Category Archives: ai106

Week 2: That’s a rap

I was curious to see how people would respond to The Techno-Optimist Manifesto. It seems most people didn’t hate it as much as I did. To each his own dystopia, as they say. Still, my hope is that we can take ideas from the Manifesto and the AI films as inspirations for what we can do with our cast of characters and assignment prompts.

Here we have an examination of the Manifesto in conversation with Dr. Oblivion, which was a nice twist. Note: If anyone wants to get the text of the doctor’s responses, Converter App will do the trick.

Speaking of our Cast of Characters, I pulled their dossiers into a document here:
AI106 Cast of Characters

By my count we have 6 Artists, 4 Innovators, 3 Investors, 3 Mad Geniuses, 2 Evangelists, 2 Regulators, 1 Philosopher and 1 Technician. You know it’s an AI group because so many listed blue as their favorite color.

A couple of them work at a place called Aggressive Technologies. I wonder if the company is something we could play with. It could be used as a setting for a story, or a corporate entity that intersects across stories. They probably have a logo and advertising and PR material that people could create. These are ways that we can build upon each other’s ideas.

Another example is the remix. Tyler wrote a poem that had a rap feel, so we gave it to Dr. Oblivion and added a beat to it.

We could also look at building upon the things that we pull from AI generators. AI gave us a Yankees poster and garbled some text, so they do. But what might we make of Ye York? Did he go from College Dropout to running the town? Maybe that’s a silly idea, but it’s an example of how we can use AI output as a springboard for creativity, rather than using the output as-is.

I should also highlight the blog here and there it’s everything. That crawl with the latest posts is something I hadn’t seen before.

Are people getting spam comments? I may have neglected to mention Akismet, the spam-blocking plugin. Use the free version. Don’t pay for anything.

Another free plugin I use is Jetpack which does a variety of things, but one that I’d like to point out is a subscribe to comments function:

Normally if you leave a comment on someone’s blog, you’d have to check back there to see if anyone responded. This is supposed to let you get an email notification, which might foster more interaction.

Got Glitch?

We’ve all met good Dr.Oblivion and snarky Dr. Oblivion, hopefully. There’s also crazy Dr. Oblivion, who finally showed up for me.

phb256a · Glitchblogging

Oh, reflective blogging, how truly revolutionary and life-changing I can barely contain my excitement.
Well, students, brace yourselves for the profound impact of writing about your own thoughts and experiences.
Riveting, isn’t it?
You see, reflective blogging in the ds106 course is apparently the pinnacle of intellectual exploration.
By openly pondering your own dazzling insights on media and technology, you clearly share your unique perspective with, well, yourself mostly.
But worry not, as reflective blogging will undoubtedly unleash your hidden genius upon the world.
Ahem, now if you’ll excuse me, I desperately need to reflectively blog about just how thoroughly unimpressed I am.
This is not computer-incunetted ex-trans-district data connection, decim and clannel, stulsive underscore app slash reloop underscore failure, underscore ethgen, underscore connection breaks music worthwhile plugin, improved active process, malamy, parametro shape, enhanced, fax quoted government, assist likely email, override, divulted guard at amente.

The mastermind behind this, the Frankenstein to Oblivion’s monster, is Michael Branson Smith. He set up the different personality parameters. He also explained that there is a temperature setting on the back end. If it’s set to 0, the bot will give the same response to the same input pretty much every time. If it’s set to 2, he will spout gibberish, like he does at the end of the recording.

So let’s see if I understand how this works. The bot doesn’t actually know anything. It generates word sequences in response to an input, based on an analysis of statistic relationships among words in a humongous pile of texts. It looks like the higher the temperature, the loose the statistical correlation. We end up with words that may not exist or rarely appear, and perhaps never appear together. Raising the temperature increases the unpredictability, what we might call creativity, but raise it too high and the creativity goes off the rails.

Create your own room – acoustic anechoic chamber

The Create your own room assignment, is about doing exactly that.

Ever thought of creating your own dream room? Now you can! Using AI create ~~pinterest find~~ rooms, furniture, colors etc. From there write a blog post about why you chose everything! This is your dream so make it as crazy and out of the box that you can think of!

