“Share a picture, or photo, that conveys something pure. This could be a person, an object, or a moment.“
So I answered with the very obvious answer of my cat!
Her name is Cat, I’m pretty sure I’ve talked about her. She’s the purest thing I can think of, an actual blessing from above. Looking at her just makes me so happy. She’s my baby (she’s 12)!
“Generate your own Net Art based on a keyword search. But is it art? Share it out anyway …. and tell us what your keyword search term was. We’re a curious tribe.”
So, I did just that! I decided to put in the prompt “cat running for president” because I had a sudden visual in my head of a cat behind the presidental pedestal with a paw in the air greeting the audience, or saying something really powerful. Here’s what Net Art gave me.
It’s really just an amalgamation of images (I believe 8 different images) answering the prompt. It definitely didn’t give me what I imagined it to, but I didn’t ask for that specifically. Despite it, I think it’s very cool! I would not be voting for this cat, though . . . something about those eyes . . .
“The Chrome Music Lab lets users experiment with different oscillators (square, sawtooth, triangle, and sine). Play around with the different oscillators by dragging your finger/mouse up and down each oscillator to change the its frequency. What are they saying or singing? Tell us, show us, or perhaps record a conversation/duet with your favorite oscillator.“
This one was a lot of fun with, and each time I played with the little guys, it seemed like they were so excited. So I decided to answer with that, just explaining what they were doing in my post.
I decided these little guys were singing the song of their people, and if you see how excited they are, it’s because they never get the chance to sing this for new people! They’re eager for people to hear their song and know it! I mean, if I only had limited chances to sing my song to others, I’d be excited to sing it whenever possible!
Overall, very fun Daily Creates this week. I didn’t get a whole bunch of thoughts into them, but it did open my eyes and wake me up a little, getting me ready for the work I was going to do.
This week . . . for having very little assignments, I don’t think I’ve ever done as much work as I did this week.
I’m going to structure this weekly summary different from usual just because it was a very messy week that I went back and forth on assignments on, so I think it’d just be easier to go through them based on each type of assignment.
So, here is this messy, messy week!
Daily Creates
I did two Daily Creates this week.
The first one I did on Wednesday, I created a snow globe, which I thought was really funny to make in late February. I wanted to go for a semi-realism look, but then I was also just having fun with a silly little Christmas in February assignment.
The second one I did on Friday, I just had to discuss what an image of Canada Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was discussing and agreeing on with a lil robot, so I decided to tie this into the course world and say that Aggressive Technologies was preparing to expand their buildings and factories to Canada! Not really a lot of thought put into it, but interesting to imagine if the course company slowly spread across the globe. I imagine that, now, it is, but this was in the past, when it was slowly dipping its toes into each continent and country.
Video Assignments
I need you guys to know that I actually did around 5 of these total . . .
I did the entire conversation with Dr. Oblivion assignment, had a whole 6-minute audio of Sol interviewing Dr. Oblivion, but every single time (I tried this at least 15 times) I tried to make Dr. Oblivion’s word audio into the video, the thing kept telling me that I didn’t have a GPU driver EVEN AFTER I WENT AND REINSTALLED A NVIDIA GPU DRIVER . . . I don’t know if maybe I just downloaded the wrong one (I was pretty sure and double checked my own laptop specs and specs on Google), but it just did not work any time and I was so frustrated that I didn’t even bother asking, because instead, I had a better idea.
“I’ll just make an animatic for it like this assignment in the assignment bank.”
WRONG! TOO MUCH WORK AND I AM TOO TIRED!! but we already started making frames of Sol . . .
so . . . I decided to stick with the animatic assignment, but make a different audio for Sol! Instead, I decided to build their character and explore the Top 5 most important things to them! Here is the post for that assignment:
I talked about it in the post, but editing this was so much easier than actually planning it or drawing it. It was a lot of fun to do and reawaken the artist that I kicked to the back of my head! Young me really wanted to be an animator, so this was very nice for that version of me!
