Author Archives: Greta Hammen

Weekly Summary #7📅:

by Greta Hammen

After giving the propaganda assignment some thought, I was inspired to create a bumper sticker, however my classmates see it more as a poster. The steps of the process are detailed in Propaganda – gretahammen.com. It was a good thing that last week we thought about what role our character might have in relation to Aggressive Technologies, that helped with the creative vision for the bumper sticker.

Creating the Public Service Announcement was a rewarding experience and I hope that everyone will try the sites that I did to produce a video like the one on Public Service Announcement🎙: – gretahammen.com.

Let’s be creative each day, in some way. Examples of mine are shown at Daily Creates 7: – gretahammen.com.

Commenting came natural to me for Xander’s Propaganda – Creative Bytes: Exploring the World of DS106 (rishicshankards106.com), Propaganda picture – Leila’s Corner (the-comeup.com), WE WILL NOT BE SILENCED – Leila’s Corner (the-comeup.com), Pure – My blog (andrewpoon.org) and Postage Stamp – My blog (andrewpoon.org).

Natasha and I conversed before finalizing Reaction to propaganda🪞: – According to Greta (gretahammen.com). We have a positive vision for Aggressive Technologies and will not go along on the road popularly followed. We agreed with aggressive tech: propaganda poster – here and there it’s everything (feigrace.com).

Reaction to propaganda🪞:

by Greta Hammen

According to Natasha Sidorov, she was surprised that some negative comments and responses have come out regarding Aggressive Technologies. The word aggressive has a negative connotation, so I looked up the definition. The online dictionary stated: ready or likely to attack or confront. Synonyms were hostile, belligerent and forceful. On the other hand, a positive side of aggression can be being competitive. My character is a cybersecurity employee for the CIA, and she has a contract to lead AI development for Aggressive Technologies. Natasha responded favorably to Don’t Believe Everything You See – I make a propaganda poster – Sydney Says Things (sydneyjadyn.com), because the branding of that poster went with her vision of where Aggressive Technologies is going to go. We don’t agree that AI will completely separate you from meaning relationships as shown in Propaganda Video… Hope Thats OK? – Abiotic Interface. My character and I both support aggressive tech: propaganda poster – here and there it’s everything (feigrace.com).

Daily Creates 7:

by Greta Hammen

The song, Castle on a Hill, by Ed Sheeran touches the heart strings. I believe that is why it has risen to the top of chart rankings. Of course, the music and singing are on point too. The daily create was to explain which castle you would choose and why. The other castle was the one that Frankenstein lived in. Another way to interpret that assignment would be to select a different castle all together. I wonder who will do that in ds106.

Teenage boys by a simple stone castle.

I created a postage stamp with the planet Saturn on it. This was in memory of Saturn 3, the first film that I watched for ds106. The planet is such a unique shape, and the purple gives some depth to the art arrangement.

Gorilla Koko cuddles a kitten.

On Wednesday, the daily create was to post of picture of what pure looks like to us. I chose Koko the gorilla showing affection to a kitten. Animals are our great teachers on how to love others.

Public Service Announcement🎙️:

by Greta Hammen

Cryptocurrency will supersede traditional currency.

In order to produce this video, there were several steps. First, I downloaded the background music from Renatus Cartesius | Jamendo Music | Free music downloads. I liked this music because it is soft and would be appropriate behind a speaker’s voice. The second step was to go to (playgroundai.com) to create an avatar that would give the announcement. The prompt that I typed in was Russian lady with dark hair. All the images were outdoors, so I edited the request, by adding “in a newsroom”. I chose this image, other options had her in sexy attire. The third step is to go to AI Voice Generator & Text to Speech | ElevenLabs and you sign in with your google account, there is no cost. Select a voice by listening to a few of the options, I chose Glinda’s voice. Paste your text from a word document into the script box and press generate. It will make a MP3 of the AI voice. I did this three times, because I would notice places where my text needed revising, in order for the dialogue to be understood. I downloaded the accepted version. The fourth step is to go to Studio (d-id.com) to combine the image with the MP3. You sign in and upload the image and then upload the audio and press generate. The avatar will be animated, and the words will be synced with the mouth movements. The fifth step is to import the background music on one layer and then the created video on a second layer in Premiere Pro. The background music was too loud, select that layer and right click to get a menu of options, scroll down to audio gain, I lowered it to -12 and pressed ok. Also, the music was longer than the video, so I used the blade to cut it to have it end the same time as the video. I exported it as an MPEG4 to my downloads and then uploaded it to my YouTube channel. I copied the link to embed here.

The link to purchase the sweatshirt mentioned in above announcement is https://nftreasure.com/product/coq-dmc-hoodie/

Sweatshirt with NFC chip, modeled by my nephew, who created the artwork on it.

