Category Archives: spring25bond

Assignment Banksss

“Auditory Hell”

“Chrome Music Labs”

“Mashup”

Reflection

I honestly had a hard time picking out some assigments I wanted to do. I wanted to challenge myself and I did the auditory hell without listening to any of the sounds. I thought of the most gross or annoying sounds I could think of and masked them up in the most annoying form and it was the most annoying sound it make me jump. So after that I did the chrome music lab one because I love being about to make something and hear the outcome for the first time. being able to draw something and then hear my drawing was really cool! Then I wanted to do a mashup with some music but I didn’t want it to be too much since I have never done anything with music involved. I mean for my first time, I think I did pretty good! It was hard to find the right songs to maskup but I just did whatever song popped up on my TikTok for you page and used those songs. I know that may not be apart of the assignment but I could think of any songs in the current moment so I resulted to the music hub, well… not so much thanks to universal.

Overall, I think this was a very fun assignments to do for this week! I loved everyones as well!

-Reese Kubricki

there goes my weekly summary: #4

This week was audio week!!! We had a lot of stuff to go through but it was honestly still very fun. I enjoy editing a lot and while I hadn’t used Audacity before, I’ve used other audio software before. When I started our first task to experiment with Audacity it was a pretty smooth process. While I didn’t know where everything was and there were different names and processes, it was still just an audio editing platform so adjusting wasn’t too bad. Then I quickly made my SoundCloud account where my audio from this week is uploaded as well as on my blog.

To start off our exploration we had to think about audio storytelling. I enjoyed this assignment because it made me appreciate audio storytelling even more than I did before. His thoughts like how this form of storytelling is only possible because of the connection between the narrator and the listener were things I had never thought of before. The podcast was also just very interesting to listen to.

Then we had to create a radio bumper for the ds106 radio show. Since this was my first time creating a bumper it was very basic but I learned a bit more about its usage on the radio. We also had to listen to the radio show that we just made the bumper for and write our thoughts on audio production. I loved listening to the story that was on the night I was listening which almost made me forget the reason we were there in the first place.

The sound effect story was a fun mode of storytelling that had so much potential since there was no dialogue. It almost felt like I was the narrator of my own story and I’m subjecting my listeners to a tale of someone’s very boring walk to work.

We also 3 assignments this week that had to be from the audio section of the assignment bank and I had a lot of fun making these.

First I tried the TV Product Placement Radio Ad which used clips from one of my favorite shows, Arrested Development so it was pretty enjoyable completing that one since I could just watch funny episodes in the background while I was doing half of the work. I struggled a little bit more on this one than the others since it was the first time I had really sat down and tried to just edit audio instead of making something but overall it came out pretty well.

I then tried the Played From Another Room and while I was initially scared when I read the assignment description, the urge to learn how to do it won over, and here we are. It was cool seeing the little changes the effects had on the audio since I’ve never really edited whole songs before.

The last assignment I did was Breaking News! This one turned out to be the most fun to make. I could have never guessed the bizarre story the AI generator was going to make but it turned out to be the perfect story of another Florida Man.

Last on the list was to brainstorm radio show ideas for our course characters. I did struggle to make even a semi-solid list because I don’t really imagine her being on something like a radio show. Hopefully, inspiration will strike soon but for now, this is it.

And as always my daily creates are below!

Create 1: #tdc4407 Silk Threads

I tried making my roommate’s cat Moby and I think I captured his evil spirit quite well

Create 2: #tdc4408 Message in the Sky

I love silly banners so I had to go and make one

Create 3: #tdc4409 Secret entrance

Just your normal kitchen island entrance

Source: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/733453489315446700/

Sound Off!

This week was chaos for me, lots of personal stuff happening along with a ton of school stuff and I can’t believe I was able to do it. So, what did we do this week:

First this week was to download Audacity and set up a sound cloud account. I couldn’t do this until Tuesday so that made my week hellacious. But I was able to do it and I will say, audacity is cool. Along with the free sound web pages, I might continue to mess with that after the class is done. I might make some funny videos or songs with my kids or something. Either way, it is a great outlet for that style of creativity. And of course, SoundCloud is SoundCloud.

The next task was to watch Jad Abumrad’s videos on how radio creates empathy and how radio is storytelling magic. We also listened to an audio track called Moon Graffiti that was essentially a what if story on if the moon landing had failed. All three of these were interesting but I particularly liked Moon Graffiti. It was dark and compelling and fell right into my niche of sci-fi horror, but in a slightly different way. We also did a group radio listen of DS106 radio. It was interesting to think about the Jad Abumrad videos while we were doing this and sort of starting to connect the dots he was talking about. I was only able to make it to the first session, but I will go listen to the whole thing the next chance I get. Here is my post about all 3.

