The second assignment I chose to do for the three audio assignments this week was to create a relaxing and soothing sound that one could fall asleep to, if they wanted. So, I went ahead and started browsing through some of the sounds available on freesound.org and tried to locate some calming sounds that I could put together to create one big audio clip. I wanted to include various sounds such as chimes, waterfalls, rainfall, animals, nature, etc. Luckily, I was able to get almost all of the sounds that I wanted to incorporate, into the final audio clip. As you will hear in the sound bite, I started off by taking all of the four sounds and having them play at the same time, overlapping one another. For the chimes, I decided that it was too overpowering for the rest of the sounds that were being used so I decided to just let those play every 10 seconds and then the time when they were not playing would be filled up by the remaining sounds that were being played. I chose to use the sounds of wind chimes, soft rainfall, a slow waterfall, as well as the chimes and chirps from birds in a rural countryside. I think all of these sounds blend in really well and allow the listener to try and pick apart the different sounds and try to decipher what is what. Also, none of the sounds are too overwhelming so the listener is not overstimulated by the same sound. Also, in the sound clip that contains the rural countryside there is a train horn that is being sounded way off in the distance which I personally really liked. I thought the addition of the train horn in the distance really added to the relaxing nature of the sound clip because the horn would sometimes be played when all of the other sound bites were coming down from their climax, so it would not be dead silence, rather a subtle horn that one could hear off in the distance and still be stimulated by the various sounds as they begin to climax once again. Also, the train horn was nowhere near too loud for this clip either and you could even hear the nature that was captured in tis clip over the train horn and really enjoyed the birds chirping while the horn was being sounded. I would say that my favorite sound clip used to create this entire piece would have to be the sound clip that had the train horn, soft wind rustling, and the birds chirping in the background because on its own, that could be a relaxing clip I could listen to all day. Take a listen to my final product, which you can listen to below.
Author Archives: Creative Bytes: Exploring the World of DS106
Xander’s Triumphant Return to Civilization
One of the tasks for this week was to complete 3 audio assignments from the assignment bank apart from the sound effect story and the radio bumper. So, for my first assignment I decided to create a breaking new video with some text-to-speech video generation techniques with the addition of using a AI generated image to fit the theme of the class as well. The assignment also stated that we should include our course characters into the assignments as we go so I decided, why not give Xander a return the general public with a breaking news update. It has been a while since we got to check in with Xander and I am happy to report that he has been up to some big things recently. I could tell you but I could also just show you, take a quick look at this breaking news story that covered what Xander has been up to over the last couple of months.
As I am sure you all saw, Xander became the first human in the world to have an AI agent working simultaneously with his brain causing his brain power to almost double. This news is being released after Xander has been with the agent in his brain for about 5 weeks so he is well past his rehabilitation point and is onto full-blown performance testing now. As of recent, there have been no issues with his chip and he feels the same, however, he does say that every know and then he just gets a big rush of knowledge and that it is hard to explain. However, he constantly reinforces the fact that there have been zero negative side effects or consequences of this chip so far and stresses that to everyone who looks at him as a egotistical mastermind.
I really enjoyed creating this breaking news update because I have never done something like this before. It has always been with image generation but never with video generation and it cool to figure out how everything worked and what you could and could not do with a tool like this. The background image was an AI generated image, which actually took me a while to generate because the chatbot was not properly following my prompts and kept giving me random outputs that did not match my prompt but other than that, that part was pretty easy. I then found an professional looking avatar and added him into it so that he could act as my news anchor. Once I did that, I just needed to give it a short script to read as my text-to-speech requirement was being fulfilled while also finishing up the main chunk of the assignment.
P.S. Stay tuned, I think Xander has something big up his sleeve with another character in this class *wink wink*.
My Latest Story… BUT With No Words!!!