Propaganda & Debunking Misinformation📷:

by Greta Hammen

Reagan’s 9 most terrifying words were, “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help”. I changed government to AI, personalized it by adding “you” and created a bumper sticker in https://new.express.adobe.com. First, I typed text to generate an AI robot in a suit, it provided a handful of options. I chose the image below and added text in the Anisette Std. regular font, size 124. In text effects, I added shadow smooth to the text to make it easier to read, that option is found by scrolling to the bottom, when you are in the text command menu. Then I put a marbled area behind the text, to add more contrast of black on off-white. That marbled area can be found in the elements section under dyes and washes.

Aggressive Technologies has hired the CIA cybersecurity team in Division 4 to develop a new AI system that has the potential to revolutionize the cybersecurity industry. My character, Natasha Sidorov, will help by testing the system and providing feedback on effectiveness and potential vulnerabilities. They have one robot, Grant, who will be contributing to the success of the team.

Grant will assist in the internal success of Aggressive Technologies.

Weekly Summary 6📅:

by Greta Hammen

This was a challenging week, as I wrote two papers for other classes. I hope that these assignments are well done too! My daily creates are found here https://bit.ly/3uGPdmR and at https://bit.ly/3OSZVgV.

Thinking about how my character could be involved with Aggressive Technologies added some fantasy and “what if” to my life. I created an avatar of Natasha Sidorov on https://www.photoleapapp.com and wrote about it https://gretahammen.com/ds106/sidorov-cyber-mission/.

In Premiere Pro, I worked on Pictures >🖋: – gretahammen.com. Then I created two that involved my character Poem Video🌅: – gretahammen.com, A Toast for Colleague🥂: – gretahammen.com.

I shared my support by watching Video Assignments Week 6 – Cat On A Moped (cat-on-a-moped.com), Talk to the Bot – Giving Dr. Oblivion an Offer to Become a Super Robot to Take Over the World – AI106 Blog – Robin Yu (robinsyu.com), One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish – My blog (andrewpoon.org),

A Toast for Colleague🥂:

by Greta Hammen

It was my pleasure to give a toast to my colleague, Natasha Sidorov, at a small office party we had at the CIA. They had a large shrimp platter, vegetables, cut fruit, champagne and a cake. Natasha earned a promotion of team leader in our Division 4 and she landed a big contract with client, Aggressive Technologies! I used my iPhone 14 Pro to record directly unto YouTube. Then I emailed it to myself to have the URL, to paste and embed here.

Toasting Natasha

Poem Video🌅:

by Greta Hammen

I was so inspired by One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish – My blog (andrewpoon.org), that I follows his steps within his post and created one of my character, Natasha Sidorov.

I used the avatar that I created on https://www.photoleapapp.com and uploaded it to Blabberize.com. By selecting the area around the mouth, it will have movement. I used the microphone on my computer to recite the haiku poem. Moonlit Reverie, by Kate Davies. On that site you can save as a video file, so I saved it, uploaded it to YouTube and then embedded it in post. The mouth saved in an open position however, showing a black circle around. I did not try to make the circle around the mouth smaller at the start, try that edit if you go to that site, for a more polished result.

Pictures >🖋️:

Everybody’s looking for something.

For this video, the prompt was to combine a video and audio to create a message. I downloaded the tiger video from Tiger, Predator, Dangerous. Free Stock Video – Pixabay. The download was easy to import into Premiere Pro because the format was MP4. First, I put a sound video with it from Freesound. It was ordinary, so I gave it more thought today and listened to several rock songs with tiger in it, such as Eye of the Tiger by Survivor, Tiger Lily by The Band and Tiger by the Cult. They were all too rough and did not work. I went with Sweet Dreams by Annie Lennox, as the beat matches the cadence of the tiger. This audio was a download on YouTube, then I used YouTube to MP4 converter | Wave.video to covert it to MP4, so that I could save in my computer and import it into Premiere. I copied and pasted the tiger video twice to make it longer and I cut the audio to make it shorter.

Sidorov Cyber Mission

by Greta Hammen

Aggressive Technologies had a cyberattack that has compromised the company’s systems and put sensitive information at risk. My character, Natasha Sidorov, is working with the company’s cybersecurity team to trace the source of the attack to prevent further breaches.

In addition, the company would like to develop a new AI system that has the potential to revolutionize the cybersecurity industry. Natasha will help by testing the system and providing feedback on effectiveness and potential vulnerabilities.

Attached is an avatar of Natasha Sidorov produced on the app Photoleap. I uploaded an image of Angelina Jolie from the movie, Salt, and pressed the create avatar button. The minimum upload was 10 photos, so the other 9, were of me.