I decided to use a nifty website to create a video game dialogue box to convey a scene of my character, Hwei, talking to the spirits of his dead ancestors.
https://sebastianscaini.itch.io/ffxiv-dialogue-overlay-maker
The videos presented in this week’s reflection material felt very familiar to me. I recently took a class in UI/UX designing and some of these design elements come into play in the field of technology as well.
One of the elements I would like to go in depth with is the strategic use of color. The Vanity Fair video featuring James Verdesoto was very insightful for making connections between the film industry and the tech space of UI/UX. A lot of my favorite movies were featured in this video, including Star Wars and Avatar. What surprised me is the dominant nature of a specific color within film genres. For example, the use of blue is prominent in almost every action thriller poster, used to bring out the technological, high speed natures of the films.
However, the introduction of orange as a complimentary color introduces new ways for the colors to be used, with blue often being a background while the orange/yellow highlights the most important subjects such as the main characters.
There are some comparisons to be made in films vs. UI/UX elements. Take a look at this chart describing the use of each color:
Blue is not implemented as a thrilling color in any way of the imagination, yet can still be used signaling intelligence and tech such as Microsoft’s implementation in windows. The use of colors in contrasting ways exemplifies that not every color has a specific correlation to a certain emotion, situation, or overall vibe. Who knows, maybe in our future AI world, colors are interpreted by AI in different ways to the point where they convey completely different meanings!
I decided to take on this assignment in a public library, and I faced some difficulties with the tasks I was given. A few of them required me to go outside to take the pictures but luckily I was planning on leaving within the allotted 20 minutes anyways, so I was able to get these photos.
Start time: 5:05PM
End time: 5:25pm
I was surprised at how many of these could be done from the limited space of a tiny room. I had to be creative with the types of props to use for my images, such as my water bottle and the leftover trash from my snack. It forced me to be creative with photography and it was a fun way to get my creative juices flowing while taking a study break.
The Middlebury college AI assignment was an interesting read and activity. As an introduction of the assignment, there was an in-depth discussion about the regulation of AI, and how the development of free and accessible online tools has created issues for original creators and artists. The widespread recognition of Stable Diffusion is something I’ve come across in my time on the internet as well. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to differentiate the difference between real art and AI generated ones, especially for already animated content. If I were an artist (which I am most definitely not), I wouldn’t be happy with the direction of the industry and I would frankly be worried about how this changes my creative direction for the future. I’d assume that many artists are stuck at a crossroads between pursuing a type of art they’re truly excited about versus adhering to the AI buzz and losing some originality in the process.
For the actual image generation portion of the assignment, I decided to create an image of a dachshund on the moon, and I formatted the prompt to where the dog would resemble an astronaut, akin to Neil Armstrong during the first moon landing. I decided to use both Stable Diffusion and Craiyon to generate these images.
This first one from Stable Diffusion was amazing, 10/10 in my book. The image feels very realistic yet still with an artistic flair. The generator even stayed true to the prompt and added an American flag on the left arm sleeve. The only criticism I’d have would be the weird lighting coming from what I’d assume is the sun? Doesn’t seem very realistic for there to be beaming sun on the moon. Otherwise, it kind of scares me how good this image was.
This one from the Craiyon generator is something that I expected a little more. The image is very low quality and doesn’t adhere to the guidelines I set in the prompt. It’s almost comically bad, the moon completely overtakes the subject of the photo which was supposed to be the dog.
I didn’t get any submission result back after sending in my results on the website, but I will update here if there is anything else that pops up from this adventure.
What a week. There was a lot more work than the first week for sure. I did not take my advice from last week to start ahead of time and spread out the work, partially because of unexpected circumstances and partially due to other classes suddenly giving a lot of work that I didn’t expect and partially because I am a serial procrastinator.