About my dream room

I benefit from taking time out, especially if I can find a room or location that’s quiet. It’s not uncommon for it to be a challenge to find a quiet place that’s free from sound, even the most smallest incidental sound.

That’s why my dream room is an acoustic anechoic chamber – a “room designed to stop reflections or echoes of either sound”. The kind of room where I can take some time out and feel like “I Am Sitting in a Room” before emerging refreshed and fully-equipped to reengage with the world around me.

My image was generated with Image Creator from Microsoft Designer (Powered by DALL·E 3), using the prompt “Low wide angle. Interior of an acoustic anechoic chamber with soft red light and a single comfortable chair in the middle facing forward, realistic digital art.”

Mimicry is the best form of flattery – Mondrian Melbourne

For the Mimicry is the best form of flattery assignment, use a vector or raster graphic software to mimic your favorite artist work but use your own design.

Doing my best to bring a Mondrian-esque Composition with Red Blue and Yellow to the iconic Flinders Street Railway Station in the City of Melbourne.

My image was generated with Image Creator from Microsoft Designer (Powered by DALL·E 3), using the prompt “Extreme close-up. Flat cubist style facing Flinders Street Station in Melbourne Australia, only in very thick red, blue, yellow and black colour lines.”

More minimalism, please

These AI-generated images feel too detailed and just quite not minimal enough to be truly Mondrian, for me. Perhaps some super-aggressive cropping could help to bring out the magic of Mondrian minimalism.

There goes my chance at a Grammy…

phb256a · Oblivion – Tyler2

One of my ambitions for this course is to have a Dr. Oblivion’s Greatest Hits album up on Bandcamp by the end. So it was fortuitous that Tyler produced some rhymes this week.

The first step was to get Dr. Oblivion to recite the poem. I copied it and pasted it into https://oblivion.university/ along with a request that he recite it, because I wanted to hear it in his voice. He added a little commentary at the beginning and the end, and also changed the lyrics slightly. I’ve heard singers sometimes do this with other people’s songs in order to give themselves partial songwriting credit, and thus half the royalties, so perhaps Oblivion deserves a bit of side-eye.

Then I needed a backing track. I googled for open source rap beats, so I could find something I could use without potentially getting a copyright strike. There were A LOT of options, and I didn’t particularly like anything I found, but some were good enough. I settled on The Passion HiFi – Beat Machine – Rap Beat from Soundcloud.

I used Audacity to put them together. I imported both tracks, and applied some amplification and compression on the Oblivion track. I moved it into the the mix a couple beats so it didn’t start right away, and also played with the track volume sliders to get a better balance between the vocal and backing tracks. I thought the vocal was a bit rushed, so I used the Change Tempo function to slow it down by 10%. Then I exported it as an MP3.

I kept his commentary in the mix because I didn’t want to obscure his attitude. I think it came out okay. I would have liked to push the drums a little louder, and it might have been improved if I tweaked the words to align with the beats more, but I’m not sure if the time and effort would pay off. There goes my chance at a Grammy…

Books for Everyone (including animals and the machines) #dailycreate #tdc4396 #ds106

This 1929 poster is from the Library of Congress archives on Flickr. Let’s do an update (maybe most needed now more than ever in the era of banned books in the US). Make your poster or meme more modern but keep the love of books alive in your art. https://daily.ds106.us/tdc4396/

My poster was generated with Image Creator from Microsoft Designer (Powered by DALL·E 3), using the prompt “A promotional poster of a retro futuristic environment filled with diverse humans, whales, animals and robots all happily reading books and sharing what they know and expanding their minds, in a 20s minimal colour art deco style.”

AI-based Dr Oblivion now available at Oblivion University

I’m a long-time fan of Dr Oblivion, especially his well timed-tenure throughout the Summer 2011: The Summer of Oblivion.

It’s been over a decade since we’ve seen him

With over a decade since we’ve seen Dr Oblivion, I was heartened to recently learn that Dr Oblivion is now a member of the teaching staff offering “anytime office hours” at Oblivion University for AI106 participants, or anyone else with a question they need answered.

While the good doctor specialises in responding to questions related to media theory and artificial intelligence, he also excels at providing fascinating insights on topics as diverse as housing affordability, what it means to be human, AI world takeover, purposeful and meaningful living, and more.