I wish I had the inspiration to have actually done the interview of Oblivion, but it was draining so much of my energy and I just could not fathom doing 6 minutes of it . . . but I’ll tell you, Dr. Oblivion’s snarkiness was annoying Sol.
Another Video Assignment I did was a little Get Ready With Me where I did makeup inspired by Sol! This . . . I filmed 3 different makeup looks (could not find one I was happy with), decided on one I was happy with, edited the video, tried to send it to my laptop from my phone, then actually deleted it from my phone before it had finished sending and lost everything. First off, huge shout out to me for not crying and punching a wall, but that defeated me for the rest of the day.
SO I DID IT AGAIN THE NEXT DAY!! And I did not delete the video, and I actually liked this one a lot better, anyways, so here is the post:
This was a lot of fun because this was the type of makeup I imagined Sol in when I was drawing them, and it was like they were coming to life!! It was actually so fun, despite the frustration and mishaps . . . as Sol doesn’t have a consistent body/form (although, I only draw them in the form I designed for the sake of consistency and not confusion), I think it would be so fun to try out other makeup that I think Sol would do!
Also, editing this was fine! I used iMovie which was really easy to learn after a lot of trial and error with the mishaps.
The final assignment I did was an interview of myself.
I talked about this in the post, but this was eye-opening to me and uncovered a lot of truth for me. It made me realize how unhealthy my habits are, and how I really need to fix them sooner than later. It was also kind of nice imagining myself in the future and hoping to see how far I’ve come. I think this allowed me to love myself a little, or at least give myself the time of day to relax and think.
Editing was easy peasy for this one too
Aggressive Technologies
This assignment was pretty simple, just world building and placing Sol into the course world and not just in the sky. I’m actually so excited to see how they will interact with the other characters, because I like to imagine that Sol never steps foot on Earth, so to avoid messing with people’s lives.
This week was very stressful from the amount of work I made myself do and all of the errors over and over, but I think I learned a lot about it, and I explored things that made me uncomfortable! Huge kudos to editors because this was aggravating for a really long time and very time-consuming, so I can’t imagine how much time editors actually put into things.
“Each year since 2017 Vanity Fair interviews Billie Eilish, and in many ways it is an introspective in which she is talking to her former self as the years go on. I hope when you’re reading this they are still doing them! But now it’s your turn. The first part is easy, make a list of questions you want to aks yourself, turn on the camera and hit record. A year from now, take the same questions and record yourself answering them again. Feel free to edit in responses from the previous year and even reactions to those previous answers. As the years go on perhaps you’ll learn more about yourself and who you are becoming.”
Here is the link!
This was actually fairly simple. I took questions from the 2022 Billie Eilish Vanity Fair interview (oddly, the 2023 one is not out . . . so maybe they’re done?) for myself and asked myself the questions. Well, most of the questions. I skipped the ones revolving around fans or about being an artist because I have zero fans and I am not an artist nor am I famous.
Filming was easy, I just filmed it on my iPhone 15 Pro camera and edited it using iMovie. I don’t think I ran into any errors in this or any trouble, it was fairly easy after having practiced using video editors for the class!
This was actually more like a reflection for me, and it kind of forced my to uncover things about myself that I wasn’t aware of our hadn’t voiced. I hadn’t really understood that I put so much work on myself just to escape overthinking thoughts until I, well, thought about it, and this made me think about it.
Obviously, I can’t fast travel and show you 2025’s interview of me, but I’m excited to see where I’ll be then, and I hope 2025 me will feel like I’ve come a long way.
Aggressive Technologies just introduced a brand new AI model that plans to construct any form of media, whether that be art, movies, TV shows, plays, etc. into reality through the prompting of a user, sort of like a really, really big 3D printer that can create any story the user requests, and our beloved star in the sky is not pleased with this.
Now, typically, as an ethereal being, Sol prefers to stay out of human drama. They feel it isn’t fair for them to meddle into this stuff when they have the actual possibility of changing reality. However, as this is posing a threat to all storytellers on Earth, they knew they had to step in.