One the assignments that we got to do this week was to create a sound effect story. This means that we had to create a short (less than 90 seconds) sound clip that tells a story. I have my sound effect story uploaded to my SoundCloud and you can find it below. At times, I noticed that sometimes the sounds were a little difficult to make out. That is one thing that really interested me, because while telling a story is so easy with words, it becomes a lot more difficult when the only thing you can use is sounds because those sounds need to be so precise in order to try and convey the message you are trying to explain. The basic idea of my sound effect story was about a man who was driving down a slick, icy road and his car had spun out and he had crashed into a ditch. The clip starts off with wind howling to try and portray the idea that the person was moving fast and then a car crash sound comes in. Once that happens, the man walks on snow, which can be heard through the crunching snow sound clip, and then finds a cabin. He opens the door, which can once again be heard and then he starts a fire with the crackling in the background. He then begins to make himself a cup of tea which you can hear him pour it and then proceeds to take a shower because he is all dirty and cold from the walk to the cabin, which can also be heard at the end of the sound clip. That is as far as my story goes for right now and I liked the ending because it leaves a mysterious atmosphere around because you do not really know what happened to the man or if he got help. I enjoyed doing this assignment and it was cool to see how the different sounds could come together to make one final product that told a story.
My First Radio Bumper!
This week i got the chance to experiment with various sounds and the Audacity program. One of the first things that I did was create a radio bumper for the 106.1 radio station. I picked this station because it is in line with the DS106 tag line and also is a radio station that I always listened to growing up. I decided in order to create the radio bumper, I first needed to decide what kinds of sounds and music the radio would play, and so I decided on pop, rap, country, and the current top hits in the country. This was just like the actual radio station I used to listen to and it had a good overview of different songs to keep people interested. Like any radio station, I also decided to add the tag line “exclusive interviews” in my radio bumper to attract even more people. You can find the radio bumper that I created at the link below.
No Pictures? No Problem, We Got Sounds!
In this blog post, I am going to be discussing some thing that I learned from watching the two Radio Lab youtube videos along with some things that I picked up on while listening to the “Moon Graffiti” sounds clip on Soundcloud. All of these entertainment mediums gave me a lot more insight into the world of audio storytelling and really showed me that you can tell a story without having to have pictures or written words. Jad Abumrad talks about his version of storytelling, through the use of audio, is his “voice.” He states that there is something magical about a person going up on stage and use their voice to capture the audience and put them into a dream state. Now, he also states that since he is uncomfortable doing that, the sounds and clips that he makes, are his “voice” that allow the audience to feel the same sense of connection and euphoria. He claims that the way he makes sounds is almost an ancient way of making sounds in a modern day world where the technology allows you to do so many different things with various sounds. In the second video, he also claims that he a tv junkie meaning he loves sounds and images. He makes an example that images are not always necessary and that sometimes the lack of images can be good as well due to the increased imagination that comes with the lack of images and abundance of sounds. He says that that brings more empathy into the world because it creates a connection between two people, the person explaining the situation and the person who is listening and trying to create a image in their head.
I think that while listening to Moon Graffiti, everything that Abumrad was saying in his videos was becoming more and more true. Listening to this sound clip, it felt like I was really there with them. The different sounds and the various radio sounds that were happening really made the situation feel real and I think that if I was listening to this right before going to sleep, this is all I would dream about. There was a very eerie sound that was being played in the background after they had crashed on the moon and the sound of the narrator immediately after definitely sounds a little on the darker, evil side. But I think that was the main purpose, to create an atmosphere that was eerie and unpredictable because this is a new situaiton that no one has ever really discussed or talked about before. The sounds used in this clip were picked perfectly and each sound fit perfectly with one another especially when they were layered over one another. Abumrad was saying that using sounds were his “voice” to tell a story and these sounds and voices in this clip are telling their own story just like Abumrad. Also, he states that the lack of images in storytelling sometimes opens up ones mind to more creative and imaginative ideas, and at the beginning of this clip when they were crashing, I was able to create an image in my head that really might have been what the crash may have looked like if it ever was too happen. Also, having the two astronauts converse with each other while that soft, spooky sound in the back is playing also gives a eerie atmosphere to the whole thing. Overall, i enjoyed getting my feet wet a little bit with audio storytelling and am interested to see how the rest of this week goes!
Quick Turnaround for Weekly Summary #3!!!
