I used a clip of the Black Mirror episode “Hated in the Nation“, provided in the ds106 weekly assignment. I screen recorded a scene and cut out disturbing portions from it, instead using a PowerPoint to put images over the video. The thumbnail comes from IMDB’s review of the episode. I recorded and put it together with OpenShot and Audacity, both free programs.
Well, that was hard. I can’t say I’ll be too keen on editing audio again after this week, but this is what I managed to do. Three daily creates: 4769, 4770, and 4771.
Things are getting rough as I have harder coding assignments in my other classes and tests and quizzes and projects. Work life balance is very interesting because I no longer have a roommate which results in me not talking to anyone for a week and then taking up an hour or more of someone’s time when I have 50 things to do by Friday. Good luck everyone I hope you’re coping better than me.
To make this, I got the tune from Free Sound and the voice from Eleven Labs. I plugged in what I wanted the ai voice to say and searched for a radio bumper song for the tune. I got a song and outro and put them in Audacity with the voice and edited the decibels until I could hear the voice more clearly.
This is not canon to the story; I just thought it would be a funny idea. There were a lot of sounds used in this: background traffic, Zer0 walking, robot noises, car honk, car crash, and of course, robot glitching noises. I put all of these files in audacity and trimmed them, placed them carefully, and changed how loud and quiet they are so that a story could be told through the sound.
The news jingle at the beginning of the recording was made by chimerical on FreeSound.org. For the voice, I used a text-to-speech feature of ChatGPT. I put these together in Audacity and uploaded it to Soundcloud. Quite frankly, I didn’t know Soundcloud was still being used before this class required me to create an account. The news broadcast relates to my story, as it is broadcasting the moment the public found out that ai had gained consciousness.
I went to Chrome Music Lab’s Song Maker feature to edit and play the notes. The melody is from a Coldplay song, feelslikeimfallinginlove. I was listening to the song trying to figure out what music to write, so I started writing the song by ear while adding some harmonies and extending notes due to the limitations of the song maker. I’ve been listening to Coldplay since I was in middle school, and I’ve been singing since preschool. Honestly, I was very relieved the song didn’t have any flats or sharps in it, or else I wouldn’t have been able to make it with chrome’s song maker. If you want to mess around with it yourself, here’s the link.
This week is beginning to become a blur, but I remember I did my daily creates earlier in the week and posted a comment on the ds106 site. I’m not sure if it was approved, but I tried anyway. I also received the joyous news that our assignments and summaries don’t have to strictly adhere to the “at least two paragraphs describing the story behind your art” on top of everything else you have to write rule. Still, I find myself completing the assignments and enjoying making or editing images but come to a standstill when it’s time to write about it on a website. Oh well, just 13 more weeks (including exam week), right?
I did the daily creates for Sunday, Monday, and Wednesday, pictured below. I made the Australian flag and outline on Krita, found pictures of Busch Gardens on google, and made an anti-word cloud based on a page of the Hunger Games. The bird is meant to represent a mockingbird.
When making this assignment, I wanted to try to make some kind of symbol for the resistance, for the robots, or just for Zer0 in general. I decided on a symbol for the resistance, highlighting that they are robots and often have glowing symbols on their faces. The lines with a triangle on the end are present on Zer0’s face. I used Krita again, trying to make it look a bit neon with an airbrush and multiple layers. I tried capturing cyberpunk and tech noir vibes with the dark background and neon, while also trying to think of what would separate the robots from the humans. Maybe there are many robots in the resistance that have triangle LEDs on their faces. Maybe it’s something they thought of that doesn’t particularly match a human face. They could’ve taken attributes from multiple members of the resistance and merged them together. Whatever the reason, this is the symbol they decided on.
I got a little carried away on this one. Only two of our assignments have to be about our story this week, so I decided to make this one different. This is related to the game Rain World, which is a difficult game about being trapped in never ending cycles. This little blue creature on the bottom right is called an overseer. They are autonomous little robots that observe things and share information with each other. They are also able to produce holograms, like the one in the middle of the screen, in order to share information with living beings. The intelligent species on the planet that made the overseers are referred to as the ancients. This hologram is meant to represent the opposition some ancients had to the building of a giant iterator (supercomputer) about the size of mount Everest. This iterator (named Five Pebbles) is already built and completed by the time the game takes place. I made this all on Krita, using different brushes and filters to make the hologram and stone wall look correct. I used the Soft Light filter for much of the hologram. I read the wiki page about overseers to draw one better and learned some interesting things about them that I hadn’t noticed before.
These were my photoblitz prompts. I took multiple photos but edited it down to one picture per prompt. I also included pictures of the time I started the assignment, and the time it ended.
The first photo, 6:03 pm.
Next, I had to find a manufactured item. This could technically be a lot of things, but I decided to use my flashlight. I was a little confused by the elements portion of the prompt, so I turned the flashlight on and also showed the keychain portion just in case.
Next, I knew exactly what to do for three items, because I have three empty spice jars waiting around. There used to be four, but that one has a peppery seasoning in it now.
The shadow was a little difficult to make, but I make a sort of rectangle shape by holding my coat above my head. I think the shadow would be hard to identify since it seems so boxy.
There aren’t many edges in my room, but I did land on the edge of my table, and I think I managed to make it a bit artistic.
Now for this one, why do you want to see my toes?
This image could’ve also qualified for the three items prompt, but I decided to use it for the plastic object instead.
This is a painting a previous roommate and I made. We followed a Bob Ross tutorial, and I like how it turned out. She used these trees to teach me how to paint them, what brush to use, and how colors can work together.
In the end, it was 6:23 and my photoblitz was over.