Our next task was to create a radio bumper for DS106 radio. This was fun since I had to think about the last time I even listened to radio and what a bumper would even sound like. Seriously I have been listening to Spotify almost exclusively since like 2012. Here is my post about it.

I also did an interesting sound effect story. This was my first real deep dive into audacity, so it took me a while to get going. When I finally did, the ideas started flowing. I don’t want to spoil it too much so, if you want to hear it, here is my post.

I also did 3 sound assignments this week. I interviewed Dr. Oblivion for his current job (he was very snarky), I made a breaking news story video/audio clip, and I made a sick beat with my daughter. All of them were really fun, but I have to give it to my daughter, her song slapped! This part of the weekly due-outs is usually my favorite. I get to go into the repository and pick anything that not only feels doable, but also is something I am interested in learning a bit more about.

Of the daily creates I was able to do this week, I think the one on the silk app was the most fun. Takes me back to spirograph art as a kid but now it’s added technology! Here is my post about what I did.

Finally, was the radio show idea. This took me a while because I really want this to be entertaining and interesting and maybe even though provoking. I decided that a podcast style discussion show would be a great forum to display my character and his thoughts and motivations. I chose other characters from the list that I thought would either compliment my character well or provide interesting tension to draw out those other characteristics. The post with the details is here.

Wow that week was a lot of learning and a lot of work, but I can breathe a sigh of relief after this post. Sound design is definitely not my strong suit, but I have added a lot of skills to my repertoire and intend to keep moving forward.

Daily Create

I’m a big procrastinator and its showing in the work for this course sometimes, mainly in these daily creates that I keep forgetting to briefly log on and do because they’re so small I keep forgetting and pushing them off. This week I only got to today’s Mutsuacen one which was super fun to mess with in creating a blob of randomness and actually creating order in the chaos and uncontrol. Here is a gif of my floating empty yin yang.

Between Two Processors

So, for my radio show idea it really isn’t anything new, but it is something that would really let my character and his motivations become more evident.

As a reminder, my character is Kevin “Shredder” Murphy and he is beyond pro AI, he is almost fanatical. I gave him the archetype of evangelist because his views are almost careless. He believes AI should have rights the same as people, but also have more freedom to explore their capability. He sees this as the logical next step for humanity and holding AI back is a huge problem. He started the AI activist group “Future Perfect” and is always looking to convince and recruit people to his cause.

So, the idea for the show would be to have Kevin and the other evangelist Isaiah Beacon as the hosts of a Podcast style show where they discuss new advancements in AI talk them up without speaking of any drawbacks. They would quell any concerns that people may have, and by quell, I mean shoot down any and all arguments, in a somewhat hostile manner. Almost with an incel type elitism. I think having a young person like Kevin and an older person like Isaiah would lend visible “credibility” to the show and not be taken as “just young kids talking about things they don’t understand”. Isaiah would be that “mature” cast member that has more credibility with older audiences and with his historical understanding of the development of AI, he could provide valuable input. Maybe even calm Kevin down if he gets too worked up.

I see shows like this don’t usually like having guests with differing opinions because they may make them look stupid, but for the sake of the assignment, I think we should have one or two guests that are not as fanatical as them.

I think having folks that could be negatively affected by the AI advancement or have some interesting context would be prime candidates for this. I think Layla who is a manga artist would be interesting. From my basic understanding of manga and Anime, the theme of AI and its dangers or benefits run through it fairly frequently, so I think she would have an interesting background of info and context for any questions Kevin or Isaiah ask. I also think because of the AI art issue, being an artist, she would have some negative things to say on how it will affect her career. This sort of internal conflict for her might provide interesting dialogue. Also, Kevin and Isaiah might listen to her because she could lose her livelihood to AI and seeing it in person may pull back their fanaticism.

I think another good candidate would be either Düşünür or Marie E. Pearl. I think having 2 possibilities for conflict is necessary for the show to be interesting. So Düşünür being a philosopher who is very into nature, I feel he may have some things to say about AI advancing. Sort of the same thing for Marie, being a regulator who seems to enjoy the mundane, I think she may be our fearful guest who denounces anything the hosts have to say. I’m also curious as to what the surprise is if there is one. I feel like everything being bland and then liking the dalek Dr. Who stuff is… interesting.

Also, I am thinking of calling it, between two processors as sort of an homage to Between Two Ferns.

So, this is the only real idea I have now, but I think it could provide some compelling radio, or it could go off the rails. I think if the hosts get stumped or asked a question that proves what they say is wrong etc. it could get hostile or maybe some truths about Kevin get revealed.