This week went by a little quicker than last week in my opinion. I started off the week by getting my first daily create done which you can find here. This daily create basically asked us to create a saying or phrase of a dog barking but in cat talk. This was a little confusing to me and so my answer was pretty simple and just revolved around translating various dog sounds to “meow.” I also was able to do my second of three daily creates for this week which was to create an image of what a cat might take a photo of on the other side, it is a little hard to explain but click on this link to find it. Finally, my last daily create for this week is located here and involved us using Google for a coloring book experiment. You had to try and color in the picture from memory using the different colors available to you. It actually proved to be somewhat difficult and I thought it would be much easier. Once I finished that, I moved onto working on the assignment bank assignments and I started with the Middlebury Art Challenge. I actually really enjoyed working on this assignment because it was interesting to see how image generators would react when being given different prompts and I really enjoyed looking at the outputs. Although this assignment took me a little while, I thought it was worth it because it really allowed me to see how my prompts affected the outcomes of the image generators. I found out that small changes in the prompt do indeed have pretty big impacts on what the image generators can create once the prompts are changed. Moving on, I did the next two assignments for the assignment bank tasks within the visual and design fields. My first one was a visual assignment that required me to create a collage of the seasons in a single area, and I chose to do mine in Central Park, New York. I created this using a collage maker and really enjoyed finding the pictures and looking at the different sceneries in the area. My final assignment bank task was to create a magazine cover for my course character, Xander Neoteric. This magazine cover was created using an AI image generator and I really like the look and feel of the magazine cover. It truly brings out the tech side of Xander and from the font and color really shows that this guy loves the field of technology. I also spent some time everyday this week to comment on people’s post to make sure that everyone is getting some positive feedback on their work so that they do not feel like they are doing it for nothing. I also enjoy just looking at other people’s work to see what everyone came up with. I also was able to create this photoblitz this week as one of my assignments as well. The photoblitz required me to take seven prompts and associate each prompt with a photo that I took to try and match the photo with the prompt. I was given 20 minutes to complete as many of the seven prompts that I could and fortunately, I was able to finish them all. You can find my photoblitz at the link given above. Like stated in that blog post, I enjoyed completing this assignment because it allowed me to be more creative and intentional with the photos and work that I was doing. I also created a post that talks about some things that I learned while watching the interview that was linked on the assignment page along with the other youtube videos that were linked as well. I enjoyed this assignment because it gave me a better insight of what was happening in the world of film and books in regards to movie posters and book covers.
I did not encounter too many issues this week when completing my assignments. I thought things went pretty smoothly this week and I enjoyed doing all of the assignments. The only issue that I can really think of was like last week, my WordPress site would sometimes not load, but again, there were resolved almost immediately, and did not cause any big issues. Like stated before, I really enjoyed the Middlebury Art Challenge because I was interested to see how the image generators would generate the different pictures based on the different prompts.
I definitely think that I accomplished all of the requirements for all of the assignments for this week and I think I did them to the best of my ability. Like stated before, I enjoyed most of the assignments for this week and really allowed me to be creative and intentional with the work I was doing. I would not do anything differently for the work that I did this week as it was completed with effort, time, and creativeness. I believe that there are no larger issues at hand with my work. I think that the assignments were done properly and with effort. I do not have any further questions at this time for the class.
Photo Mania!
- Make it green: green sleeves, green with envy, green eggs and ham.
- Your favorite color.
- Fabric: we wear it, sleep on it, decorate with it. An interesting cloth design or texture.
- An instrument that measures something
- If only shoes could talk. Tell their story in a photo, either on or off someone.
- Take a photo of advertising that has been painted onto a building. The older the better.
- Take a picture of something growing.
Above, you can see the different tasks that I had to do when accomplishing my photoblitz. I enjoyed going around and trying to find various pictures that fit the scheme of the prompt. To start off, I had to take a picture of the website itself to show the start and end time for the time spent working on the prompts. Those are pictured below, and as you can see from the time I started and the time I finished it took me about 18 minutes to complete. Now I want to take some time to go through the pictures that I took and why I chose them for each prompt.
Starting with the “Make it green: green sleeves, green with envy, green eggs and ham” prompt, I took a minute to think to myself what the prompt really wanted me to do and after a minute I decided to just take a picture with almost the entirety of it being covered with some shade of green. The following picture is used to represent the various things that I used to make the picture seem “green.” As you can see, I was able to find different items around my room that had different shades of green to throw some contrast in there. There are four tennis rackets with a very deep shade of green contrasting with two pieces of clothing that are also different shades of green as well. The one on the left is lighter while the one on the right is a darker shade. In the background, there is also a blanket that has more earthy, green tones to it that was used to cover up any extra space to fill the picture in with more green.
