find a GIF that represented the first job I had and I chose a baby woodworking as I was a camp counselor out at a woodworking camp and helped the younger kids use the big tools and measure their creations. The second one was really fun and got me thinking about who I am and how I want people to perceive me. I chose the song Dancing Queen because its fun and honestly just such a good song to walk up to. The third one was probably my favorite, I got to create an art piece that resembled my experienced with falling asleep and dreaming. When I fall asleep and start to dream it feels like a spiral so I wanted that to be the main focus.

I absolutely love commenting on other peoples posts and responding to comments on my own. I am having so much fun with Dr. Ravioli and other people are as well. I have made a lot of OC’s in my life but he is by far my favorite one. I can not wait to see more of what other people create in this class.

This week we were tasked with completing two Visual or Design assignments from the assignment bank and making at least one of them have to do with the character I created. Dr. Ravioli was very excited to start this task and knew it would be amazing.

Firstly I chose to complete the design task “Your story as a game!” where I had to create a game home screen based off of my character Dr. Ravioli. I used the AI photo generator Bing to make this artwork since this week is focusing on AI photo generators.

I love how this turned out and I think Bing did a really good job at creating what I wanted.

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Next I chose to complete the visual assignment “Make a collage of the 4 seasons: Winter, Fall, Summer, and Spring.” But after completing it I realized that I read it wrong because I’m dyslexic and instead of making a collage, I AI generated the four seasons as colleges.

College of Winter

College of Spring

College of Fall

College of Summer

Task one: Texture adds a dimensional quality to photos, and changes with scale.

Task two: Make a creative photo of some sort of boundary

Task three: Make an artistic closeup photo of an ear- human, animal, whatever.

Task four: Take a photo of an object that represents how old you feel.

Task five: Take an extreme close-up of an easily recognizable, common object.

Task six: Take a picture of a word of a sign that represents the kind of day you are having.

Task seven: A perfect line. Make a photo of intersecting vertal, horizontal, or diagonal lines.

Week Twooooooooooo!!

This week has been a doozy, but I have been having so much fun, especially with the daily creates! I have a set time each day to make sure I don’t forget to complete them, and each time the prompt comes out, I get very excited. So far, each one has come with its own challenges and its own solutions, but each time I have completed one, I have been happy with the result. I have been making sure to be creative and work thoroughly while also having fun expressing myself.

The assignment bank was a pleasant surprise this week. I have thoroughly enjoyed participating in these assignments and I also enjoyed incorporating AI in two of them. The first one I did was a visual assignment that focused on inspirational posters that had phrases that meant the opposite of what was shown. This assignment can be seen at the top of the Assignment Bank page on my blog. I chose to show pictures of my traveling experience and how beautiful the earth can be if you explore it and made sure to emphasize the natural beauty of the world.

The second assignment bank I completed was a Minecraft Mystery, which can be seen under my inspirational poster on the Assignment Bank page on my Blog. Since I had to incorporate AI in this somehow, I chose to write about a story of a new mine crafter logging on to a new Minecraft world and not being able to find sheep to make a bed, he finds himself becoming very anxious as he starts to hear weird noises outside his cave since he hasn’t slept in days. Turns out it was Herobrine who managed to get away from Mojang and found its way into the Minecraft game as an evil AI. Herobrine ends up taking over the main character’s computer, and that is the last we hear of him. I really enjoyed this assignment as I am a bit of a Minecraft nerd, and I really enjoy the game and have enjoyed it since I was very young. I have always been very fascinated with Herobrine and I even thought I saw him a couple of times in my Minecraft worlds when I was younger.

The third and final Assignment bank I chose was to write the beginnings of a fan fic. Since I still had to incorporate AI into this assignment, I chose to write about a robot named Artifia, who was made as an experiment to see if robots could live amongst humans without being recognized as non-human. I had a lot of fun creating this character and thinking about what I wanted for this world and this robot. She is an AI that has become what she thinks to be human and refuses to believe otherwise. She is strong and wants the world to be equal and peaceful. This was a very fun exercise.