Sol chooses to leave subtle messages in the paintings of the sky that serve as a warning to the humans of the threat this AI model could pose if not regulated, as well as a threat to Aggressive Technologies to put regulations on the model. It got a bit of a message across, as news broadcast the message, but Aggressive Technologies stayed silent on the matter. It felt distasteful to Sol, seeing as there were humans who agreed to put limitations on the AI model, but Aggressive Technologies did not even issue a statement regarding it.
With much annoyance, Sol does what they have not done in a human-form in billions of years: they step foot onto Earth, marching directly up to the doorstep of Aggressive Technologies, prepared a long string of words to convince them how dangerous this AI model could quickly turn out to be.
Today I did a little combination of two Video Assignments: this one revolving around making an animatic and this one revolving around making a video list of 5 things important to you. Combining them, I chose to make a little animatic about things that are most important to my Course Character, Sol!
Actually, I was planning on making an animatic of the original assignment (conversing with Dr. Oblivion), but I was annoying having to keep drawing over and over. Instead, I used the frames I got from that and put them into this!
Here is the video:
I used FireAlpaca, an art program I’ve been using since like 2015 and a really old Wacom art tablet from when I used to actually draw a lot. Since then, I lost interest in art (I watched all my artist peers get better at art and watched how I could not always improve and it made me mad so I just stopped (and I got old and busy)), but this was nice to rebirth the artsy side of me.
I used ElevenLabs for the AI voice for Sol (it’s the voice Serena), but I don’t think the voice is exactly what I would imagine them to sound like. Having a fluid form makes me think that their voice would just be different all the time.
I used OpenShot to edit this and finally figured out how to work it, and it is actually . . . so easy to use, it’s kind of crazy. Not sure what happened last week, but we got it! Putting all the pictures in and moving them around was not hard at all, very simple task and not even the hardest part. Very crazy to me that I’m saying that the easiest and quickest part was editing it!
This was an okay assignment, though. I spent too much time on it, but I rebirthed the old art-lover inside of me, so it was sort of nostalgic too.
“Record yourself getting ready! Whether it be how you get ready for your day, ready for bed, ready for an event, makeup look, etc. See if you can edit the video to speed through parts that may take a second (i.e. washing your face, brushing your teeth…) and create a voice over of the process. For inspiration, look up any ‘Get ready with me’ video on YouTube! Have fun with it, maybe even make a (tasteful) parody version.”
So I decided, of course I’m going to do makeup!
I actually did three different looks and filmed it yesterday . . . and then accidentally deleted it when it didn’t save right . . . and lost everything so I got really mad . . . so this is actually my second time doing this video assignment!
Anyways, here is my video!
The video is messy, I cut out the majority of it because I ended up covering up what I was doing with my hand, BUT! I did it! I kept everything sped up too because it can be miserably slow . . . makeup is a tedious process, let me tell you.
Also, editing this was nightmareish. I have no idea how makeup social media influencers decide what they want in the video and especially those who make TikToks or Instagrams that are just 1 minute . . . I skipped so many stuff!! How do they do it and include everything!! Even if you cut out the entire process of a step, it feels weird . . . huge kudos to them for that though (in another life I am a social media makeup influencer but in this life I am not).
If you want a list of all of my makeup that I used in this (whether included or not), here it is:
Elf Blemish Control Face Primer w/ salicylic acid
Colourpop Pretty Fresh pressed face powder (shade fair 1)
Morphe x Nyane Fierce Fairytale Palette (Eyeshadow Colors: Gyoza)
Morphe x Abby Roberts Bittersweet Like Honey Palette (Eyeshadow Colors: Solar, Spicy, Vivienne, LA Vibez; Blush Colors: Hot Sauce, Pink Champagne)
Juvia’s Place The Nubian Glow Palette (Eyeshadow Colors: Gold shade mid bottom, has no name?!?!)
Elf Dewy Coconut Setting Mist
Isn’t that fun..
Anyways, I filmed this on my phone (iPhone 15 Pro) and edited it on iMovie because it took too long to try to send to my laptop to edit through OpenShot. I didn’t have any trouble with iMovie, though. It was a fairly easy application to use.
