Category Archives: VisualAssignments

Dream Homes and Digital Futures

The thought of what house I would buy without any financial restrictions has always been a thought in my mind, especially as I continue to progress into adulthood and have to think about fully living on my own with a job and a stable income. I’ve always dreamed of living in a house on the West Coast in the San Diego area, and immediately went to browse around the area. I’m also not a huge fan of the more boxy shaped modern houses and am more drawn to clean and minimalistic houses with some rustic aspects to tie it together. After a bit of searching, I found this house that looks perfect, listing at 4.5 million with 5 beds and 3 baths, and a setup and all the space one could need.

A connection to our class theme of Tech Noir I thought of was how the market of houses would look under a vastly developed technological society. Smart homes would be commonplace, but could be used to exert control over their inhabitants. There’s also concerns of privacy as technologies that makes a home “smart” could be hijacked by powerful corporations or government entities to monitor and manipulate people. Would every house look the same and be “smart homes” or could there be diversity present and how would that ratio look? How would a boundary between security and privacy look in a market of houses full of surveillance and AI-driven systems? Furthermore, large tech corporations could dominate the housing market, buying up properties to embed technology in them, then price out working-class residents to raise property value and essentially cut off any sense of community. Overall, my vision of the housing market in tech noir is a space governed by technology that shapes the living experience for its residents.

Stay Home – Living is Dangerous

Visual Assignment

Stay Home – Living is Dangerous. Create some sort of graphic. Design the overall graphic to convey some sort of feeling or theme, but then have text saying something completely contradictory to the theme or feeling. Sort of like one of those old anti-motivational posters, but with more design than a black box with a white frame.”

I wanted to do something simple and creepy. Using the description of the assignment to create the creep factor.

I had to search for a suitable image that went along with the theme of tech noir. This particular image was built with the idea of constant surveillance even if you can’t tell. Yet I opted to put a visible eye then a hidden one.

Pinterest Picks My Perfect Life

I love Pinterest, and I have always loved Pinterest. It’s a fun and relaxing website that allows me to curate what I would like my life to look like. I chose the “Your Dream Life” assignment because I’ve basically been doing this assignment in my free time for years.

The boards that I have on my Pinterest include hair, outfits, bedroom, pets, gym, and home. To start, my Pinterest board shows many beautiful styles of hair. In an ideal world, my hair would always be made up. Whether it’s straightened, curled, braided, or put up, I love it when my hair is done, and I wish I had more time to sit down and do it. For the outfits board, I have been struggling with my style lately. I’m having trouble choosing what style(s) I identify with. For the most part, I’ve been really into 2000s fashion, so my board is made up of a lot of that. I also love feminine fashion, so those pieces also show up on my board a lot. Moving on to my pets board, I have a cat and a dog at home, so I feel I already have the ideal life for pets. I will be happy if I have at least one pet. My gym board is the only one that doesn’t align with my perfect life. I have never been into fitness, so in a perfect world, I wouldn’t have to exercise to stay healthy. However, I know that’s unrealistic, so I included some easy, beginner exercises for my health and wellness. Finally, for my home board, I love lots of color and character, and that shows in my pins for homes. Victorian homes match my love for color and character really well, so I have always been drawn to them.

To determine what I wanted on each board, I had to sit down and envision all the aspects of my ideal life. For example, with my outfits board, I said I’ve been having trouble figuring out my style, so what I did to try and help find it was thinking about TV characters I’ve seen where I’ve thought “Oh that’s a cute outfit.” So I thought Cheyenne from Reba had some cute outfits and included her on my board. Another thing I did since I mentioned liking feminine outfits was to search for “2024/25 girly outfits” to stay up to date on trends while still matching the vibes that I like. For my house/bedroom, I went a different route. Where I live is an extension of my personality and interests. I like comedies that can be messy, and my love for playful and maximalist decorations reflects those interests. Another example is I’m a night owl, so I spend a lot of time in my bedroom. Therefore, I want it to be aesthetic, but I also want it to have things like my books and laptop in close quarters. Consequently, you’ll see a nightstand, dresser, bookshelf, or desk in many of my pins so that I can easily access my valuables.

This project was enjoyable for me because I enjoyed getting to craft my ideal life. Limited time might keep me from being able to do my hair every day, and limited funds may keep me from buying a house tomorrow, but crafting a more personalized style, going to the gym more, and decorating my room better are achievable goals, maybe now that I can see the finish lines for my goals they will be easier to achieve.

