Category Archives: ai106

Props to propaganda

LEGO – Star Wars propaganda torn version By ArchWorks

Propaganda was a big hit this week, which is perhaps predictable given the nature of the assignments. Even so, there was some great work, and it’s all worth checking out. One I’d like to highlight comes from Cinder’s Wonderland. Note the write up. It explains how AI was used to get ideas, identifies and links to the tools used, and says how they built on the AI image. It even explains the reasoning behind color and font choices. All within one short paragraph.

Also worth noting are the characters’ reactions to PSAs and propaganda for the ways they bring the characters into each others worlds. It is unfortunate that there are only seven reaction posts though…. (sigh)

Propaganda

I really like this post, I think the slogan Liv comes up with is really strong and forces you to reflect on our country’s system.

It was a well thought out poster. The symbolism with the scale and money was done nicely

Propoganda

The design is simple but the picture says a lot

I really liked how minimal this poster was. It is gorgeous and straight to the point. I also liked the message the story behind it. Well done!

You Are What You Eat

It got me. Like it worked. Like that’s what they want with propaganda, it worked.

Not Cracking any Jokes

eggs

PROPAGANDA

This was so good and absolutely inspired. Loved it.

Daily Create

I love the view

Breaking News

I love the picture he chose makes it really feel like a news story

Propaganda

I love the poster he made, and the quote really stands out

What’s Black, White, and Read All Over?

I loved the creativity and how it looks so realistic!

Battle of the Birds

I love this! I did the same assignment for the Bills, so it was cool seeing someone else’s interpretation, as well as seeing other team’s! Go Birds!

Social Media Turns Deadly

This newsposter was awesome! It looked like The Washington Post or The New York Times. Very cool! Great job!

Favorite Movie Gif Daily Create

I love this quote and I think the gif is so relatable

Femme Fatale Propaganda

This was a beautiful poster, and I really like the look of this persons character. I love that the look is consistent throughout this persons post!

Let’s Check Out the Classes PSA’s! Sapphire Mae Edition.

Loved it and thought it was super cute.

Finn Reacting to Public Service Announcements

I love how this person quoted their character to react to posts. I totally can see this character saying these things!

Wouldn’t Want to Hear This on the Radio!

This post is so good and I am so impressed with how above and beyond Rylie went for this assignment. Great job!

TDC 2/25 – 2/28

These were my favorite Daily creates this week!

Propaganda

Well written post. I enjoyed reading it and it put a smile on my face. My favorite part actually was the first sentence.. “I have to start this by saying..”

Daily Create 2/27/25

This was so cool!

Bumper Sticker

This idea was hilarious! I love the design

 

 

“…like choosing your favorite snack”

What should ds106 do about those who don't vote for the posts of the week? Should there be consequences for failing to fulfill their democratic duties?

Hmm, that’s an interesting question. In ds106, voting for post of the week is like choosing your favorite snack. It helps showcase great work and encourages participation. While consequences might seem harsh, maybe gentle reminders could help encourage more
voting. After all, everyone’s opinions are important for a fair judgment.

It’s the sigh at the beginning that gets me. I feel the same way. Everyone should be looking over the work of the class, and everyone will definitely see things that they recognize as awesome. But apparently some people can’t be bothered. Who wants to be involved? It’s easier to sleepwalk into dystopia.

That, my friends, is not the 4life attitude. We are all in ds106 together. Get out there and vote!

Tech Noir Connections

Tech Noir Connections logo

Wouldn’t Want to Hear This on the Radio! is an excellently done PSA that hints at a larger story. How would other course characters react to the announcement? Would some of them be forces behind the issue? Or – maybe it is something other than what it seems at first.

That points to a specific event. In Propaganda, we see a theme represented. It says something about society, and something about the individual character. We’ve seen other glimpses of Malone before, and every little piece helps us understand her better. Something to consider: If people were to tag their character posts with the character’s name, they could pull the posts together under blogURL/tag/charactername.

Femme Fatale Propaganda likewise addresses a societal issue, this time in conflict with the character. That conflict, put together with the Missing Person Alert teases a story. Have the FF Haters done something to Sapphria, or has she gone into hiding, to deal with them behind the scenes?

In response to some of the above, we can see Finn Reacting to Public Service Announcements. Here we have a character positioning himself among the propaganda and announcements. We should consider how this exercise form the seeds of stories. Characters could connect directly, or their stories could tangentially touch, generating a narrative mosaic.

We had many ideas for tech-noir shows already – see how that tagging works? – but these assignments are generating more, creating a fertile environment for creative connections. Where does the class want to go with this?

“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

Rustproofing

Yesterday’s Daily Create involved using one of the Photofunia effects to put text in rust. As usual, I did the most obvious thing and made a GIF from a verse of My My, Hey Hey. Maybe that’s only obvious to people of a certain demographic though. But since nothing exceeds like excess, I decided to do the whole song. I’m not sure if it was worth the effort. I like the idea in concept, but in practice it’s probably as tedious to watch as it was to make. A kinetic typography approach might have worked better, but definitely would have been a lot more work.