I’m not sure what else to say that I haven’t said here or in the video. I think it’d be interesting to see other Sol-inspired makeup (maybe I am just a lover of sun-related aesthetics and need to take a breather but this makes me so excited) so maybe I will continue to do more Sol makeup! Very obviously, this makeup would look very different on them, because I am about as pale as my hoodie in the video, but I’m actually working on drawing Sol a little bit (my other assignment that I’m doing is the animatic one . . . which is taking a while, but surprise for more Sol features soon!)
Thank you for reading and watching I hope you have a good day or night!
FINALLY GOT TO THIS and I am going to speedrun this because I’m running out of time.
There weren’t a lot of assignments this week, and they weren’t anything I was 100% unfamilar with, yet I still waited until the last minute. It did go well, though! Sort of . . . like, mostly well, I think. Just a little frustration, but a lot of trial and error and learning about editing!
Instead of separating this by day like usual, I’m just going to discuss my assignments!
I did 2 Daily Creates this week.
Here is the link to the first one! There really is not a story for this, I was just told to make a little story or interpretion of this Captain flying a plane’s expression. I decided . . . he crossed the Bremuda Triangle safely!!! I, too, would feel pretty proud and content about that feat, which is what I saw his expression as.
Here is the link to the second one! I was prompted to discuss my favorite style of poems and I chose free verse simply because there are no rules. My biggest frustration to poetry is all the rules, which is great to read, but miserable to write, in my opinion. So, free verse allows me to just . . . write! Perfect!! No rules!
So, I made a short little poem about how I am filled with 300 mg of caffeine and yet I’m still tired because I am a cog in the machine and a workaholic and all I do is work. It’s coded in my brain, I just can’t stop until I’m content and I am never, never content. And, well, captialism will make sure I stay as a cog in the machine until the day I die . . . so I guess I lose (but I actually love working???).
(p.s. about these . . . does anyone know how to embed Mastodon posts? It wouldn’t let me, even with the embed links . . .)
One of the assignments I did this week was revisit my goals at the start of the semester and revise them as get further in the semester. Here is the post (I’ve learned to embed!!)
There’s really no story behind this either, but I think it was nice to see my goals and look back on them. It made me feel like I’ve come a long way already, yet I still had things to revise. I am on track with my goals, but there’s new things I want to explore that I’ve come across throughout the class.
Regardless, I’m feeling good about the class and my work. I hope I can continue to post good work and feel comfortable sharing these things (because some things make me feel really uncomfortable to share, which I don’t really know why. Fear of criticism, maybe . . .) and also feel comfortable viewing other people’s work without trying to compare myself!
We (you and me) are doing great! Just in case anyone needed to hear that.
The big assignment I did this week was my video essay on 2001: A Space Odyssey. Here is the post:
I talk about it in the post, but this one was stressful. I actually spent the majority of the day working on this (watching the movie, deciding which scene, taking notes on the scene and rewatching it over and over, recording voice over (3 times), editing, fighting a war with the editing program). I think Microsoft Clipchamp worked fine for what I wanted, but it was difficult not being able to really zoom in on the audio in the view. If anyone’s used it and knows how to do that, please tell me . . . otherwise, I’ll move to OpenShot.
I did try OpenShot, but it didn’t let me import it. Does anyone know if OpenShot only accepts certain file types for importing, because that’s the only thing I can think of that would prevent me from importing.
I’m not sure what else to say about the post outside of what’s in it, just that I do recommend the movie (if you can sit through the majority of the movie with eerie music and eerie images) if you haven’t watched it. It has a sort of ambiguous ending, so I’d be interested in seeing other people’s thoughts and interpretations of the ending, and the movie as a whole!
NEXT WEEK I WILL WORK EARLIER!! Because I’ve seen the amount of Video Assignments I have to do and I am not prepared for that if this one took me as long as it did. Otherwise, that’s my only goal for next week!
Today I watched the good classic 2001: A Space Odyssey to study Stanley Kubrick’s directing and cinematography. It was a long movie, and I had to separate it into two different watchings because I had to go to work in the middle of it.
