Author Archives: paul bond

Gettin’ Medieval

Friend of Tom Woodward shared his discovery of an AI-generated rap based on The Canterbury Tales. That inspired me to ask Dr. Oblivion:

An Ask Dr. Oblivion notecard saying, "How might we envision AI through a rap mixtape of Chaucer?"

and his response:


Dr. O seems to think “We don’t need Skynet records taking over the charts,” but perhaps that has already started.

I was curious though. How would Dr. Oblivion handle archaic English? So I asked:

Please recite this verse so I can hear it in your voice:
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,
To ferne halwes, couthe in sondry londes;
And specially from every shires ende

I had to ask a couple times before he would do it. I dare say his pronunciation is a little better than Suno’s, but what do I know. on a barely related note, I wonder if Suno could give a Middle English ska punk version of The Techno-Optimist Manifesto?

I’m sure to suffer in musical purgatory for that. I was trying to relate this to the Dr. Oblivion Intro assignment, but it went a bit off the rails. These AI generators can be fun in that they easily produce weird stuff, but then the challenge is to make something out of it. Sometimes it’s just a dead end.

Collect the whole set!

an array of trading cards

I saw Bryan Mathers’ Trading Card Remix on Mastodon:

 

View on Mastodon

 

and I thought, “This could be a cool way to visualize course characters.” Is there a trading card assignment though? If there wasn’t before, thanks to the magic of the Assignment Bank, there is now! It’s an easy and fun way to

Collateral coincidences

I watched the Michael Mann neo-noir classic Collateral last night. I was thinking about the idea of noir characters, and how this film shows a great example of the Innocent Bystander, a cab driver, a man with a plan, whose life is turned upside down by a random fare.

This segment, starting at 1:23 of the video, struck me as a metaphor for customizing our blog spaces: Taking the standard ride, seeing how the controls work, closing the door to focus, and adding the personal touches. As Jim put it:

Figuring out how to design the space wherein you live, work, and learn remains crucial and remains at the core of the ds106 experience.

How’s that for an unexpected coincidence?

I also wanted to do a visual or design assignment using the film. I told myself I would go to the fifth page of assignments and do one I found there. I was taken with the initial cab ride scene with Jamie Foxx and Jada Pinkett Smith and thought it would be good for the Storytelling Collage assignment. Pinkett Smith does an impressive job of communicating with eyes and expressions, so I tried to capture some of that. Here are the shots I used:

  1. She tells him how to do his job
  2. He suggests a better route
  3. She barely gives him attention as she responds. The plexiglas partition is a concrete symbol of the divide between them
  4. But she thinks about it. Note that she’s no longer behind the partition.
  5. Exterior view of the tangle of roadways
  6. There’s a seriousness and depth about him that she finds attractive
  7. Another exterior, would not be out of place in a tech noir film
  8. There’s an openness and connection between them – closer together horizontally and also depth-wise. Note how the background is completely out of focus, All that matters is the tow of them.
  9. Love this shot, with the noir feel of shadow and light and the symbolism of the green light ahead of him and the red light behind

And here is the collage:

an arrangement of shots from the movie Collateral, illustrating a conversation leading to personal connection between a cab driver and passenger

I was thinking of it in terms of a page from a graphic novel, so the layout is a little more formal than the average collage. I pondered cropping images, but the director and cinematographer had them framed so perfectly that I thought it better to use them as is. I did try to use the arrangement to show them coming closer together.

Fortunately for me the scene was on Youtube. I used yt-dlp to download the video. At first the command didn’t work, so I looked up some directions.  They weren’t exactly what I needed, but they gave me the idea to put single quotes around the video URL, and that did the trick. I imported the video into iMovie and selected about twenty frames from the scene. Then I used PowerPoint as a canvas to arrange the stills, and exported the final arrangement as a JPG.

I think it works. I’m not sure if it says collage, but it conveys a version of the story. I’m not sure if the decision not to crop was the right one. I could have been more creative and expressive with design and arrangement otherwise, so perhaps I will consider revising it later. It was worthwhile though to give the scene a close reading and look at how the shots work internally and in combination.

Show us the Tech Noir

The point of the film review assignment was to get people thinking about the Tech Noir concept, how it has been portrayed in media, and what it means to us. It’s not meant to be a generic or conventional film review as much as a way for you to think about the theme and connect some dots.

