Category Archives: spring25bond

PSA Evil Bricks!

On Tuesday the 30th of January I was the victim of an evil brick. I tripped walking to my car after class just before 7:30pm walking to my car. It hurt me. I Want to bring awareness to the issue of good bricks turning to a life of crime and violence. I chose to make a billboard Public Service Announcement to help spread the word.

Bricks are everywhere! As humans expand their habitat, we also expand the habitat of bricks. With age comes the increased risk of bricks becoming evil. Young bricks have an increased risk when installed incorrectly. We as humans can do better and be better.

I made this using Adobe illustrator, Adobe Firefly, Microsoft paint program (whatever comes with windows) and picture I found on the internet of Arrington Hall.

The brick path image needs to be cut down, but I have reached my limit on the use of my right hand. When I fell, I caught most of my weight on my right hand and left knee. I scraped my head on the bricks when I fell. I fell on the path in front of Arrington Hall on the path to the parking lot. I learned you can yell expletives, and no one will care on campus. I also learn I do not scream as I fall just yell in anger. My heavy backpack only served to destabilize me and smash my head to the ground. I luckily did not get a concussion. I think I fell because I was getting sick and did not get sick because of my fall. I am on antibiotics and under doctor’s orders to rest. I could not type at all Wednesday or Thursday due to the swelling in my hands.

This is my head close to 24 hours after the accident(above).

Be safe out there walking is dangerous!

My Latest Story… BUT With No Words!!!

One the assignments that we got to do this week was to create a sound effect story. This means that we had to create a short (less than 90 seconds) sound clip that tells a story. I have my sound effect story uploaded to my SoundCloud and you can find it below. At times, I noticed that sometimes the sounds were a little difficult to make out. That is one thing that really interested me, because while telling a story is so easy with words, it becomes a lot more difficult when the only thing you can use is sounds because those sounds need to be so precise in order to try and convey the message you are trying to explain. The basic idea of my sound effect story was about a man who was driving down a slick, icy road and his car had spun out and he had crashed into a ditch. The clip starts off with wind howling to try and portray the idea that the person was moving fast and then a car crash sound comes in. Once that happens, the man walks on snow, which can be heard through the crunching snow sound clip, and then finds a cabin. He opens the door, which can once again be heard and then he starts a fire with the crackling in the background. He then begins to make himself a cup of tea which you can hear him pour it and then proceeds to take a shower because he is all dirty and cold from the walk to the cabin, which can also be heard at the end of the sound clip. That is as far as my story goes for right now and I liked the ending because it leaves a mysterious atmosphere around because you do not really know what happened to the man or if he got help. I enjoyed doing this assignment and it was cool to see how the different sounds could come together to make one final product that told a story.

My First Radio Bumper!

This week i got the chance to experiment with various sounds and the Audacity program. One of the first things that I did was create a radio bumper for the 106.1 radio station. I picked this station because it is in line with the DS106 tag line and also is a radio station that I always listened to growing up. I decided in order to create the radio bumper, I first needed to decide what kinds of sounds and music the radio would play, and so I decided on pop, rap, country, and the current top hits in the country. This was just like the actual radio station I used to listen to and it had a good overview of different songs to keep people interested. Like any radio station, I also decided to add the tag line “exclusive interviews” in my radio bumper to attract even more people. You can find the radio bumper that I created at the link below.

No Pictures? No Problem, We Got Sounds!