What got me out of the gutter and back on my ass to run my creative mind again were the daily creates. I knew that I couldn’t procrastinate on these, as they needed to be completed within the posted date. I had lots of fun creating silly poems, collages, and even went hunting on a map for random words in my hometown and making a wacky story about it.
I’ll link to a post with a roundup of all of my daily creates for the week below. I actually got into such a habit of completing these that I ended up doing more than the required amount for the week!
Next order of business was the assignment bank. Just a note on the website UI and content itself, it’s very interesting to see all of these responses and assignments created way back in 2012 and beyond. It’s almost like a memory bank of DS106, and all of the creativity that has gone into the DS106 community over the years. These assignments took a little more creativity and effort but not too much, but I did choose to do relatively easy ones for this first week so it’ll most likely ramp up more in the coming weeks.
Next I edited my blog. To be honest, I’ve always been into minimalist designs, and I often think that the plain yet clean aesthetic is the one that appeals to me the most, even looking at blogs throughout the years. I created various categories that would sort my posts on the right side of my homepage for easier access to my posts, and removed some of the sample prompts and layout to create a clean, no frills look. I swear I actually did some customization! I made the background an ice blue that can hardly be recognized by the human eye, but I swear it was my best attempt to bring in some personality to my otherwise mundane and basic blog. As a future revision, I hope to write an “about me” page and link it at the top somewhere.
https://ds106.robinsyu.com/blog/
Participation is something I could have done a better job with this week. I commented on a few blogs right after finishing my assignments for the week (on Friday), so it definitely wasn’t on my mind to browse throughout the week. Although, this assignment bank post that was done by Tyler was a fun read! It was an assignment where after inserting a birth year, the task is to create a poem with generated words that are relevant to that year within the Merriam-Webster yearly list. Although the assignment was to write a poem, he identified his creation as more of a rap, and it flowed together really nicely! His post inspired me to put some more thought into which types of assignments I can be creative with in the future.
The course character assignment is something I had TOO much fun with this week. I am a huge gamer, and I took this opportunity to take inspiration from one of the newly released champions in League of Legends, Hwei. I took his sinister roots and backstory and turned it into something relevant to AI, keeping his core identity intact in the process while putting my own spin on the character.
It was so cool to link his character to the Artist archetype, as in the game, he is quite literally an artist with a gigantic paintbrush that throws ink of death at the sight of an enemy, acting as the team’s damage dealer and artillery mage. While he doesn’t have these bad-ass abilities in his course character creation version, I decided to focus more on his moral compass and the tragedies of his past that created his skewed viewpoint on the world around him, turning him to AI tools to plot the end of humankind.
The Techno-Optimist Manifesto article was an interesting read. It was essentially a lengthy dissertation about the positives of technology and how it was going to lead us all to the promised land. I didn’t agree with the sentiments, but I did make some thoughtful comparisons to my own opinions and how different it was from my WALL-E review. Dr. Oblivion’s response surprised me the most, as he absolutely agreed with all of my comments. However, this made me feel some sort of eerie way. almost as if I finally realized that Dr. Oblivion, just like any other form of AI, shares no form of common goal with humans for the survival and prosperity of mankind.
Finally for my film review revisions, I made a few revisions to talk more about the deeper AI themes and gained some perspective from Dr. Oblivion. He was mostly agreeing with my points, but that alone was enough for me to strengthen my arguments.
What a crazy week this was, both in and out of DS106. I will make sure to not procrastinate next week, but I said this last week as well, so who knows when I’ll start holding myself accountable 
In my film review last week of WALL-E, I felt as though the tone of the movie was critical yet hopeful. All of humankind defaulted to living in a spaceship, running away from the collective damage dealt to the planet’s ecosystem, and setting for a sedentary existence where AI takes over all aspects of life for them. Only in the end after AI intervention was mankind prompted to give their own planet another shot. In this article, Andreessen argues in favor of technological advancements, and emphasizes how the positive aspects of technology outweighs the negatives. It argues against pessimism and preaches how human progress, economic growth, and the improvement of living stands will all manifest from the development of technology.