Moving on, the next prompt talked about taking a picture that involved you favorite color. This one was fairly simple, and since my favorite color was red, I decided to take a picture of my tennis bag that is very much bright red. This picture can be seen below.
My next prompt was to take a picture of a piece of fabric or clothing that has an interesting design or texture. As a result, i decided to take a picture of the following polo that I recently bought. This article of clothing fit the description perfectly in my opinion because of the different lines, textures, and shapes that are present on the t-shirt. As you can see, there is a very palleted design, meaning that it looks like there are different “heights” and “depths” to the t-shirt giving it a very cool design to look at. Also, the various lines and triangles that are used on the piece are also very cool to look at and make the t-shirt look and feel better when wearing it. One last design aspect that I thought made it perfect for this prompt was that when the t-shirt is just hanging as it is in the photo, it appears that all of the triangles and lines are converging to one center point at the bottom of the t-shirt which I thought was cool as well.
My fourth prompt was to take a picture of something that measures things. Now I think most people would go and take a picture of a tape measure or ruler, however, I did not have access to either of those items. Therefore, after walking around my apartment for a couple minutes, I decided to take a picture of my thermostat. This, in my opinion, still fits the description because it is measuring the temperature in my apartment as time goes on similar to measuring the height of a tree using a ruler or other measurement device. That image is pictured below.
Moving on, my fifth prompt was the one that talks about a picture of someone’s shoes. I decided to take a picture of the shoes that I have now had for over 2 years. This is because this was the first pair of shoes that I was able to purchase with my own money. I never worked a job in high school, and so having the ability to make some money during college and buy my first pair of shoes was pretty nice to experience. Those shoes are pictured below and you can definitely tell that they have been put through the wringer.
The next prompt was probably the toughest prompt for me to accomplish, however, I do have two pictures that could possibly work for this prompt. This prompt involved finding a picture of a advertisement that was painted onto the side of a building. One of the pictures is on the left hand side and that is a picture of a sticker that has been pasted onto the wall in my living room talking about protecting the walls. The one of the right hand side is a mural of Kobe Bryant that was painted on the side of the building in Los Angeles, California. As you can see, the image on the left is closest I could get to an advertisement because there is nothing on the side of my apartment complex. It says what materials are okay to use on the walls and what items are not okay on the walls and advertises them visually as well. On the right hand side, it is not an advertisement per say, rather an image of a great basketball player and the legacy that he left behind. It is a picture of Kobe Bryant next to a Black Mamba, as that was his nickname during his time in the NBA and after he retired. Again, not necessarily an advertisement, but a visual representation of the legacy of one of the greatest basketball players of all time.
My final prompt was to take a picture of something that was growing. This prompt is pretty self-explanatory in my opinion and so I decided to just take the simple route on this prompt. I just decided to take a picture of the forest area near my apartment complex which shows an abundance of trees that have grown and the small branches that are continuing to grow and flourish as the Spring season rolls around. That image can be found below.
I enjoyed completing this assignment because it allowed me to be a little more creative some of my prompts and the images that I chose to use for those prompts. Some I went the more simple route but some of them also required me to be a little more thoughtful about the image that I was using such as the thermostat and the picture of something being advertised on the side of a building. Overall, I really enjoyed completing this assignment and am very excited to see what everyone else in the class got the chance to come up with.