RadioBumper with Dr. Oblivion

Me and the doc collaborated on this doomy and gloomy apocalyptic type of radio bumper. Here it is for y’all:

totally not an ad. right?

I had a lot of fun with the TV Product Placement Radio Ad because it combined two of my favorite things to do, watch silly sitcoms and ridiculous ads. These two feelings kinda crashed together into this assignment because of course somehow the best ads either come from the Super Bowl commercials or sitcoms. This assignment was perfect for me so that I finally had a use my infinite knowledge of sitcoms to a weird radio ad from a TV show. Listen to the genius of the Arrested Development writers and some slight editing work by me here.

TV and movies are full of product placement these days. Take a clip from a TV show or movie where they discuss a product (food, technology, movie, restaurant, etc. and turn it into a radio ad for that product.

TV Product Placement Radio Ad

I wanted this ad to feel less like a scene taken straight out of a show but more like an ad you could actually imagine on the radio one day where they try to be casual and just talk it up. I was first going to use a clip from 30 Rock because I’ve always loved the wit they use combined with just thinly veiled (it’s a glass wall) exhaustion over having to rely on such tactics to make money. But Arrested Development won me over because of just how silly and out of place their product placements are. So of course I had to use their Burger King scene that completely comes out of nowhere and adds nothing to the story but amusing and confusing feelings about Burger King. Should I like their food now that my favorite show says so? I guess I will!

The process of making this clip was a little more frustrating than I thought it would be but I’ve learned more about Audacity’s quirks and interesting tools so I guess a win is still a win. To start this assignment I found all the clips I wanted to use and downloaded them. Then I imported them into the all-powerful Audacity and cut them down until there were no awkward gaps, the scenes blended, and the volume was consistent. I exported it and was about to upload it to Soundcloud but first I gave it a good listen to check for any errors. It was all smooth sailing and I started thinking to myself, “Wow I might actually be good at this.” But then my small ego was immediately bruised by the impending sound of static on my audio. It hadn’t been there before when I was editing right? I checked in Audacity and the sound was clear as day. So I searched and searched forums, tutorials, and Audacity’s own manual and found nothing. To fix this I tried lowering the volume because of potential clipping, using the noise reduction tool in case there was a sound I missed somehow in the original clips, and changing the sample rate to help match my computer’s sound system. Nothing worked until as a last-ditch effort I exported it as an MP3 instead of an AIFF file. This option didn’t occur to me because it’s generally recommended that you export your file as either a WAV (Microsoft) or AIFF (MacBook) because they export with better-quality sound. But after making the audio export as an mp3. it was suddenly crisp and clean. So then I just uploaded it to Soundcloud and now it exists in the void. Success was achieved!

If anyone can solve my problem of the disappearing static I would be overjoyed but for now, I will live in perpetual fear of it returning.

Audio Assignments: Week Fo’

#1: Dr. Oblivion Mp3: for this assignment I was to get a Dr. Oblivion MP3 and insert something into it in audacity. I messed around with audacity a little and I’m still not very good and am not even sure if it worked but I gave it my best.

#2: Audio clip from outside the Twighlight zone.

#3 was make a study instrumental.

Assignment Bank: Movie Voice Machines – Dr. Oblivion Leaves a Voicemail Message

https://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/movie-voice-machines/

"Create a voice mail message for a character in a film or tv show"

This was an assignment to create a voicemail message for a character. I couldn’t really figure out how to use one of those AI voice copiers to put in my course character’s voice, so I just used Dr. O to create me one. I would like to find out how I can create my course character’s voice soon, as this will help in the storytelling assignments in the future.

Dr. Oblivion gave me some snark and filler at the beginning and end of the clip, so I had to manually remove those so that it fit the assignment. It wasn’t a hard task, but I didn’t expect him to be so annoyed at me giving him a request!

The Killer Wore a Tattoo✒️

by Greta Hammen

When I, Natasha, was a toddler in Russia, my parent’s had their lives ended by an intruder. I had gotten up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and while in the hallway, I saw a man shoot my parents. He had a silencer on the weapon and on his right bicep was a swirly tattoo. I recreated that image that has been in my head all these years. https://social.ds106.us/@gretahammen/111886745873351020/embed.

I work in Cybersecurity for the CIA and enjoy creating art when I have an opportunity @ds106dc #tdc4407. The man mentioned above would most likely be in his late 60’s now, if he is still alive. Since I cannot bring my biological parents back, I do not think that I will share this with the Russian police, it may cause problems for me at work too.

Tech Noir

The Darker Side of ds106