I saw a lot of people doing this assignment, so I thought I would give it a try! I always loved coloring, because it has always been a relaxing activity I can turn to if I need to distract myself or need something to do. Especially in this specific design, the mandala, which are known to have therapeutic effects when coloring them, such as decreasing tension and anxiety and encouraging creativity. According to an article by Pine Rest Mental Health Services, the shapes and the colors chosen for the mandala can symbolize whatever the artist wants it to be. When thinking about this specific drawing, I liked the colors, since some of my favorite colors are in it, such as pink and blue. Also, the almost floral-leafy design of it was appealing since I love nature in art. Overall, I enjoyed this assignment and it was a great way to destress from my work from other classes!
For starting of the week, I decided to start customizing my website a bit to personalize it! I wanted to do something different than my other subdomain sites. I also started reading through the different tasks throughout the week, and planning out when I will complete each task. I think I did well at spacing out the assignments, while also doing the daily creates everyday.
Daily Creates
Daily Create #1
The theme for Monday was “unintended consequences”, so I decided to do an inspirational poster. One that you would see in a high school classroom or in a doctor’s office. I used Canva to create it, and then posted it to Mastodon.
Daily Create #2
The theme for this daily create was “bad art”. I opened Instagram after opening this assignment out of procrastination, and saw a post from Sammy D. Eagle, to which I immediately got to work. Of course, it only took me a couple of minutes, and I am not much of an artist, but I am quite proud of it.
Daily Create #3
The challenge for this was to take a photo of your long shadow. As I was walking back from lunch with a friend, I saw my long shadow in the snow, and took the opportunity to take the photo. I thought this prompt was quite funny and also interesting, as the effect the position of the sun has on shadows is intriguing.
Daily Create #4
It is DS106 Radio’s 14th birthday so I thought I would share a classic birthday song!
Daily Create #5
For the last daily task of the week, we had to make a poem out of emojis. For some reason, this iconic chant from an iconic movie kept playing in my mind! I guess it kind of counts as a poem, there is repetition?
Tasks
Assignment Banks
I was excited to complete these assignments, as there were so many options that it was hard to choose from them. The first assignment I did was to find my dream home on Zillow, which I then decided to make a collage of my favorite photos of the dream house I found. To read more about my dream home and my thought process behind it, read My Dream Home. For the second assignment, I made a GIF from the movie Blade Runner 2049, as it is not my favorite movie of all time, but it is one of my favorite cyber punk movies, with a stacked cast and amazing visuals. To read more, read GIF. Lastly, or the third assignment I chose to do was “Who Said What?”, where I found three characters who share similar characteristics, and made a confusing graphic of them saying an iconic quote, with showing different aspects of the characters. I chose to do iconic characters in the cyberpunk genre, and to read more about it, check out my Who Said What? post.
Building Participation
I also got to comment on and view some of my classmates blogs! This assignment was pretty easy and fun, as I got to explore my classmates blogs! It was very interesting to see all the different themes, as well as reading their blog posts just to get a peek as to who they are. I am excited to see everyone’s work in the near future.
Course Character
This was probably my favorite task as I got to get creative in creating a character under the film noir genre. It came pretty easy to me, and the archetype of the hard-boiled detective immediately stood out to me. Then, ideas started flowing about how to flesh out the character into something that fits into the genre, but stands out in a way. It was also interesting researching the different archetypes and their common characteristics. Here is my full-fledged description of my new course character, Course Character.
Readings and Film Review (Dr. Oblivion!)
Overall, I enjoyed Dr. Oblivions input in the assignments that I used him for! The readings were interesting, as I completely agree with how we should use ethics and morals when navigating advancements in technology. To read my summary, here is my post Technopoly. With the film review, I was happy to go more in depth about the Black Mirror episode I watched. To read more about my film review, here is my blog post about it Updated Film Review: Black Mirror.
Who said what? This quote on this graphic can seem very confusing, as you can see Harrison Ford’s character in Blade Runner, Rick Deckard, saying the iconic line delivered by Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Terminator, with it being quoted by Major Motoko Kusanagi, the main character in the Japanese cyberpunk anime series, Ghost in the Shell. All of these characters share similar characteristics. One being that they are all iconic characters in the cyberpunk, tech-noir genre. Also, they are all lone-wolf, hard-shell main characters of these pieces of media, navigating their own complex, dystopian worlds. Haunted by their traumatic pasts, the lines between right and wrong are blurred, making them question their own actions or motivations. They tend to have a cynical outlook, enforcing their ‘lone-wolf’ persona in order to protect their own feelings and to not relive the trauma that got them to be how they are in the first place. These characters are one of the many archetypes in cyperpunk/tech-noir media.
I have never made a GIF before, so I would count this as a first for this assignment! Although I did not pick my all-time favorite or least-favorite movie, I chose to do one of my favorite movies that are apart of the tech-noir/cyber punk genre, Blade Runner 2049. I made a GIF from Blade Runner 2049 because it perfectly captures the essence of the tech-noir genre, a fusion of futuristic technology and noir-inspired storytelling. There’s something weirdly beautiful about its world, a sprawling dystopia drenched in neon and rain, where every frame feels like a staring at a piece of art. For me, creating a GIF from this film was about more than isolating a visually stunning moment; it was about preserving and sharing the atmosphere that defines the genre. In tech-noir, the technology isn’t just a backdrop, it’s a character, deeply intertwined with the human life. The GIF I chose captures a moment where the main character feels truly isolated, even with his once cherished companion standing in front of him. It’s a way to distill the soul of the film into a loop, reflecting the endless, cyclical nature of the questions it asks about what it means to be alive. Creating this GIF felt like paying homage to a genre that explores dystopian themes and what our advancements in technology could lead us to in the future.