It’s also an opportunity to practice some blogging skills like linking and embedding images and other media. If we’re going to discuss video, incorporating clips or screenshots of the points we’re discussing is a good idea. In some cases you can find usable clips on Youtube, which can be easily embedded in a post. You may be able to find images of scenes through Google. My Mac is giving me a hard time about taking screenshots of Netflix and some other services, but it appears that the Windows Print Screen function works. In order to get the shots I used in my post, I found the video on an alternate site and recorded a portion with Quicktime. Then I imported the screen recording into iMovie and saved relevant images. I really need to find a better process.

As evidence of the power of tagging, you can see our group’s film reviews at https://ds106.ai/category/film-review/. Tags are a great way of organizing posts, and allow us to bring them together. We can see how we as a group see the idea of tech noir in various media.

One review found a Black Mirror episode dealing with transhumanism ideas, which may be utopian or dystopian depending on one’s point of view. This review also adds images and links, exercising the power of digital media. The post from My blog (not my blog) discusses a Black Mirror episode  which touches on issues of surveillance, identity rights and terms of service, and the dystopian possibilities of a corporation claiming ownership over one’s life story. Another person looked at a 90s classic, The Matrix, noting its twisted reality and impressive effects. I wonder, if a term made up for the movie makes its way into the dictionary, is that an indication of living in the matrix? These posts show a good start to blogging, but we can push it further – more links, more media, more connections. Keep the reviews rolling!

“Ever get the feeling you was being watched?”

The other day friend of ds106 Grant Potter noted that the tech noir adjacent theme of surveillance is a theme on the Criterion Channel this month. One of the films on their list is The Anderson Tapes, which conveniently happens to be available on tubitv. I was drawn to it because it’s directed by Sidney Lumet (whose book Making Movies is highly recommended to anyone interested in the topic), and finding out that it has Christopher Walken’s first steps sealed the deal.

scene of a government office with a picture of President Nixon on the wall

We noted that there’s a sort of retro-futurism to tech noir. This is definitely retro, dated by the photo of Nixon on the government office wall. Those weird computerish bleeps and bloops in the soundtrack and trailer are supposed give a pseudo sci fi feel, I suppose. It’s a conventional heist film, except that the viewer isn’t the only one watching. From the Wikipedia entry:

Unwittingly, Anderson is under pervasive surveillance almost the entire operation, from the earliest planning to the execution. This includes a private detective hired by Werner to eavesdrop on his mistress Ingrid; the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, checking on a released drug dealer; the FBI, investigating Black activists and the interstate smuggling of antiques; and the IRS, which is after the mob boss who is financing the operation. The various surveilling Federal, state, and municipal agencies all have different missions (and targets), so none is able to “connect the dots” and anticipate the robbery.

Throughout the story we see cameras, screens, wires and recorders. Everything is watched, everything is recorded. A big difference from today is that everything is siloed. I guess they hadn’t figured out the power of data fusion back then. In the end, everything gets erased because most of it wasn’t exactly legal. Oh to live in such innocent times.

One of the underappreciated highlights though has to be Martin Balsam’s toupee.

actor Martin Balsam in The Anderson Tapes, wearing a toupee

Down by GIF

Today’s Daily Create instructions were to visualize The Scream, but since I saw Down by Law way back when, “scream” suggests a different image. If I were smart I would have realized that someone must have made this GIF before, but as it is I just dove in and made my own. I used this video clip with Imgflip to make the base GIF, then opened it in Photoshop and deleted 3 of every 4 layers to bring the size down, then inserted the type layers and merged them with the image layers, rather tediously. There’s a better way to do that, I’m sure, and if I did this more often I might know and remember it. In any case, I made a thing, and that’s the whole point, isn’t it? , as they say.

Talking Tech Noir, part deux

We’re working with a them of Tech Noir in ds106 this semester, and as I mentioned before, we can’t really expect the class to know what we’re talking about, so Jim and I recorded a half-hour discussion which hopefully brings some clarity. We discuss meanings, themes and history, where we are and where we may want to go.

We have a list of Tech Noir/Cyberpunk media to help people get familiar. Is there anything that should be added?

Tech Noir 106

Jim had talked about doing a Tech Noir themed course many years ago, and now we’re looking to revisit the idea. It feels appropriate to the times. I can’t expect everyone to be an aficionado of the genre though, so I’m thinking about ways to be expansive with it, to offer people more ways to connect. Incorporating cyberpunk is an obvious one. I also want to add Technopoly to bring a philosophical lens to the idea.
Continue reading →

“
a story, a tale we missed”

I was intrigued by Bryan Alexander’s book club proposal to read the Project 2025 document. Unfortunately I have too many summer projects competing for time and attention to participate meaningfully. But in the spirit of AI106 I have taken passages from the document and fed them to AI song generator Udio to make death metal tracks.