In this blog post, I am going to be discussing some thing that I learned from watching the two Radio Lab youtube videos along with some things that I picked up on while listening to the “Moon Graffiti” sounds clip on Soundcloud. All of these entertainment mediums gave me a lot more insight into the world of audio storytelling and really showed me that you can tell a story without having to have pictures or written words. Jad Abumrad talks about his version of storytelling, through the use of audio, is his “voice.” He states that there is something magical about a person going up on stage and use their voice to capture the audience and put them into a dream state. Now, he also states that since he is uncomfortable doing that, the sounds and clips that he makes, are his “voice” that allow the audience to feel the same sense of connection and euphoria. He claims that the way he makes sounds is almost an ancient way of making sounds in a modern day world where the technology allows you to do so many different things with various sounds. In the second video, he also claims that he a tv junkie meaning he loves sounds and images. He makes an example that images are not always necessary and that sometimes the lack of images can be good as well due to the increased imagination that comes with the lack of images and abundance of sounds. He says that that brings more empathy into the world because it creates a connection between two people, the person explaining the situation and the person who is listening and trying to create a image in their head.

I think that while listening to Moon Graffiti, everything that Abumrad was saying in his videos was becoming more and more true. Listening to this sound clip, it felt like I was really there with them. The different sounds and the various radio sounds that were happening really made the situation feel real and I think that if I was listening to this right before going to sleep, this is all I would dream about. There was a very eerie sound that was being played in the background after they had crashed on the moon and the sound of the narrator immediately after definitely sounds a little on the darker, evil side. But I think that was the main purpose, to create an atmosphere that was eerie and unpredictable because this is a new situaiton that no one has ever really discussed or talked about before. The sounds used in this clip were picked perfectly and each sound fit perfectly with one another especially when they were layered over one another. Abumrad was saying that using sounds were his “voice” to tell a story and these sounds and voices in this clip are telling their own story just like Abumrad. Also, he states that the lack of images in storytelling sometimes opens up ones mind to more creative and imaginative ideas, and at the beginning of this clip when they were crashing, I was able to create an image in my head that really might have been what the crash may have looked like if it ever was too happen. Also, having the two astronauts converse with each other while that soft, spooky sound in the back is playing also gives a eerie atmosphere to the whole thing. Overall, i enjoyed getting my feet wet a little bit with audio storytelling and am interested to see how the rest of this week goes!

The Art of Voice

audioreflection

As an avid true crime podcast listener, I am constantly listening to the radio. I find that it helps me multitask and be able to slow my brain down enough to function. Something about the usage of sound effects, descriptors, and subtle sounds in the background is entrancing. The videos that I watched from Jad Abumrad How Radio Creates Empathy and Digital Shamanism and Old-Fashioned, Newfangled Storytelling Magic really gives insight into how people on the radio create this effect and how I might go about doing this if I were to follow through with creating a podcast of my own like how I have been thinking for the last couple of years.

Abumrad says that it is important for good stories to put you in sort of a dream-like state. The story should be able to be portrayed through the sound waves through different techniques of voice and sound effects. It’s like they are actively painting a picture without surface or medium. The process behind podcasts and radio channels is very detailed oriented and able to grab and keep attention of listeners without being able to use visuals.

Moon Graffiti is an excellent portrayal of this. They were able to take me on an adventure through sounds. I was actually convinced at the end that I was taught history wrong for a second before I read the caption. The sound effects and vocal descriptors made it seem like I was right there with them with my radio dead, and stranded on the moon. The eerie music definitely helped with giving me a fright as well. I would definitely be panicking way more than they did but I guess when you are training to go to space you get familiar with the fact that you may die there.

Photo Blitz

I was given 20 minutes to do this list in photos. You can decide if I was successful or not.

Take a photo of (or something that represents) the moon.
Make a silhouette by aiming the camera into bright light.
Ssqueaks, honks, laughter, etc. Make a photo of a noise maker you hear.
Something commonly considered ugly and make it heart-breakingly beautiful.
Take a photo of an object that represents how old you feel.
An instrument that measures something
Forced perspective – make something small look big, or big look small.

click for another list.

Enjoy the stylized haze from a dirty camera lens.

My dog Grace makes lots of noises. Here she can be seen laughing at me while I attempt to do my work. Or maybe she was just yawning….

Are those a giant’s fingers?! Are they just tiny tissues? Is that a piece of glitter? What is going on there?

