Author Archives: Rylie’s Riveting Region

“I’ll be Back” as Pixel Art!

I decided to work on the 256 Points Assignment this week. I used Procreate to make a portrait of Arnold Schwarzenegger as Terminator. It was an interesting process as I didn’t have a brush small enough to work pixel-by-pixel, so I instead had to create blobs and then erase them down in order to get the shape I wanted.

Me in Collage Form Except I’m not Me

I had so much fun developing my course character, Bethany Smith (aka a gangster named “Smithy”). As such, I opted to participate in one of the visual assignments but collage Bethany instead of myself. I used Pinterest’s Collage Maker, and had so much fun developing this character further!

Timelapse of my collage creation

“My name is Bethany, its great to meet you!”

Bethany Smith was born in Agusta, Maine on June 6, 1996. She had a good childhood, full of family dinners and stellar report cards. She surprised everyone by not applying to any colleges, and moving to Chicago with her high school sweetheart, Colin. They married soon after, but her picture perfect life seemed to end there. Colin died on a hunting trip or a ski accident or during a hiking trip with his best friend two years after they were married. She surprised everyone even more when she started working at the same funeral home that “took care of Colin.” Bethany never struck anyone as the type who would work somewhere so morbid, but she seems to love it! It gives her plenty of time to read her books (romance, especially anything with vampires or monsters) and her bosses are pretty lax on the cell phone policy. If you ever ask her for advice, she’ll tell you that “the kindness I to others show, that kindness comes to me.”

Bethany has always been unassuming, but it has only become worse since Colin died. She keeps her mousy brown hair cut above her shoulders (she hates when its in her eyes). She’s 5’5″ with a slim build and dark brown eyes. She tends to favor jeans and pants, and can rarely be found in a t-shirt as she likes feeling “put together.” She has a light dusting of freckles, and acne scars that are slowly fading. One of the signature parts of her style is her green nail polish, because she feels like it makes her features pop. Lunch most days is a salad or leftovers, and after work she might enjoy an Old Fashioned or two. She doesn’t go anywhere without her phone. She is glued to it, whether she is at work or anywhere else. She can be found making hushed phone calls and viciously texting, but swears “its nothing.”

Smithy, on the other hand, was “born” September 29, 2011 at 1:06pm. She knew her Dad was up to something, but he had been going on a lot of “work trips” recently and “working late” more nights than not. One day, she went to bring her Dad some lunch and walked in on a scene she would never be able to forget. Her Dad was dead, bent over his desk in a pool of blood. While she knew it was wrong, she had to look at her Dad’s computer before calling the police. Through his emails and phone records, she realized that the man she knew as a good father and loving husband was one of the East Coast’s most powerful mobsters. Whatever had happened to her Dad was clearly targeted, but the police ruled it a suicide. Smithy used what she found on the laptop to slowly begin to build her own empire, using her connections to the crematorium to take care of anyone who causes her trouble. No one knows who Smithy is, and no one knows what Bethany is always so preoccupied with.

Why My Backpack is so Heavy

  1. Water Bottle: more than often, it’s empty. I just like to have it with me. Decorated with stickers from various events and bands.
  2. Laptop Charger
  3. Pencil Pouch: hand embroidered by me, rarely used anymore. However, it feels wrong to go anywhere without a writing utensil.
  4. Laptop: slowly dying, also covered in stickers.
  5. iPad: my most recent birthday gift, one of my only posessions that isn’t covered in stickers/pins/keychains/embroidery/patches or anything similar.
  6. Earbuds (wireless): I can only wear my left earbud right now because of my piercings.
  7. Carmex Chapstick: should be taken out of my bag, I don’t even use Carmex anymore.
  8. Hand Sanitizer: probably don’t use this as much as I should, but I enjoy having it with me.
  9. Decongestant: helps with my migraines sometimes.
  10. Earbuds (wired): these are for my laptop, and unlike my wireless earbuds, I can wear both of these. These were always my favorite design back when wired earbuds were the norm.
  11. Dongle: just in case all my wireless headphones are dead.
  12. Frog Wallet: I keep most important things in my sticky wallet on my phone, but again, it feels wrong not to have a physical wallet.
  13. Apple: most of the time there is some kind of snack in my bag, today it was an apple.
  14. Mini-Vasaline: my current preferred Chapstick.
  15. Hand Warmers: a Christmas gift from my roommate, one of my most valued posessions this winter.
  16. Crecent Wrench: major contributor to my backpack weight, but needed for work. Used almost every day in the scene shop while I work with the lights.
  17. Giant Receipt: found this in my jacket pocket after picking something up at the store and shoved it in my bag.
  18. Zine Materials: cut up magazines and such for a zine making project in DGST 201 (Tinkering, Hacking, and Making). Won’t remain in my backpack, though.
  19. “Lady Bag”: exactly what it sounds like and contains everything a lady such as myself might need (Ibuprofen, pads, mints, eye drops, ect).
  20. My Bag: purchased for senior year of high school, which was entierly online. Some embroidery done by me, many patches sewn on by me but designed by others. Buttons and keychains galore- you can always hear me coming.