This movie . . . wow, it was onto something. I really enjoyed it!! I also think it’s so interesting to see how this was one of the first AI characters in media, and I really thought about how AI has changed so much in film. It also had the trope that AI learns too much and becomes evil, so that was interesting how that idea was present even in the 60s.
For the Assignment, I did a video essay on one of the scenes in which HAL-9000, the AI in the film, was observing and listening (or reading) the two humans, Dave and Frank, discuss that maybe HAL was malfunctioning. It’s the turning point, and it’s a tense scene that has barely any movement.
Some notes about my video essay: I used OBS to record the movie and Microsoft Clipchamp to film the audio voiceover and edit. And it was hell. I couldn’t zoom in on the audio and I felt very far away and with limited control. At one point, I tried to drag the audio, and it completely disappeared . . . and I couldn’t get it back despite still hearing it . . . so please ignore the little error where my voice repeats itself! I literally could not see the audio.
Overall thoughts were, the movie was great, the filming and storytelling through tiny tiny things was so powerful. The voiceover was also like fighting a war, I filmed 3 different takes before deciding I just needed to make a script and hope for the best. Editing made me want to slam my head into a wall (also I tried OpenShot first, and couldn’t import my video at all so I gave up), despite having a little experience in editing. I definitely, definitely need more practice.
I definitely think I’ve been quite on track with my goals, which is a pat on the back for me. I feel like I’m learning about the different modes of storytelling and fighting discomfort over not understanding programs, and actually learning from trial and error and tutorials! I think I’m doing really well!
Some revised goals I want to have is that I want to be able to spend a lot more time on these programs and these thoughts. I’ve been doing okay at that, because when I work on things for this class, I hyperfocus on them, but I want to be able to learn things on my own without tutorials. I do a little bit now, but I mostly end up looking it up. A lot of learning is just playing around and trying different things and seeing what works and what doesn’t work, so I want to just play around with these programs and see what happens and what I can create.
I’ve actually been having a lot of fun and have been taking the assignments as ways to be creative and tell stories in my own way but with a guide to look back on, which I think is what has made this not as stressful as I thought it was in the past. I really like how a lot of the assignments aren’t strict on rules or what to do exactly: you make of it what you can with the given prompts or media.
One last thing, I’ve definitely become more comfortable with AI. Talking to Dr. Oblivion is so funny to me, I just love when he gets sentimental (such a change from his usual snarky attitude). He can be my friend now, but he will still be being side eyed for a while. Other AI is still iffy with me, but I’m working on it slowly to understand its limits and my own limits, and that’s fun.
That time of week! Can’t believe I made it here, did not expect that at all. MAN do I deserve a good nap after this
I’m currently writing a draft of this at 12:03 am on Friday . . . I still have one Daily Create to do, but it won’t come out until 5 AM (boooooo), but otherwise, I’m finished before Friday ends! Mostly because I will be gone all day Friday and knew I wouldn’t have time.
I also realized that people write such smaller blog posts than me . . . but in my defense, I have a lot to say all the time and I want to walk people through every step! (but for real, tell me if i need to shut up)
So here’s Week 4!
(For the sake of not having to embed all my audios, I’m just going to link the posts and you can click on them to find the audio embedded there!)
Saturday and Sunday and Monday were doozies . . . I played Lethal Company instead of doing work! ACTUALLY Monday I did some commenting.
On Tuesday, we got some work done! Sort of . . . I listened to the ds106radio session in the evening and did some more commenting and browsing the blogs of others, but I didn’t make any posts yet. I also watched the videos from Radiolab’s Jad Abumrad and was very pleased to about how audio creates a story! We’ll get into in a second.
On Wednesday, I started off with a Daily Create. The task was to make an image of a plane with a banner in the sky say a message, and I thought about being snarky (my inner Dr. Oblivion is coming out) and made this.
I also finished up my reflection on the ds106radio segment. This post was a lot of me going “oh my god this is so cool i love little things wow” and also having my eyes really opened! Unfortunately, now every video I watch or every song I listen to, I’m listening for sounds in the back and trying to see what all is there . . . I’m overanalyzing things now!!