(fingers belong to a 9-year-old girl)

Moon doodle! (also, by the 9-year-old)

As I loaded this, I realized that now you all get to see my dusty ceiling light. This is the same room from the ceiling selfie in week one. This is for the silhouette in front of the light photo.

Tape measure showing 6 inches. You may have noticed the couch is blue.

I feel old, banged up, dusty, and yet useful like these books. I used them in a painting last year about this time.

I think my little dried flowers are pretty. My family not so much. Enjoy the little turtle hiding underneath it all.

Finished. I think it helps that my house is a mess right now. we are still trying to move back in since the water damage was fixed. It has items in odd places.

Four Seasons – Wyoming

I used Adobe firefly to create imagines of what Wyoming would look like in 4 seasons. Lady Alice is from a ranch in Wyoming, so I used that as the prompt.

I am assuming the AI used the northern bits of Wyoming near Jackson Hole or Yellowstone as reference. I have only been to the southern parts of Wyoming near I-80, Laramie, Rocksprings etc. I remember that area being browns most of the year and not so much green as the pictures. I have only been passing through and never stayed long. My internet search for actual pictures of Wyoming around Jackson Hole are more like these created ones in color.

Koala in a Knitted Hat – Part 2

To read Koala in knitted hat part one follow the link. Koala wearing a knitted hat – HURKLE-DURKLING Thoughts for DS106 (hurkledurkling.com)

After leaving Bing imagine creator running for hours (overnight) I came back to find more Koalas in knitted hats! It gave me four koalas and I chose one to enhance with their program.

Look it’s the same couch! and half of the Koala is gone…

This baby koala has different claws then the others. My 7 year old tells me these are all baby Koalas because their ears are spiky.

I decided to play with Koala 3 with what Bing had to offer.

I played with the lighting and gave it a boarder. Bing was really slow and there wasn’t much I could do without paying for more. It did have a lot of templates to turn the imagine into a card or announcement. My suggestion is to give it 12+ hours to generate the imagine.

Assignment Bank: colorize your world – Inverted Color Course Character

I used a simple website to invert the colors of an image of my course character. Here is the tool I used:
https://pinetools.com/invert-image-colors

I didn’t expect much out of a quick color inversion, but boy did it change the vibe of Hwei. Other than the alien-like glow that comes along with using color inversion, the emphasis on green and yellow hues is a complete overhaul of his

I’d argue that the glow on his body is actually a pretty cool visual element that can portray a transcendent being emitting light.

Here is a skin for Hwei in the original game League of Legends.

To be honest, this isn’t a great in-game skin. It’s quite lazy and it was only shipped out due to every character needing a skin upon release so that Riot Games (the company behind League) could profit from early release sales.
It feels forced to push him into a winter theme for his first skin to portray him as some sort of “ice prince”, when they could have taken this concept in a much more sophisticated manner accurate to his lore.

I feel as though my simple color inversion has produced a better idea than this lazy Disney rip-off. The light green emphasis symbolizes Hwei’s connection to organic beings and the laws of nature, which contrasts his dystopian cyborg outlook that he currently has. As an alter ego, maybe Hwei can be an individual seeking to lead the natural world, using his art to move the core emotions of every living being around him.

Doing this assignment has given me some ideas for revisions to his story, potentially highlighting the conflict between his ideologies of natural beings versus the virtually perfect AI prototypes.

Week 3 Summary

Phew, made it another week. My week was packed with multiple things, but the material for this course was pretty light. So far I learned a lot more in this week’s material and had more fun as well!

My absolute favorite activity of the week was the Photoblitz activity. I hope you all enjoy reading through it as much as I did creating it!

Next was the design reflections where I felt like I learned the most.

I unintentionally created a theme for this week’s assignments. Hopefully you can pick it up on this next assignment, demystifying AI.

Lastly, I have my two bank assignments.

Read my visual assignment about how Chuckles is both brave and strong.

And finally, I hope I didn’t sink your ship with all my work.

Tech Noir

The Darker Side of ds106