“If you give Dr. Oblivion (https://oblivion.university/) a question or directive, he will give a response of up to a minute, which may or may not be loaded with snark. For this assignment you should download the MP3 of the Doctor’s response, import it into Audacity and cut it up and insert your part of the conversation“
Dr. Oblivion with the snark! I thought I asked a pretty straightforward question about the worries of AI taking over coding jobs. This is a topic very relevant to me, as I’m worried that during my time in the CS field, there will be a lack of jobs with the advancement of AI showing no signs of stopping. While The Doc did give me some snark, he also replied with some very insightful takes on how AI is built by us humans, and we will always use it as a tool rather than a replacement. However, I’m worried that the intent of AI creators will take a greedy turn, as many things in this world do. What if AI is used in a way where the betterment of society isn’t upheld?
I’d like to say that I’m an avid listener of podcasts and radio shows. My long commutes to school and work often allows me to finish a chunk of these at a time, and I really enjoy the insights I get from my favorite podcasters. I will say however, that my scope of interests is severely limited, with the majority of my listening time being taken up by Gill Gross’ Tennis podcast.
Gill does a lot of tennis post-match commentaries detailing the strategies of players, historic implications, among many other things a tennis fanatic can get behind. However, I realize that for the purpose of DS106, I probably can’t do a tennis broadcast with my course character along with my partner’s characters.
To tell a story about AI with connections to our characters within a 20-30 minute window, I think that creating a little short story with sound effects and dialogue included would be an interesting way to fulfill the requirements, similar to the radio stories we listened to during the DS106 radio broadcast this week. I haven’t really thought of the specifics yet, but I think this will become more clear after the groups have been assigned and we get to talk about everyone’s characters and their interests.
“Now that we have a #ds106 radio up and running creating a 15 to 30 second bumper for the station.“
This was my first attempt at a radio bumper, and I focused my attention on creating a catchy phrase. I came up with “The best tunes with the best people” and looking back at it I could’ve made something more clever but this will have to do. Something I had to work through was the audio only playing through one side of my headphones but I soon figured out that I needed to go into the settings of Audacity and split the audio channels. You can never know too much about the software we use! I’m still an Audacity rookie, so there will most likely be more of these learning lessons.
“Tell a story using nothing but sound effects. There can be no verbal communication, only sound effects. Use at least five different sounds that you find online. The story can be no longer than 90 seconds.“
I used sounds sourced exclusively from Freesound.org to create a story where a man enters a spooky castle and potentially doesn’t make it back alive. There are some supernatural elements to the sounds used, such as weird alien noises that are indescribable in daily life.
The story starts off with a whispering man, then our main character is transported to the haunted castle. He opens the door only to find a void of black and the emergence of an unknown extraterrestrial being. Then his screams can be heard echoing throughout the castle, never to be heard again.
Audacity was surprisingly simple to use for mashing together sound effects clips like this, it made me feel more comfortable with working with the software in bigger projects in the future.
For the live DS106 radio session this week, I was working at night for all 3 of the sessions. However, I was able to check into the Wednesday night’s show and it was an absolute pleasure.
The first story called “A Logic Named Joe” was a lighthearted comedic interpretation of what the internet would look like back in the 50s. A lot of the transition effects sounded similar to a cartoon movie with its wonky antics. Some of the distance effects allowed for us to decipher the situation more clearly, and where each character was located during each part of the story. The most interesting thing I noticed was how the interpretation of an AI assistant didn’t sound very robotic at all. It sounded more like an older movie narrator with much more personality than what I imagined people in the 50s expected AI to be.
The second story was “Report on the Barnhouse Effect” and this was a big shift between the last story. A lot of the creeking of doors and chairs, footsteps, and other subtle sounds made the story eerie, with each one adding to a sense of overall urgency in the story. There was a lot more to take in with this story, and I really appreciated all of the intricate sound effects used to portray the story. Professor Bond mentioning that the bell ringing at the end of the story signaled that the location was at a service desk, and I wouldn’t have caught that without his insight.
Overall I took a lot of lessons away from this session, and I’d definitely tune in again for some more stories.