Photofunia has many interesting effects, some of which have shown up in Daily Creates before. What interests me is not so much the effects in themselves, but how they can be used as building blocks, and contribute to a bigger story. Not unlike our experiments in AI106 – we played with generative applications to make stuff, but where the course really succeeded was in what we made out of that stuff. They give you this but you make it that, to paraphrase a song of the past.

Scenes from the whale rapture

The other week one AI said that the internet was like “diving into a vast digital ocean where you can swim with majestic whales of knowledge or get caught in the undertow of clickbait and cat memes” and I asked another to visualize that metaphor. One of my colleagues was so enamored of the image that she asked it for a few more. This was the first of the collection that I saw:

It looks like there should be a story to go with the image. That might even be a good idea for a daily create. You could probably do that with any of them. Take this one:

I see a whale rapture while the planet bursts at its seams. It’s like an alternate version of Star Trek 4

And then there’s the cat riding the steampunk whale:

I wonder if he’s related to Dr. Ravioli? He looks like he might know everything too.

Mysteries abound. “Mwaa haa haa!”

a cartonn character laughing, Mwaa Haaa Haaa

I thought I’d bring together a few of the class projects. Some interesting things are going on. Mysteries abound.

Dr. Oblivion has some competition: https://cat-on-a-moped.com/uncategorized/final-video/ This was unexpected. Is Aggressive Technologies behind this? Is it connected to their lawyer’s threats? Is Dr. Oblivion the mole? So many questions…

Note the Doctor’s diabolic laughter embedded in the middle of Destiny’s great AI interview video. Is he giving us a warning, or inadvertently showing his hand? The whole video is worth a watch for the way it weaves a variety of viewpoints together.

We can also see Eisenhower, of the military-industrial complex fame, warn about Aggressive Technologies. Or has the president been hacked?

Some people used Gooey.ai to do the lip-syncing, like in this debate between the doctor and Isaiah Beacon. It is good when people note which tools they’re using, and even better when they link to them and explain the ins and outs of the process. I wonder what the competition between Isaiah Beacon University and Oblivion University would be like? Is there a connection between Dr. Forges and Isaiah Beacon? Hmmm….

This video of the hacker getting hacked is another one worth checking out. Note the various techniques used to keep it moving and hold our interest – different voices, the use of titles and clips, and the underlying sound effects. It builds on an earlier story and ends on an ominous note suggesting more to come, while still holding together as a complete story in itself.

“Happy surfing.”

For today’s Daily Create, we were to build on the classic “On the internet nobody knows you’re a dog” cartoon. I wondered how Dr. Oblivion would respond to the query:

Then, in my infinite laziness curiosity, I asked the same of ChatGPT. It gave me a bland list, so I asked it if it could express the ideas in humorous metaphors. That didn’t turn out much better, but it did suggest that the internet was like “diving into a vast digital ocean where you can swim with majestic whales of knowledge or get caught in the undertow of clickbait and cat memes.” The underwater cat concept had potential, so I asked Copilot to draw me a picture.

an underwater scene of whales swimming over a seabed og cats on computers

They both brought up cats. It occurred to me afterwards that cats are highly correlated with dogs as well as the web, so maybe I should have expected that. Perhaps those cats also represent the digital overlords that the doctor warned us about.

“Turn around, bright eyes”

For yesterday’s Daily Create we were to make blackout poetry with content from a certain web site. I looked at it briefly and decided to use the Weird Old Book Finder instead, probably because I found the typography uninspiring. I searched WOBF for eclipse, skimmed a few titles and picked a random page from one. I unfortunately neglected to note the title. I highlighted some phrases that caught my eye and blacked out the rest. I saw the black void in the middle of the image and decided to drop an eclipse shot in there. In hindsight, I should have done something about the line at the top of the eclipse image, so I softened it a bit for the image above.

The TDC was appropriate for Eclipse Day, but even more so for me as I had traveled to the path of totality. I was under complete cloud cover and couldn’t see the event, but that’s okay because I was more interested in the environment and seeing/hearing how wildlife reacted. Here’s a short recording of the sounds of the area about an hour before the light went out:

I wanted to broadcast to ds106radio but my phone has been uncooperative. Maybe that’s okay because technology shouldn’t have been my focus in the moment. I can’t say the animals (deer, squirrels, chipmunks, birds) seemed any different than usual in the lead-in to the eclipse. As it started getting visibly darker, it got very quiet. It wasn’t a very quick process, but every time I blinked it was noticeably darker. I wouldn’t say it got night-time dark, but it was very close to it for a few minutes. There was no moon or stars behind the clouds for that slight dim light that happens at night, but there was dim light on the horizon. I thought heard the hoot of an owl, and definitely heard the howls of some coyotes. Also some cheers and fireworks from the crowd outside the woods. Then it started to get lighter, but not like a sunrise since the sun was mid-afternoon overhead. Quite the amazing experience. As it grew lighter there was a lot of bird chatter, like you might hear over the course of dawn but compressed into a few minutes. I’ve had worse Mondays.