Weekly Summary #1

In addition to the two Wikipedia articles, I decided to read Joseph Hurtgen’s article Sci-fi Noir: The Terminator and Tech Noir | 10 Updates to Film Noir. I’ve seen The Terminator before, but I can’t say that I remember much of the movie besides the major beats and iconic moments.

I think the part in section 2 where Hurtgen discusses the lack of trust in the police force was interesting, especially as many people currently are unable to trust or rely on the police. I think it is somewhat ironic that a crucial aspect of a genre that portrays an “unwanted” or “dystopian” future shares such direct similarities to our present society.

“Consider also that the police are not who you can turn to in The Terminator and you have pretty well laid out this aspect of the noir. If you can’t turn to those who are supposed to serve and protect you, who can you turn to? Who can you trust?” – Joseph Hurtgen

I watched an episode of Black Mirror to satisfy the watching of technoir media, and I enjoyed it! I think the episode I watched felt less blatantly “sci-fi” than what I’ve heard of other parts of the series, which I appreciated as I’m not always the biggest fan of that genre. Maybe that won’t bode well for me in this class, but I might not like the genre just because I’m unfamiliar with it.

I also had my intro meeting this week, and I’m looking forward to the class! I’m excited to dig in to assignments and see what different applications are involved in this class. Overall I didn’t have much frustration this week, especially since I’m familiar with DoOO/Wordpress.

Black Mirror – S2E1 Review

I decided to watch an episode of Black Mirror this week as the tech noir film, as I was interested in the more contemporary approach that this show could take. I closed my eyes and chose an episode randomly, landing on the first episode of season two entitled “Be Right Back.” The short description on the episode reads, “after learning about a new service that lets people stay in touch with the deceased, a lonley, greiving Martha reconnects with her late lover.” Without watching the episode, I’m interested to see if this has any parallels to the AI chatbots that have begun to pop up in common social media apps like Facebook and Instagram.

One of the first lines in the episode mentions the “Narwhal Virus” that collapsed Russia’s economy, and while I know that viruses are a frequent troupe in futuristic media, I still got a kick out of this post-Covid. Ashe, the “late lover” the description mentions, is certainly hooked to his phone and his death is implied to be due to distracted driving. I was also spot on about the AI chatbot prediction, as all of Ashe’s internet activity was funneled into a program that allowed Martha to text him. As the episode went on, not-Ashe became more realistic, transitioning from text into phone calls and finally into a real body. Martha experiences frustration as not-Ashe is indeed not Ashe, and she feels like he is so close to being the person she remembered but also so different.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that it took less than twelve hours for Martha to initiate sex with not-Ashe, which I found interesting. I feel like I would be so uncomfortable if I were in her situation, and the absolute last thing on my mind would be having sex with the thing that looks like my dead partner. However, I know that the idea of intimacy with future tech is something that many are interested in, and I think that acknowledging that in this episode made it stronger.

Goals for this Class

While it was the eighth task on the to-do list, I opted to consider what I wanted to get out of this class before reading/watching this week’s assignments. I work in theatre, primarily in lighting design, which provides an interesting method for storytelling. While lighting isn’t something that most audiences conciously notice, it is something that carries a huge amount of the narrative and helps to create the wold on stage. As such, I’m always working to try and find new ways to tell stories and interact with the world around me, especially in ways that may be unexpectected or unnoticed by most. I’m excited to learn more about different ways to tell stories, but also to engage with the “tech noir” theme and consider how technology has helped or hindered the development of complex narratives.