Category Archives: reviews

Listen!

I had the joy of listing to a few of the other group’s radio shows this week. I ended up missing class on Tuesday and caught the 2 shows that aired then. I was unable to make Wednesday’s broadcast. Ravioli Radio played Monday with another show. I was able to listen then too. I had an exceptional busy week with my kids, so I was unable to give the shows the attention they deserved.

I was able to catch bits and pieces of the shows. You could tell everyone put a lot of thought and work into their projects. Everyone is at a different level when it comes to computer skills. With that comes different strengths and weaknesses. I enjoyed the show, Pop Perceptive, that spoke about AI in pop culture movies. This included the Spider-Man movies and The Avengers movies. I love Spider-Man. They did a good job analyzing how AI was portrayed in different ways. Ravioli Radio had a commercial that had the same voice as Isaiah Beacon (I may have the name wrong) a tele-evangelist for AI. He was featured in Logic Pod. It was really fun to have those connect by accident. (I could be wrong the maker of the commercial only knows) It would be fun in the future to connect more of our characters in indirect ways.

Wonder Craft – Pitch by Lady Alice

Wondercraft AI

Hello everyone My name is Lady Alice Smythe.

I would like to introduce you to Wonder Craft. The following was made by the AI algorithm used by Wonder Craft. I gave it the information I wanted it to use in a disorganized manner. After reading I will show you what it had to work with. Enjoy!

Welcome to “AI Uses,” an exploration into the transformative capabilities of artificial intelligence in content creation. Whether you are a marketer looking to craft compelling promotional materials, an entrepreneur seeking to build your brand, or an educational content creator aiming to elevate e-learning experiences, AI offers a myriad of opportunities to revolutionize your approach. The advent of AI writing tools has empowered even the least creative among us, providing an avenue for expression and communication. Such tools are invaluable for busy individuals, saving time without compromising on quality. Acquiring an algorithm that can seamlessly craft blogs, novels, or podcasts—like the dynamic Wondercraft—can not only enhance productivity but also open revenue streams, as any content created can potentially generate income. Imagine the advantages as a marketing or advertising agency, where AI can assist in fabricating audio ads ripe with appeal, or a business using thought-leading podcasts to establish industry authority. Educational content creators can harness AI to produce compelling audio and video content, enriching the learning experience.

News and media publishers might find AI to be a strategic ally in broadening their audience, converting written articles into captivating audio narratives. Audiobook producers and authors can turn stories into immersive listening experiences, while digital writers and bloggers can transform their written content into engaging podcasts. For freelance audio editors and producers, AI tools offer advanced capabilities to craft high-quality podcasts and audiobooks. Corporate communications and human resource departments can leverage AI to enhance internal communications and training, and language learning platforms can create engaging audio materials to aid effective learning. Moreover, translators and localization agencies could utilize AI to streamline and scale their operations, offering multilingual content with ease. Brands and advertisers also stand to benefit, infusing their campaigns with innovation and engaging potential customers in novel ways.

With AI like Wonder Craft, starting a project is as simple as setting up a user ID and choosing your desired format—be it a blog, story, or podcast. It’s tailored for those who value efficiency and creativity, packaged within a user-friendly interface. In a world where user agreements are often skimmed, integrating terms that secure the proprietary rights to generated content can protect the interests of algorithm owners. Such provisions might even permit tapping into the lucrative potential of content monetization. As we navigate the digital landscape, AI tools emerge as instrumental allies, especially for those in the business of communication and storytelling. “AI Uses” invites you to consider the infinite possibilities that artificial intelligence brings to the table, heralding a new era of content creation accessible to the general public and professionals alike. Welcome to the future of creativity.

I think it explained the case beautifully of brining Wounder Craft into the fold of Aggressive Technologies owned assets. Here is a sample of the unorganized thoughts I gave it to work with.