This short story was unexpectedly gripping for the entirety of the 10 minutes. The conversation between Armstrong and Aldrin signifies uncharted territory, as this was the first time man stepped foot on the moon. The entire story has an underlying mysterious backtrack, until the middle where sometimes just their voices and breathing fill the audio. Sound effects are also littered into the story, and even if these sounds aren’t accurate to what can be heard in space, it adds to the suspense and gravity of the situation.
I am personally very afraid of space, and anything of the unknown. It’s the feeling of knowing that there are things out there that are unknown to us, or potentially too advanced for the human mind to grasp. The “fear of missing out” or FOMO is also a reason why I fear the unknown, as eventually man may be able to conquer space and comprehend all of the mysteries in our galaxy, but I’ll never be around to witness this.
But the nature of the unknown and the fear that future civilizations will have to conquer gives me comfort at times. At least I won’t have to face these uncharted territories myself, all at the cost of my FOMO inside of my tombstone.
I couldn’t think of any message for the world to put on my plane banner, so I decided to advertise the class instead.
The next create was to write a three line poem about lemons without using the following words: lemon, yellow, round, fruit, citrus, tart, juicy, peel, and sour.
Sunshine buddies on a twig Can’t resist the urge of it Bite in and it just might sting
Added a little rhyme to it and I was pretty proud of it!
Finally I shared a secret hideout, this one was from the SMT series games.
Looks eerie, the space saucer circular thingies resemble a space station, so I hypothesized that they’re a portal to somewhere in space.
I didn’t expect much out of a quick color inversion, but boy did it change the vibe of Hwei. Other than the alien-like glow that comes along with using color inversion, the emphasis on green and yellow hues is a complete overhaul of his
I’d argue that the glow on his body is actually a pretty cool visual element that can portray a transcendent being emitting light.
Here is a skin for Hwei in the original game League of Legends.
To be honest, this isn’t a great in-game skin. It’s quite lazy and it was only shipped out due to every character needing a skin upon release so that Riot Games (the company behind League) could profit from early release sales. It feels forced to push him into a winter theme for his first skin to portray him as some sort of “ice prince”, when they could have taken this concept in a much more sophisticated manner accurate to his lore.
I feel as though my simple color inversion has produced a better idea than this lazy Disney rip-off. The light green emphasis symbolizes Hwei’s connection to organic beings and the laws of nature, which contrasts his dystopian cyborg outlook that he currently has. As an alter ego, maybe Hwei can be an individual seeking to lead the natural world, using his art to move the core emotions of every living being around him.
Doing this assignment has given me some ideas for revisions to his story, potentially highlighting the conflict between his ideologies of natural beings versus the virtually perfect AI prototypes.
I am proud to say that for once in my DS106 career, I did not procrastinate.
… kind of.
To my own surprise, I started this week’s slew of assignments early, doing some of the lighter work at the library with my girlfriend. Due to me starting ahead of time, I was able to finish the rest of the tasks for the week today (Friday) at 11pm. So I guess I kind of did procrastinate but at the same time I started earlier than usual so the usual repercussions of procrastination didn’t hit me as hard.
The first assignment for this was the reflection post on the videos posted on the course website pertaining to design an storytelling. I made a blog post about the topic that interested me the most; the use of color. I connected the ideas shown in the Vanity Fair video with my own studies of UI/UX development and showed the similarities and differences between the two fields.
Next was the photoblitz, which I decided to tackle inside the confines of my little cubicle study room in the public library. I had to get creative with some of the photo requirements due to the limited space and props I had available, but this was some of the most fun I’ve had with a DS106 assignment as of yet!
The Middlebury College Demystifying AI mini course was my first introduction to AI art production. Previously, I’ve used AI in my coding and asking it for basic tasks, but I’ve never delved into the artistic side of things. I was surprised at the types of images I got back using simple prompts. One of the AI models was spot on with their generation while the other one was a huge miss.
I also completed two other visual and design assignments, and I decided to make both about my course chracter, Hwei. I delved into the design aspect by inverting the colors of one of his profiles, giving him a brighter, more tuned into nature type of look. Think of it as a skin, almost. The other assignment I took was adding a text box to an image of Hwei, where I put a quote that would give more insight into his backstory.
And that just about wraps it up! It was a relatively light week with creative photography and introductions to AI generation, but I thoroughly enjoyed all of the tasks this week. Next week seems to be the heavy hitter with a lot of audio stuff. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t scared, but I guess it’s time to jump into the world of audio head-first.
