Category Archives: spring25bond

Talking Tech Noir, part deux

We’re working with a them of Tech Noir in ds106 this semester, and as I mentioned before, we can’t really expect the class to know what we’re talking about, so Jim and I recorded a half-hour discussion which hopefully brings some clarity. We discuss meanings, themes and history, where we are and where we may want to go.

We have a list of Tech Noir/Cyberpunk media to help people get familiar. Is there anything that should be added?

Tech Noir 106

Jim had talked about doing a Tech Noir themed course many years ago, and now we’re looking to revisit the idea. It feels appropriate to the times. I can’t expect everyone to be an aficionado of the genre though, so I’m thinking about ways to be expansive with it, to offer people more ways to connect. Incorporating cyberpunk is an obvious one. I also want to add Technopoly to bring a philosophical lens to the idea.
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“…a story, a tale we missed”

I was intrigued by Bryan Alexander’s book club proposal to read the Project 2025 document. Unfortunately I have too many summer projects competing for time and attention to participate meaningfully. But in the spirit of AI106 I have taken passages from the document and fed them to AI song generator Udio to make death metal tracks. Restoring Limits [Verse] Ruling class, they slash and tear, they take away our rights Centralize their power, far from American sights Supra-national treaties bind us, never let us be In the grip of bureaucrats, we lose our sovereignty [Chorus] Restoring limits, bring back the fight Accountability, let’s make it right Reclaiming Our Rights [Verse] Rulers climbing high, they can’t hear our cries Treaties bind our hands, as the Constitution dies Career pawns, unseen, they tighten the chains Power games they play, and we’re the ones who pay [Chorus] Slash through the lies, expose their deceit Tear down the walls, take back our streets No backing down, we’ll stand and we’ll fight United we’ll rise, reclaiming our rights The prompt for these was: Properly considered, restoring fiscal limits and constitutional accountability to the federal government is a continuation of restoring national sovereignty to the American people. In foreign affairs, global strategy, federal budgeting and policymaking, the same pattern emerges again and again. Ruling elites slash and tear at restrictions and accountability placed on them. They centralize power up and away from the American people: to supra-national treaties and organizations, to left-wing “experts,” to sight-unseen all-or-nothing legislating, to the unelected career bureaucrats of the Administrative State, heavy metal, death metal, I’m not actually a death metal aficionado so I can’t give it a proper musical or lyrical critique. My guess is the site is mapping words and phrases to a statistical model of death metal lyrics to come up with the song, so I’m not surprised that “slash and tear” made it through. I think the songs get at a sense of the passage, while perhaps giving it more extreme coloration. Challenge the Power [Verse] Restore our thinking to thrive Establish truth, let it revive No more interests’ clash, we’ll drive Strength in analysis, we’ll arrive [Chorus] Challenge the power, break the flood Independent minds, through the blood Challenge the power, stand and fight Free the thought, into the night Revive the Mind [Verse] Restore the mind, eradicate the lie Build a fortress, let the truth arise Break the chains that bind, dismantle the guise Return to the essence, intelligence revived [Chorus] Through the fire, through the night Restore the truth, the guiding light Break through walls, shatter might In this battle, wisdom’s flight This prompt was: Restore DIE critical thinking. Establish mechanisms to restore analytic integrity and return to true intelligence-driven operations. The next Administration should eliminate the conflict of interest in the current customer-based model (in which the customer is always right) by enforcing time-tested procedures that guarantee independent analysis, even if it means challenging policymakers’ assumptions. The Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security’s leadership role should be expanded to include providing analytic top-line views and improve DIE transparency by highlighting diverging views., heavy metal, death metal, I was wondering how it would interpret DIE – as an acronym or the word die? But given the context maybe it didn’t know what to do with the word. Or maybe the whole passage just doesn’t compute. It looks like Udio picked up some words and ran off in its own direction. Torch of Integrity [Verse] The USAGM’s a story, a tale we missed, Of faith and hope in shadows kissed. A chance to shine, in world’s eyes wide, Lost in the dark, where ideals hide. [Chorus] Burn the torch of honest days, Journalistic light must blaze. Shadows of Promise [Verse] The promise was bright as the sun But shadows darken, and now it’s gone Unbiased truth we failed to keep A chance lost deep, in silence we weep [Chorus] Lost opportunity, our ideals are torn In the darkness, will we ever be reborn? The passage used here was: The USAGM is a story of a lost opportunity both to help restore the world’s confidence in the promise and ideals of America and to set a high mark for journalistic integrity and unbiased reporting. , heavy metal, gothic metal, These stayed a little more focused, probably because I only used one sentence as a prompt. So far, my intuitive feeling is that it is molding the inputs on a metal model. How would the character change if I made it dream pop or big band jazz? But I don’t think I want to go for an ironic tone here. A cut-up poetry approach might yield some interesting results. I could extract evocative or provocative phrases and put them together as prompts or use them as lyrics and see what the system does with them. None of this gives any insight into Project 2025 or its relevance to education, but it is something of a pseudo-creative outlet.

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.

Final Week Summary

I wanted to use my character, Rikaro, for this video, but it made no sense to appeal to Aggressive Technologies since he is against them. I’m glad I took this class, since it made me explore my creative side through video-making, which is a skill I will improve from now on when making YouTube uploads. This has been an amazing class, especially since it is the final one before graduation. Thanks for the amazing semester everyone!

The Final Week of DS106

As DS106 comes to an end I look back at my transformative experience. I learned how to use creative narrative techniques with digital tools to create compelling stories. I also deepened my understanding of narrative structures and audience engagement. The course felt like a collaborative environment where students from diverse backgrounds shared insights and learned from each other’s unique perspectives. This combination of creativity and technology equipped me and other students with valuable skills applicable in various professional and personal contexts, emphasizing the power of AI in storytelling.

To create the video below I used Blabberize.com – Make a Blabber! to make Leo Storm talk. For the audio I used Realistic Text to Speech converter & AI Voice generator (speechgen.io) to write the script of what Leo would say. Once the script was complete, I uploaded the file to Blabberize and let the software do its thing and what you see below is the finished product. In the video Leo responds to the two prompts: What is the best thing you saw in the course? and hat was the best thing you made in the course? He also explains why Aggressive Technologies should support DS106. I hope you enjoy the video! Until Next Time!

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Final Video Assignment + Weekly Summary

This class has been very fun. I have enjoyed being able to do research into the digital world. Going to the Digital Knowledge Center has been fun to do to learn more about the digital world. I will look to continue learning more as I feel there is still so much to learn. I liked how we we able to do an assignment like this as I was able to get more creative opposed to a boring test.

Spontaneous with a Purpose – DS106 Final Video and Reflections

So my final video went over 2 minutes, but it still stayed within the 2 minute range so hopefully Aggressive Technologies doesn’t kick me out of their conference.


My goal with this video was to purposely make it spontaneous and free flowing. I realized that the majority of my output in this class was meticulously planned and scripted out. For a reflection video such as this, I wanted to let all of my thoughts out in free flow, but this also made it difficult to keep it under 2 minutes as I’m a rambler.

What a crazy few months it has been. From our humble beginnings with setting up our blogs and writing film reviews, all the way to making collaborative radio shows and final projects that showcased all of the different technologies we worked with. This class has been an adventure that I would have never imagined back in January, and I’m grateful for all of the lessons and experiences I had.

Thank you to Professor Bond for steering us in the right direction every week without limiting our creative scopes. I hope to take the skills I learned to enhance my work in the future, as well as my daily life.