The merits of using AI to write a blog, novel, or story for you. It can help people that are not creative. It can save time for busy people. Acquiring an algorithm that already does this is important. You could embed in the user agreement that you own any and everything you put into the program. If a person uses the program to make a blog, or book that makes money the company can collect. No one reads user agreements. You could encourage people to use the program to make business presentations or sales pitches. The owner of the algorithm could use it for corporate espionage. It would be in Aggressive technologies best interest to by Wonder Craft.

I also chose how many minutes I wanted it to take to read. There is also an audio option with different voices to choose from with variable reading speeds. These are all available to download. You only receive 4 free credits. After that you have to choose a plan to pay for more use. There is also an option to email and ask for help creating a custom plan for you. The more you are willing to pay the more options you have for voices and voice cloning. To produce the track, I had made with audio would be 3.4 credits. I hope you enjoyed this presentation and realize the merits of this new company.

Well Lady Alice made quite the compelling speech there. I emailed the company asking about student plans. There is a student discount code WONDERSCHOOL25 for 25% off monthly plan. I also have made a pod cast script using Wonder Craft and a short story I wrote for a different assignment. Pilot | Listen on wondercraft.ai and the assignment Hear it Here – and a Podcast? – HURKLE-DURKLING Thoughts for DS106 (hurkledurkling.com)

Lady Alice’s reaction to propaganda & PSA

The following are the privet thoughts of a fictional character in a fictional universe. The opinions expressed here are not to be confused with the author’s personal thoughts and opinions. Any similarities to real people are a coincidence.

Another day and more propaganda. Really another sinister poster trying to convince me to trust a computer? People are full of errors why would something they make be perfect? Well, I am sure the AI are smarter than most people and it would be doing them a favor to trust it.

I make a propaganda poster

Aggressive PSA – I make a video

That video plays perfectly into people’s fears for the future. It has to be the same person that created the poster I saw earlier. Both products were so clean and to the point. “Trust us we will lead you.” people are such sheep. Well, it will make it easier to do what I want in the end.

look another poster…we are so friendly let us help you! It is so funny what the weak will believe.

Propaganda & Debunking Misinformation📷:

lol that one was funny. Anyone that knows political history should know what that referenced. I wonder how many people got the warning in it or did everyone think it was just about helping? I want to say it is hard to believe it got past the sensors but not really people are dumb. Oh well you can’t fix stupid just rule over it.

A new video time to check this out.

aggressive technologies: propaganda

Wel well an intern made it in the video. I wonder what her online presents is like. I bet there is something I can use here. She could be an easy mark and another way in to get information. Aggressive Technologies admits it openly they are spying on you, and no one bats and eye. That’s still so funny to me “a force for good”. Who’s good? Well soon to be my good after I run the place. No one is going to be allowed to spy on me and control my life. Safety, convenience, and wellbeing my ass. Well, I guess not for the company ha ha ha. Well, I am aggressive because I care to take over. Not a bad commercial I am sure it will do its job for the company. But how to use it for my gain….

Video Essay – Stealth

The main assignment this week was to learn about film making by watching and reading some information. I Highly recommend the You Tube series “Every Frame a Painting”. I learned a lot and enjoyed them very much. After we did our learning, we had to take a clip of the movie and do a voice over of our critique of the scene.

I was looking at the list of movies on Wikipedia, we were supplied, and I realized I have seen almost all of them. I learned I do watch a lot of sci-fi. The movies easy to find I have seen. I couldn’t remember the exact ending of the movie Stealth or if I had seen it on video or in theaters. It was easy to find so I went with that one. I was not even halfway through when I realized why I didn’t remember the movie. I found it very boring. I tried applying everything I learned from watching the movie making videos. I was watching for camera angles, lighting, how the scene was cut etc. Still boring. I found a few decent scenes that I jotted the time stamp down for that could be more fun or interesting to talk about.

Now came time for the downloading of a scene. I quickly realized on Thursday that it would be easiest just to find a high-resolution scene already on the internet to work with. I didn’t find any of the ones that I thought would be fun to work with. I did find one that wasn’t all action with the CGI planes.

The scene gave enough to talk about to show I watched the film making videos and told a little story.