Collateral coincidences

I watched the Michael Mann neo-noir classic Collateral last night. I was thinking about the idea of noir characters, and how this film shows a great example of the Innocent Bystander, a cab driver, a man with a plan, whose life is turned upside down by a random fare.

This segment, starting at 1:23 of the video, struck me as a metaphor for customizing our blog spaces: Taking the standard ride, seeing how the controls work, closing the door to focus, and adding the personal touches. As Jim put it:

Figuring out how to design the space wherein you live, work, and learn remains crucial and remains at the core of the ds106 experience.

How’s that for an unexpected coincidence?

I also wanted to do a visual or design assignment using the film. I told myself I would go to the fifth page of assignments and do one I found there. I was taken with the initial cab ride scene with Jamie Foxx and Jada Pinkett Smith and thought it would be good for the Storytelling Collage assignment. Pinkett Smith does an impressive job of communicating with eyes and expressions, so I tried to capture some of that. Here are the shots I used:

She tells him how to do his job
He suggests a better route
She barely gives him attention as she responds. The plexiglas partition is a concrete symbol of the divide between them
But she thinks about it. Note that she’s no longer behind the partition.
Exterior view of the tangle of roadways
There’s a seriousness and depth about him that she finds attractive
Another exterior, would not be out of place in a tech noir film
There’s an openness and connection between them – closer together horizontally and also depth-wise. Note how the background is completely out of focus, All that matters is the tow of them.
Love this shot, with the noir feel of shadow and light and the symbolism of the green light ahead of him and the red light behind

And here is the collage:

an arrangement of shots from the movie Collateral, illustrating a conversation leading to personal connection between a cab driver and passenger

I was thinking of it in terms of a page from a graphic novel, so the layout is a little more formal than the average collage. I pondered cropping images, but the director and cinematographer had them framed so perfectly that I thought it better to use them as is. I did try to use the arrangement to show them coming closer together.

Fortunately for me the scene was on Youtube. I used yt-dlp to download the video. At first the command didn’t work, so I looked up some directions. They weren’t exactly what I needed, but they gave me the idea to put single quotes around the video URL, and that did the trick. I imported the video into iMovie and selected about twenty frames from the scene. Then I used PowerPoint as a canvas to arrange the stills, and exported the final arrangement as a JPG.

I think it works. I’m not sure if it says collage, but it conveys a version of the story. I’m not sure if the decision not to crop was the right one. I could have been more creative and expressive with design and arrangement otherwise, so perhaps I will consider revising it later. It was worthwhile though to give the scene a close reading and look at how the shots work internally and in combination.

Four seasons Australia

Australia ~~Canada~~ experiences four distinct seasons – spring, summer, fall (autumn), and winter – due to its geographical location and large landmass. Demonstrate these four seasons as outlined in the 4 seasons Canada visual assignment.

Seasonal variations

Had lots of fun slightly tweaking the prompt to try and elicit creatures and characters throughout each season.

A Toast for Colleague🥂:

by Greta Hammen

It was my pleasure to give a toast to my colleague, Natasha Sidorov, at a small office party we had at the CIA. They had a large shrimp platter, vegetables, cut fruit, champagne and a cake. Natasha earned a promotion of team leader in our Division 4 and she landed a big contract with client, Aggressive Technologies! I used my iPhone 14 Pro to record directly unto YouTube. Then I emailed it to myself to have the URL, to paste and embed here.

Toasting Natasha

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.

Iceberg Right Ahead!

Visual Assignment

Create a GIF

I decided to combine the two most crucial scenes from the movie Titanic. One was when they hit the iceberg, and the other when the ship sank. Both did not occur at the same exact time, but I thought it was interesting to sum it into one scene for my gif.

I used GIF Maker to create the gif and Adobe Stock is where I retrieved the full video from.

Chuckles is both Brave and Strong

Visual Assignment: Brave?

What is it to be Strong, to be Brave?

Being strong is facing setbacks and acknowledging life’s challenges, yet choosing to bounce back. Chuckles went through a rough childhood. Although, he prefers to keep personal information private, we do know that his childhood was not a happy one.

Being brave is engaging in personal growth and stepping out of your comfort zone to make life changes. Chuckles did this by becoming an architect and at nighttime focusing on making others laugh. He gave others what he never had, this is Chuckles being brave.