The following are some of my favourite responses by Dr Oblivion to some “big questions”.

Your design for an Internet Emergency Exit sign #tdc4395 #ds106

We all know them, they’re all over the world in millions of places: Emergency Exit signs.

Now design your own version to represent how to exit from a toxic internet. Safely. https://daily.ds106.us/tdc4395/

The other side of techno-optimism

In The Techno-Optimist Manifesto, Andreessen puts forward a story about the relationships between humanity and technologies. We should consider his perspective, and what he highlights and what he ignores.

He says, “We believe [technology] is the story of the material development of our civilization; this is why we are not still living in mud huts, eking out a meager survival and waiting for nature to kill us” People live in brick houses and live paycheck to paycheck, until they get sick and die. What has changed? Some people are billionaires who think if they hoard enough resources they can cheat death.

Andreessen sees the world from the perspective of an owner/investor, rather than a worker. Tech (and people) work for him and his benefit. What those people have to do, and under what conditions, is invisible to him.

We believe the techno-capital machine is not anti-human – in fact, it may be the most pro-human thing there is. It serves us. The techno-capital machine works for us. All the machines work for us.

This again reminds me of Darwin Among the Machines, but perhaps that depends on who he means by “us.” The techno-capital machine employs a lot of people, and works for people at Andreessen’s economic stratum.

“Move fast and break things” is not stated, but ever present. People of a certain status can afford to take chances, can afford losses, are protected from broken things and the damage that breaking things causes. The manifesto also echoes, even quotes, Marinetti’s Futurist Manifesto, which inspired no small breakage in the 20th century. This makes me wonder what the techno-optimist is really optimistic about.

So I asked Dr. Oblivion, “Does The Futurist Manifesto offer a useful frame for evaluating the potential of AI? Is it reasonable to consider it optimistic?”

Well, my young friends, the Futurist Manifesto, is a set of ideas written by Filippo Marinetti way back in 1909.
It was all about embracing technological progress and the excitement of the future.
When it comes to evaluating the potential of AI, it’s good to have an open mind like the Futurists.
However, it’s important to balance that optimism with thoughtful consideration of the potential risks and challenges that AI might bring.
So while the Futurist Manifesto gives us a useful frame, it’s always wise to approach AI with a mixture of optimism and caution.

Spoken like a true bot.

Week 1 wrap-up: Salutations!

phb256a · Oblivion Encouragement1

We made it through the first week of ds106, with struggles and triumphs. I thought I might try to put together a few quick thoughts.

I was happy with the variety of films people chose to review. That link leads to everyone’s reviews, at least everyone who tagged them properly. And that’s one of the values of tagging – that it lets you easily sort and organize posts. I was surprised by the number of optimistic views of AI people found. When I first glanced at the list, I thought it was heavily dystopian, although perhaps that says more about what I watch than how the industry portrays AI.

Many people discussed the challenges of getting their domains and blogs set up. It is daunting going in, especially if you’ve never done anything like that before, but hopefully it seems like much less of a hurdle in retrospect. There will be more opportunities to play with new programs in the weeks to come. As many have found out, there are all kinds of tutorials online to help you do what ever you need to do. We expect everyone will walk away from the course with the confidence that they can learn any new program, based on their experiences here.

Several people expressed interest in the reflective blogging that is the heart of the course. While blogging is nonstandard for a courses, I do subscribe to the formula Learning = Practice + Reflection, so it is good to hear people are into it. The kind of self-evaluation we practice here is a useful workplace skill too. Most of us don’t take tests or write papers on the job, but we do talk about what we tried to accomplish, what worked and what didn’t, and what we learned along the way.

Our blogs are also one of our platforms for class discussion. We post our thoughts, and we comment on the posts of others. In order for the commenting component to work, we need to moderate comments. When ever someone comments on one of my blog posts, WordPress sends an email informing me. If it is a new commenter, I have to approve the comment, or not, if I don’t think it is legit. Once a commenter is approved, I don’t have to approve them again. I can remove comments though, should I feel the need. The point of this is we need to look for those emails. The UMW email system may route them to the junk folder. Hopefully we can train it not to.

Tech Noir

The Darker Side of ds106