Truth behind Design and Storytelling
So, the first video that I watched was the video by Vanity Fair and it was a really interesting watch. It actually got me pretty interested in the reasoning for why movie poster designers decide to use certain colors or fonts. For example, if the poster designer is designing a poster for a comedy, they are more likely to use a white background with red letters because that is what is represented by comedy films these days. The white background allows the viewer to put all of their attention on the photo that is used for the poster along with the movie name that is in a bright red color. Using blue in a poster indicates that the movie is most likely a thriller and usually has a character running down the street to indicate action and thriller as the movie genres. If the movie is also bringing in more technology, then there might be some yellow and green in the poster as well along with the blue. The use of the color yellow is more prominent in smaller films and films that independent because the marketing budget for these films is a lot less than the big firm movies. Using yellow is considered a cheap way to catch the eye of the viewer and by using it it brings more attention to the movie poster causing these smaller films to sometimes bring more viewers than they would if they used a different color for the background. Moving on, the black, white, and orange color schemes are often used to create posters for actions films. The main protagonist is usually in black and white with the title of the movie being in orange of having an orange hint behind it to help promote the masculinity of the film. This color scheme is a way of speaking to the younger audience and moves away from the traditional clutter of action movie posters. Blue and orange is also a common color scheme for movie posters with the blue being the main point of the poster while using the orange or yellow to lead the viewers eyes through the poster. It also can be used in a way where the “blue world” is lead into the “orange world” which is another way of using color to show the different sides of the movie or the battle between good and evil.
Another video that I watched this week was how Stranger Things got its title design for the Netflix show. They wanted to create a show title that could not be used in any other film or tv show when being used for the title sequence. In other words, they wanted the title to be and feel very original. One thing I found really interesting was that the title designers wanted to cast imperfections on the title sequence to make it look more gritty. This surprised me because it would not make sense to me for title designers to purposely make the title have imperfections because their whole job is to perfectly curate a title for the show. One of the tactics they used for this idea was using a Kodalith that would allow them to shine light through the back of the letters to give more emphasis on one area of the title where the light was being shined. This allowed them to create that gritty, old-fashioned look they were going for. I thought it was really cool in terms of the way they went about creating the title, because they used both physical and digital means to create a title in a world where almost everything is done digitally. I think that this method definitely helped set them apart from other tv shows, because it allows them to be more creative, organic, and unique with their ideas. I enjoyed watching this video because it really showed me how these titles were being made and why so much goes into just one title to try and make the tv show or film that much better.
Finally, I got to watch a interview with Chip Kidd this week titled “Between the Lines: Chip KIdd.” This interview really gave me a good idea and understanding of the connection that exists between design and storytelling. This interview was conducted with Kelly Corrigan and she tries to uncover the experiences that influence the works of Kidd. She tries to gain insight on what sort of information and ideas authors come up with and use to try and create different forms of media for the world to see and enjoy. Kidd explains that he works mainly a book cover designer and sometimes edits graphic novels. He makes it clear that the work he does as a book cover designer is not only very important to him, but also the public, because he aims to capture the essence of the story through just one title page where the images and words come together to try and entice the reader into reading the novel. He says that when trying to come up with a cover for a book he needs to “distill” the book to its “most essential parts” so that he can use those essential parts and ideas to come up with a design that covers the basic idea of the story, and as a result, it allows the reader to also get a quick glimpse into the main idea of the book. This job is very intuitive he says because the titles and book covers can be so different than one another. He states that it is very important to try and come up with a cover for the novel because without one we do not even get the smallest idea of what the novel may be trying to convey and without a cover a book is never truly finished. He also makes a very strong point about storytelling in graphic novels and comics, and states that what is happening between the panels, is just as important, if not more important than what is happening within the panels. He makes the statement that movies and films are somewhat more difficult to understand even though there is less going on because the movie determine the pace at which the viewer is gaining and understanding different pieces of information from within the movie whereas in novels and comics, the reader is free to decide at which pace they want to continue at to fully gain insight on the main ideas of the piece. The main takeaway from the interview for me was that book jackets are very unique, the designer must have a full understanding of the novel so that they can accurately convey that same message in the cover of the book. It is also very important because that is the first thing that people see when they pick up a book and so the cover must make them actually want to read the book. I enjoyed watching this interview because it gave me a deeper understanding of the connection between design and storytelling.
Superhero Madness!
One of the assignments for this week was from Middlebury College and we were tasked with creating a strange picture using two different AI chatbots and compare our results. I took this assignment step-by-step and have three different versions of each step. So, my initial step was to just asked the two chatbots, DALLE-3 from OpenAI and SDXL Turbo from StabilityAI to give me a picture of a superhero. I was very open-ended with my question here and as we can see I got two very different results. On the left hand side, I got an image of a superhero that appears to have three legs and two capes and a mask that looks like the one Star-Lord wears in the Marvel franchise. It is hard to tell if this is where the inspiration for the image was drawn from because the colors of the suit and mask are very similar to that of Star-Lord. On the right hand side, we see a more typical superhero costume and an image that resembles that of Superman. We can see the differences from the two different AI chatbots and how one (OpenAI) is more realistic in terms of the picture quality and then the SDXL Turbo is more cartoonish when it comes to the picture quality. Moving on, I decided to add some more details to the prompts to try and figure out what the chatbots would output.