Whenever I am asked about my dream home, or where I want to live when I grow up, a million thoughts race through my mind. I can be very indecisive, especially when it comes to this topic. One day I want to live in a cozy, big cabin in the mountains in Washington, while the next day I want to live in a beach house in a small coastal town on the East Coast. So, I started my search on Zillow. As I was thinking through locations, an idea sparked into my mind. My parents were born and raised in Buffalo, NY, and my extended family all still live there. I consider it a second home, as I would visit every winter and summer to see my family throughout my child. It is also safe to say that we are huge Buffalo Bills fans (Go Bills!). I always loved the city, as well as the small towns around it, specifically the town of East Aurora that is close to my grandmother’s house. It has a quaint main street, with shops, boutiques, and restaurants. When searching through the area for homes, I saw this 2.7 million dollar house. Now at first I was like “No way Olivia, 3 million dollars??”. But then I remembered, this is my DREAM house. So I took a shot at it. Little did I know that it would exceed my expectations. It has 5 bedrooms, 5 bathrooms, and was built in 1876. It is surrounded by lush woods and greenery, has an in-ground pool, as well as tennis courts (I am a tennis player so I found this to be an extra bonus). The inside has a very simplistic, yet rustic feel to it. My favorite feature has to be the spiral staircase at the entrance of the house, with the green carpet going up it. And, it is 30 minutes away from Highmark Stadium, which is where the Bills play! After finding the house, I decided to make a quick picture collage of my favorite photos of the landscape, as well as the interior. I can now safely say that I have found my dream home, and although it may be far-fetched (like 3 million dollars far…), it is always good to dream.
I found the reading to be pretty interesting! In order to accept new technology, we should fully understand it, knowing its benefits and downsides. Chapter 1 really intrigued me as he emphasized how should avoid the extremes, between being a technophile or a technophobe. Technophile as in only seeing the benefits of technology, and technophobes only seeing the downsides, or just fearing new technology in general. Chapter 2 goes through the historical and cultural context of technocracy. Chapter 3 describes how technocracy transitioned to technopoly, where it reshaped the definitions of different societal concepts such as religion or family to align with technology. Chapter 4 outlines the change in how we access information, to where we didn’t have access to much information, to now having unlimited access through the digital age. Chapter 5 showcases and wraps up the reading so far well by establishing how society needs morality when we are navigating new inventions or advancements.
Dr. Oblivion’s Input
Dr. Oblivion said that it is important to incorporate how we must stick to ethics and morals in a technologically-advancing environment. He also said how it is “essential to embrace new technology, but also be wary of it’s setbacks”. Overall, he outlined the same points that I said above.
I watched an episode of Black Mirror called “White Bear”. I have watched a couple of episodes of Black Mirror before, so I knew the baseline plot of most of the episodes were trippy, futuristic, had some major plot twist, as well as some message about society. This episode had my jaw dropped as I did not expect the plot twist ending.
Summary
The episode opens with the main character, Victoria, waking up in a strange house with no memory of who she is or how she got there. As she stumbles outside, she notices that people are silently filming her on their phones, showing no response to her confusion or pleas for help. Suddenly, masked individuals begin hunting her, attempting to kill her with firearms and other weapons. As they navigate through the dangerous town, a plot twist ending is revealed, and it truly astounds viewers and leaves them questions their own morals.
How It Connects to Tech Noir
Black Mirror tends to take the route with it’s episodes to explore some potential new technology, its benefits, as well as its downsides. Specifically, in the episode White Bear, it doesn’t showcase much new technology, it showcases some advanced tech with how they handle punishment in the U.S. Also, with the dark aesthetics and sort of dystopian society it portrays.
When asking Dr. Oblivion, he said the episode “White Bear” has the similar themes of tech noir and cyberpunk, with the “dark, twisted reality” due to the “bleak future dominated by sinister technological advancements.” The new and advanced technology is used to control and punish people who do not follow what they want.
I decided to pick the hard-boiled detective arch type, but to steer away from the usual and make her female. We do not see many female detective characters, and if there are any they are more stereotypical. I wanted to create one that had the hard personality, but also a soft side.
Veronica Malone works as a detective, and is a no-nonsense, sharp-tongued character who has a moral compass. She will usually use humor even in tense situations. Being born and raised in the city of Boston, Massachusetts, she grew up wanting to fight for justice, and to work in a field where she could help others. She is single, born in 1992, which makes her 32 and her zodiac sign a Scorpio. She has shoulder-length brown hair, dark eyes, and wears an iconic wine red coat and fedora that she wears when she is on the case.
She does enjoy some movies and books. Her favorite movie is either Ocean’s 11, or Miss Congeniality when she is feeling good. Her favorite book is The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler as she likes a story with flawed characters and moral grey areas. If she had to pick her favorite possession, it would either be her journal where she makes notes of all the cases she has worked on or criminals she has caught, or her revolver, which is self-explanatory. Her personal motto is “Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing”, as it reflects her way of life and her upbringing to where she is now.