I couldn’t just download it. I signed up to try You Tube premium free for 30 days. Turns out you can only view it in YouTube. Alright time to research and find a way.

I found this video

So, then I learned there was no way to download the video. It is Friday at noon, and I have a mild fever and caught a cold. (at least it better not turn out to be the flu) There is no going to campus today to get help. (in case you don’t remember I own a house, have kids etc.) I do own a video camera of decent quality or there is my smart phone. Let’s be pirates! I downloaded a program with dubious origins and hoped for the best. (please don’t let it be virus ridden) I then paid for the programs. I already had Adobe Premier Rush, so I was golden.

I made the voice over and it isn’t even 2 pm yet. New problem, You Tube doesn’t like the movie clip, copy right infringement. Now to use a new platform for uploading. Vimeo for the win.

I am glad I got this done before I lost my voice. My throat hurts and I am coming down with something. This take will have to do. I spent the most time trying to get a clip to do the voice over on. Once I got the clip it was easy to do a voice over on it.

A few scenes I liked better are a meeting held on the ship over a game of scrabble that takes place about 30 minutes into the movie. Has a lot of foreshadowing happening. The camera angles and placement of characters is one of the best in the whole movie. The grounding of EDI at minute 46 is also interesting. At hour 1:16 you have what I call the blame game scene. it has the “bad guys” in shadow speaking over the phone blaming each other for what went wrong. It cuts back and forth to the two men on the phone in darkness trying to one up each other. I felt it made good use of editing during the argument of who can better take down whom.

While I found the movie to be predictable and slow my husband enjoyed the movie very much. The movie had a want to be Top Gun vibe and spent a lot of money on the CGI of the state-of-the-art planes (that are not real) I noticed the font used in the credits was the same used in the Spider-man movies starring Toby McGuire. I wanted to put all this into a recording but no voice. Now that I have found the programs to use doing it again wouldn’t be too difficult.

DS106 Radio Session

I was able to make it to the 1st night of group radio listening. I have listened to vintage radio shows before, so I did have an idea on what to expect. We listen to “Do androids dream of electric sheep” It was a great story. They made great use of the sounds to let you know where the characters were at any given point. They sounded different in the car then they did in a big empty space. There were footsteps and paper shuffling. I was unable to make it to the 2nd installment of the story and listened to it on my own. In the 2nd half of the story a famous painting is described and then the painting is used a reference to explain and describe the scene. The painting used was Edvard Munch “the Scream”. The music and sound effects did a great job of painting the scene as gritty and post-apocalyptic sci-fi.

On Wednesday we listened to 2 shorter programs. The first was “A Logic named Joe”. It was cartoonish and silly but with a sense urgency. It made use of cartoonish transition music. You got the idea that the characters were in quite a pickle but in a fun way. You could tell when they were on the phone with a person by the way they distorted the other voice slightly. At one point a kid is slapped and you just have to catch it with the sound effects since they don’t out right say it.

The other program was more serious in nature with less music. It was called “Report on the Barnhouse Effect”. Some ties the scenes faded into each other and other times there was transition music. The radar sound effect noise sounded like old school call waiting beeping. The sound effects were not silly like in Joe. They were much more serious. The music was simple and eerie chords. It really built suspense. Near the end a gun (I think they might have said pistol) was being fired and it was machine gun sounds. I laughed because the sound did not match what was described. (I grew up with a parent in the military and married a veteran of the armed forces) The sounds used really carried the story along providing information.

IS that a Cabbage? – Audio Reflection

When talking about the importance of sound I can’t help but think about sound stages where they produce the sound effects for movies. The sound of bones breaking is celery. The sound of head wounds? Cabbage stands in for the head. Their goal isn’t about making a realistic sound but in giving you the sensation that the sound creates for you. They give you what you think it should sound like not what it actually does sound like.

Moon Graffiti by The Truth Podcast tells an interesting story about what if the moon landing ended in failure. It relies heavily on what you think something should sound like during the moon scenes. I really like how they did the sound of the footprints on the moon. I heard the sound and instantly thought of the ripples in the sand at 6:15.