The next step of the design challenge was to add some flair to the images and see what you could create with the different chatbots that you chose. So, I decided to ask the chatbots to give me an image of each of the heroes that they generated in my previous prompt and have them standing on top of a rock with one leg being shown to be higher than the other like some heroes stand in movies. On the left, the image was generated by DALLE-3 and as you can see, it was pretty accurate with what I asked for and what I got. The image on the right is a little more obscure because it did not have the hero have one leg higher than another, however, it did have them standing on a rock facing the world and it also appears to have added some extra people in the back even though I did not ask for it. Also, the face on the superhero on the right looks to be a little more obscure as well and does not seem to be fully generated. Finally, I made one last request to the chatbots and that will be shown and explained down below.
Here the prompt for the chatbots was to create an image that had a superhero riding a cat on the moon. As a result, on the left, we can see that ChatGPT did a great job of creating the image that I requested and looks very nice overall. However, on the right hand side we see the SDXL Turbo output which was also tasked with the same job which was to create a picture of a superhero riding a cat over the moon. For some reason, this chatbot decided to ignore the “on the moon” part of my prompt and instead have the superhero ride the car in some random city. Also, this chatbot also decided to create a superhero that was a mix of both superman and batman and not just use the same costume throughout so that was interesting to see as well. Overall, the quality of the SDXL Turbo pictures were much worse than that of ChatGPT’s and ChatGPT was also able to be more accurate with its output and they were more appealing to look at.
I would say that the image on the right hand side was the worst image I got because it was not really that close to what I was asking for. I asked for a superhero riding a cat on the moon and I got a man dressed up as two different superheroes riding a cat in some random city. That is what I think that one was the worst because the output that I got was not what I really wanted at all. I would describe what I got as a child taking in instructions and only paying attention to half of the instructions. On a more positive note, the picture below I thought was the most impressive. I really liked how this one ended up turning out. I just think my simplicity of the prompt honestly made it easier for ChatGPT to interpret and output an image that was exactly what I wanted. Also, the sun in the background that is setting and the cape flying in the back is all extra from what I asked for and it just comes together to create the perfect image. One of the reflection questions in the assignment description talked about how AI may pose a threat to artists and where I think it would affect them. I think that AI poses a pretty serious threat to artists because whatever artists are creating, AI can create the same thing, if not better, in almost no time while also making it accessible to everyone immediately. Therefore, I think that AI will definitely pose a threat in the future because AI will take that sense of creativity away from artists because whatever they make, AI can also make. When creativity is lost, it is very hard to make interesting content so it makes sense that artists might struggle in the future.
Xander’s Feature on the Cover of Vogue Magazine
Well, it happened, and it was only a matter of time. Xander made it onto the cover of Vogue Magazine. It is no surprise here that Xander made it onto the cover, he is a well-rounded man with a great mind as he says. As a result, there needed to be a cover for the magazine and one of the assignment bank assignments just happened to be to create a Vogue cover for someone. Therefore, I decided to create a magazine cover for Xander as he was the latest celebrity to make the front page. As you can see, he is main point on the front page with various pieces of text around and behind him. I use an AI chatbot to create the image because I needed to have Xander on te front and not some random clipart. Also, it was interesting to see a certain aspect of the image after its creation. I think that the AI chatbot drew inspiration from Tony Stark and the Iron Man films because if you look at Xander’s chest, it looks like there is an arc reactor powering his heart. This was really cool and interesting to see mainly because it was unexpected from the image generator stating that I have never spoken to given it prompts that are related to Iron Man. You can also see in the background the actual title of the magazine along with his name and different accolades and technologies that he has invented. I really enjoyed creating this cover because it turned out to be something that might actually be on the cover of a magazine one day and it was interesting to see how the image generator took inspiration from a place (Iron Man) when I have never spoken or said anything about it and so that was cool to see.