I have been spending some time on and off learning about how to customize my blog and make it look somewhat how I want it to look. I like the direction it is going in, and I and very excited to keep learning about how to mess with it and make it more unique. I think it still has a long way to go, but I like how it looks for now.

I think I have been participating pretty well in this class. I have made comments on several people’s posts and made sure to answer the comments on mine. I am still trying to figure out how to use Mastodon, so there is not much activity on there, but I have been actively participating in commenting on my community posts.

Creating my online character has, by far been my favorite thing we have done in this class. I have decided to keep with the theme of Cat on a Moped and based my character on that cat. I absolutely love Dr. Ravioli, and I have already gotten some comments from people who love him almost as much as I do. His description can be seen here. I had so much fun creating him, and I absolutely love how he turned out, I wish he were real. I made sure to answer all of the questions from the character creator form and added some extra context and story to some of them. Dr. Ravioli is a mad genius who loves his mopeds and is obsessed with himself, almost as much as I am obsessed with him. I dont think there could be a better runner of this blog than the Dr. himself.

I love Dr. Oblivion, and I love how sassy he can be. He refused to answer my question about what his favorite color was because he didn’t think it was important. I think it is important, but what he says goes. I read The Techno-Optimist Manifesto, and I absolutely loved it. I linked it to my film review on WALL-E and made sure to include my thoughts, reactions, and reflections. I also let Dr. Oblivion read it, and he agreed with everything I said and only mentioned adding a little bit about how we should make sure to use AI safely. You can read my Overview of The Techno-Optimist Manifesto here.

When it comes to my film review, I let Dr. Oblivion read it, and he didn’t really have any suggestions on how to increase my points on AI. I think I did pretty well on this assignment and made sure to talk about AI and how it can evolve and impact us. I made a few changes, but overall, not much, as I think this answers the required questions. Here is the link.

EXCITED TO SEE WHAT IS NEXT!

Relates or contrasts to the film WALL-E

The quote, “It is time, once again, to raise the technology flag. It is time to be Techno-Optimists.” seems like something someone would have said in WALL-E. The humans in that film let robots take over so they could live in luxury and not have to worry about anything. They used technology to their advantage, and both this article and the film WALL-E believe growth is progress. The author explains that they think AI can save lives, and we have seen that countless times in WALL-E, from the defibrillator robots and doctor robots to the robots who help restore humanity by bringing them back to earth.

Thoughts

I think technology is how we continue. It is not something we should be pushing aside. It is something we should be advancing. A lot of the things we have today will be gone at some point, we cannot continue to rely on greenhouse gasses and natural resources as they will be all used up. Growing is an important part of the human race, and it should not stop. Technology has fixed so many of our problems, and I think it has the resources to fix so many more, only if we let it. I think we have the power to fix the awful wrongdoings of this earth with technology, and it has been proven that we have already fixed many. I agree with them that AI can save lives. It has so much potential to solve many of our health issues, but only if we let it. Energy is an extremely helpful tool that we require to feel safe and comfortable, without it, there is darkness.

Reactions

I really like how the author talks about natural resources and how we won’t have them forever. We need to continue to grow to find new ways of sustaining ourselves further. It’s crazy how we haven’t expanded in our use of AI, it can be used in so many ways and can help us come up with cures for diseases and help those who are sick. Maybe AI can be the solution we need to find a cure for cancer. The continuous mention of natural resources within this article makes me very happy, especially since the author thinks technology will be able to stop the environmental degradation we started. Climate change and pollution a major problem and if we do not address these issues soon, we won’t have an earth to explore AI on, we won’t be alive.

Reflections

Humans are meant to evolve, and growing technologically is a part of that. It is important that we continue to grow. AI is a very much unappreciated tool that needs to be explored more as we continue as a human race. We need to continue our use of AI as it could be the solution to all of the many problems we face as humans, but we also need to make sure we are being ethical in its use so we do not start to go down the wrong path.