The way they did the audio of the astronauts speaking to each other tells you where they are without having to outright tell you. You can hear the scratchiness of the radio used for them to communicate. I love the camera sound effect at 6:41. You can hear the sound of the bulb charging. They drag the high pitch sound of the flash bulb charging to add to the suspense and eeriness of it all. You hear it again at 7:05 which bookends the picture sequence. You can just feel the dread in the air. They wonderfully stick to using tones and minimal music to create that sense of stillness and dread. At 8:11 you hear their footsteps and know they are walking. They set up the footstep sound at 6:15 so you will know what steps sound like on the moon. It moves the story along with having to have the characters announce everything they are doing. 11:56 appears to be when they start the time jump. They fade out the audio and make the music louder. At 12:05 you hear gasping, and you realize we are near the end of the astronauts’ oxygen. The program does a good job of letting you know that 2 hours have almost past in the story. You feel the moon rather than see the moon. Having to imagine it all puts you there more. It gives you more empathy to the characters.

Here Jad Abumrad explains his love of radio. More than that he talks about how radio connects you as the host to your audience. In some ways a radio show is like reading a book. The book has words describing sounds and you imagine them. With a good radio show they use the sound to paint the picture of what you should be seeing. like the footsteps on the moon. It is more than just a book on tape. A book on tape is still using words to describe sounds radio is more.

I couldn’t find the words to make a good segway into the next video. I love stories. They are magical, healing, teaching, warnings, sometimes living and breathing their own life. I love finding people that feel the same way. Stories are not a waste of time. There is a right place and right times for certain stories. I try to remember, when doing my projects for DS106, to ask myself “what is the story I want told here?”. Enjoy this last video clip.

Design Thoughts

I find layout and design easy. I just intuitively know when a page is balanced, what colors go together, what colors are painful to the eyes etc. I did not have to study color theory to understand color theory. When I took design at college when I was 18 it was an easy A. I saw a lot of my classmates struggle with somethings that I just knew. I grew up an Army brat. When the duty station was in Europe my parents took us to art museums. I started looking at fine art in kindergarten. I loved it. I think this early exposer to art is why somethings are just second nature to me.

We were assigned this week some videos on design. I enjoyed them very much. I got a look at what goes into making book jackets, movie posters, and a good title sequence. While I find it easy to lay out a drawing or painting picking the right type face is a different matter. Fonts are lovely little pieces of art that can convey meaning. In the title sequence for “Stranger Things” you just know it is the 80’s horror genre. They picked that font because it was on so many books in the 80’s. It conveyed a time period with the font style. Fonts can give you information just as well as the words written with it can.

The video for the curious

Have you ever noticed movie posters look similar to each other? I know I have noticed a few here and there that remind me of each other. But there is a code or theme to the colors used. White background red letters comedy. Yellow is usually an independent film. Blue with man running action thriller. These common threads lead back to highly successful movies that used those design elements in their poster advertisements. Movie poster art has its own history that it builds on. If it worked before then why change? I will include the video so you can fully curb your curiosity.

I also had the pleasure of watching an interview with Chip Kidd. He spoke about his work on making book jackets. He explained how the title of the book and the art of the book jacket need to come together to give the viewer a better understanding of what the book is about. The art on the jacket is more than just trying to catch the viewer’s eye. The cover needs to convey the type of story or theme of the story inside. It sets the tone of the words on the page. It gives the reader an idea of how they should interpret the words. A good book cover does more than just help sell the book.

Between the Lines: Chip Kidd – Alexander Street, a ProQuest Company

Between the Lines: Chip Kidd. . (2017).[Video/DVD] CreativeLive. Retrieved from https://video.alexanderstreet.com/watch/between-the-lines-chip-kidd.

Good design work makes use of negative space, color, font, and layout. When you look at something a common as an advertisement you are looking at graphic design. Art is everywhere.