Quite a different take from what I had last week based on WALL-E, but I’m honestly not surprised. As more and more developments are made, specifically to AI, the excitement for these technologies grows bigger and bigger on a global scale. People from all across the world are waiting to see the development of the next big AI feature, hoping that this is something that will make their lives easier. However, I still believe that humanity will have a hard time grasping these technologies at a fundamental level, and the collective hivemind of humankind will not be able to handle such growth, and more importantly, such efficiency. As animals who are always trying to figure out a shortcut for our tasks, just like how the humans in WALL-E lived, I believe that we will most likely get to that point as well.
Although, who am I to say that this will be a horrible life? Maybe cruising around on decked out spaceships and having every little task done for us will create a new genesis for human enlightenment and allow us to reach new heights in different ways we can’t foresee at the moment.|
I asked Dr. Oblivion about my hot take to see if he agrees that humans won’t be able to handle AI in the future.
Here’s what he had to say:
I feel a bit validated, but at the same time as a human, I kind of wish he said something positive. Maybe this is the difference between a human persona and that of an AI? Empathy.
I gained inspiration from the MOBA game League of Legends to create my very own rendition of the character Hwei. He vaguely fits under the artist archetype, albeit in a very sinister way. Hwei does not abide by the status quo of the world around him. Rather, he sees these things as tools to paint and envision his new world; one where AI can have the same shape, form, and intelligence as humans. While he portrays himself as a humble artist dressed in traditional Chinese robes and carrying a paintbrush as big as a sword, he’s actually a cutthroat AI developer and designer, spending most of his time in his laboratory working as a one man army to take over the world with robots. I can’t get too in depth with his lore as of now, but Hwei has had some traumatic experiences in the past to the point where his belief in mortality and the human experience took a twisted turn. Hwei’s discovery of AI after the tragedy in his life gave him purpose in life, finding companionship only in his own artificial creations.
Here are my daily creates for the week!
This create was a fun way to identify my hometown on a map and see which three random words I get based on the squares on the map. “Kick, Fuzzy, Pirate” instantly made me think of a pirate kicking a fuzzy animal, and that first animal was a fluffy bunny.
For day 2, the prompt was to take a picture of my ceiling. Above me there is a cheap Walmart lamp that I’ve been using for almost a decade, with my monitor hanging above due to how close the screen is to me. Above that I have my favorite frame hanging, it’s a dachshund with the caption “Long day?”. It makes my day every time.
This one was difficult for me. I had to figure out a software to make a Voynich manuscript, and I ended up choosing the most accessible online drawing tool I could find. I think I’ll try to find another way to create drawings in the future.
Below the vast the sea of clouds
There lies an ominous smoke of grey
It may look like rain to some
but to me it looks to the end of some
Today
I
Went to
The first class
of the year because
It snowed a lot and the school decided
To not cancel on Wednesday or Friday what a shame
There were two poem creation creates this week, one of them being to watch the weather in California and writing a poem based on that, and the other being a Fibonacci sequence poem, following an arithmetic sequence.
This last create is probably my favorite of the week. The phrase “Go out and touch grass” is a gamer term that is often used to ridicule others for spending too much time indoors. It’s a playful insult but I thought it would be funny to turn this phrase into my own interpretation of this create for exiting the internet.
https://www.instagram.com/remythedsrat
For this assignment, I created a Finsta (fake Instagram) for Remy the Rat from Ratatouille. If he had access to social media, he would most likely make an Instagram to show off all the newest recipes he’s cooking up.
For this assignment, I was asked to hop into a video game and build a small world.
I created a world inside my “Teapot” in the game Genshin Impact, adding my two pets that I obtained throughout my playthrough to show my appreciation for dogs 
The rest of the landscape and the Asian themed building is all made by the AI generator within the game.