Restoring Limits

[Verse]
Ruling class, they slash and tear, they take away our rights
Centralize their power, far from American sights
Supra-national treaties bind us, never let us be
In the grip of bureaucrats, we lose our sovereignty

[Chorus]
Restoring limits, bring back the fight
Accountability, let’s make it right

Reclaiming Our Rights

[Verse]
Rulers climbing high, they can’t hear our cries
Treaties bind our hands, as the Constitution dies
Career pawns, unseen, they tighten the chains
Power games they play, and we’re the ones who pay

[Chorus]
Slash through the lies, expose their deceit
Tear down the walls, take back our streets
No backing down, we’ll stand and we’ll fight
United we’ll rise, reclaiming our rights

The prompt for these was:
Properly considered, restoring fiscal limits and constitutional accountability to the federal government is a continuation of restoring national sovereignty to the American people. In foreign affairs, global strategy, federal budgeting and policymaking, the same pattern emerges again and again. Ruling elites slash and tear at restrictions and accountability placed on them. They centralize power up and away from the American people: to supra-national treaties and organizations, to left-wing “experts,” to sight-unseen all-or-nothing legislating, to the unelected career bureaucrats of the Administrative State, heavy metal, death metal,

I’m not actually a death metal aficionado so I can’t give it a proper musical or lyrical critique. My guess is the site is mapping words and phrases to a statistical model of death metal lyrics to come up with the song, so I’m not surprised that “slash and tear” made it through. I think the songs get at a sense of the passage, while perhaps giving it more extreme coloration.

Challenge the Power

[Verse]
Restore our thinking to thrive
Establish truth, let it revive
No more interests’ clash, we’ll drive
Strength in analysis, we’ll arrive

[Chorus]
Challenge the power, break the flood
Independent minds, through the blood
Challenge the power, stand and fight
Free the thought, into the night

Revive the Mind

[Verse]
Restore the mind, eradicate the lie
Build a fortress, let the truth arise
Break the chains that bind, dismantle the guise
Return to the essence, intelligence revived

[Chorus]
Through the fire, through the night
Restore the truth, the guiding light
Break through walls, shatter might
In this battle, wisdom’s flight

This prompt was:
Restore DIE critical thinking. Establish mechanisms to restore analytic integrity and return to true intelligence-driven operations. The next Administration should eliminate the conflict of interest in the current customer-based model (in which the customer is always right) by enforcing time-tested procedures that guarantee independent analysis, even if it means challenging policymakers’ assumptions. The Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security’s leadership role should be expanded to include providing analytic top-line views and improve DIE transparency by highlighting diverging views., heavy metal, death metal,

I was wondering how it would interpret DIE – as an acronym or the word die? But given the context maybe it didn’t know what to do with the word. Or maybe the whole passage just doesn’t compute. It looks like Udio picked up some words and ran off in its own direction.

Torch of Integrity

[Verse]
The USAGM’s a story, a tale we missed,
Of faith and hope in shadows kissed.
A chance to shine, in world’s eyes wide,
Lost in the dark, where ideals hide.

[Chorus]
Burn the torch of honest days,
Journalistic light must blaze.

Shadows of Promise

[Verse]
The promise was bright as the sun
But shadows darken, and now it’s gone
Unbiased truth we failed to keep
A chance lost deep, in silence we weep

[Chorus]
Lost opportunity, our ideals are torn
In the darkness, will we ever be reborn?

The passage used here was:
The USAGM is a story of a lost opportunity both to help restore the world’s confidence in the promise and ideals of America and to set a high mark for journalistic integrity and unbiased reporting. , heavy metal, gothic metal,

These stayed a little more focused, probably because I only used one sentence as a prompt. So far, my intuitive feeling is that it is molding the inputs on a metal model. How would the character change if I made it dream pop or big band jazz? But I don’t think I want to go for an ironic tone here. A cut-up poetry approach might yield some interesting results. I could extract evocative or provocative phrases and put them together as prompts or use them as lyrics and see what the system does with them.

None of this gives any insight into Project 2025 or its relevance to education, but it is something of a pseudo-creative outlet.