I also made my ds106radio bumper. This was like fighting a war. I’ve never wanted to slam my head into a table over an assignment more than this once, mostly because I just wasn’t happy with myself. I hated what I made and I couldn’t figure out how to make it better. BUT some nice people gave me some suggestions in the comments about seeking out the DKC (which I did not do . . . but that’s okay) and also relating to my struggle, so I gladly wasn’t alone!
Naturally, I was not excited for the rest of the audio assignments . . . little did I know that I was about to have the best time of my life the next day!
I also did some commenting, of course.
On Thursday, I gave myself the heaviest workload and a dream. Lucky for me, my first class was canceled, so I had more time to do some work.
I spent my morning starting off with the Daily Create, which I made up a little story about the opening that the Daily Create tasked me with finding the entrance to! I decided that there weren’t any known openings, and they were destroyed. This is a dystopia! The one opening, the last opening, leads to dark tunnels . . . what stories are in there? spookyyyy
I also listened to “Moon Graffiti” and posted my reflection. This was a lot of repetition from what I had said in my ds106radio reflection, just that I loved picking up little things that painted the bigger picture. My favorite thing was how the audio was portrayed outside of the astronauts’s heads, until suddenly, Buzz was so anxious and we were in his head. We could hear the buzzing (no pun intended) in his head, the white noise getting louder, the intensity. The way they were able to portray that stress, portray that switch into his head, all through audio so quickly . . . I felt it! It was really cool.
The next thing I did was my Sound Effect story, which I made about Sol! I used a lot of audios using Freesound, which I used all week, to build a soft ambience and environment. I portrayed them painting, as they do, with some soft piano in the back. It was actually really fun to make! This began my arc of actually enjoying audio engineering . . . life was good again.
I followed this assignment with another Audio Assignment, which I made a BREAKING NEWS audio segment using an AI voice and some news jingles I found to explain to the world that IT’S RAINING CATS AND DOGS!! Just because I wanted it to be a little ridiculous! This one wasn’t too difficult.
Next Audio Assignment was to make a spooky audio, which I did just as such. This was sooooo fun. As someone who enjoys horror games (but not really anything else horror), I know just how important audio is to set a scene. I used a lot of little things to set this scene, to provide depth and texture and that fear emotion. I focused on allowing the sounds to communicate with each other rather than communicating apart, and I think that’s what made this so successful for me.
For my last Audio Assignment, I created an audio with a song that sounded like it was playing from another room, and this one I had the time of my life with. I spent way too long on it, but it was worth it because I think it’s so cool. Again, what I learned is to have the audios communicate with each other. Don’t allow one to overpower another unless it is necessary or you need to draw attention to it. Let the audios coexist.
I built a creepy scene when I wasn’t asked because I wanted to build on the story that the second half of the assignment asked for. I put a lot of audios in here. Throughout all of these assignments, I kept a notepad open with all of the sounds and their links so that I wouldn’t lose them! It was really important to me to give credit where credit was due, even if it was the tiniest sound. Here’s my messy notepad to help me keep track of the audios!
My last assignment of the day was my brainstorming assignment for the radio show. There’s really nothing to say about this, just that I’ve had this idea in my head since I saw the assignments of the week, and I’m excited to see if anyone else is down . . . or if they want something else.
On Friday, at 12 AM, I started this! And that’s all I’ve done. On my agenda is the final Daily Create, but I can’t get to that until at least 5 AM and I will be snoozing then . . . so when I get home, hopefully, we’ll get to that! here comes a timeskip
Finally, I did my last Daily Create, in which I messed with Mutsuacen.com to make some pretty disasters! Here’s what I came up with!
It started out as some little angel wings, moving through whatever it was, but then I started trying out all of the different styles and having fun. I liked the ripple ones and played with that a little bit. There is no method to my madness, just some messes for fun!
To conclude this week, it went fine! I was stressed, but I survived and I actually feel really good and proud of myself Very excited for next week!
