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  • Week 5 Summary

    This week got interesting because of the snow on Tuesday. I used the day off to work on data science assignments. I had completed one daily create by that point and wasn’t super worried about being able to complete both. Wednesday was a bit of an off day for me, but I did find and eat food, as well as talk to friends. Thursday, I completed my second daily create and struggled with a coding assignment (this time in Java) until Friday, where I had a long choir rehearsal that was supposed to happen on Tuesday, but was postponed because of the snow. I watched the black mirror episode for the weekly assignment in the car on the way home and was unable to finish editing all the clips and adding audio by Friday at 11:59. Other people in the house were being loud anyway, which wasn’t great for focusing or being able to record a voice over. I was experiencing big personal struggles this week that I’ll hopefully not have to deal with again for a long time. I got home and slept for 11 hours and then finished the assignment on Saturday.

    Daily Creates: Origami and Moon Opera

    I couldn’t even be bothered to remove the white line at the top of the image because there was too much work to do.

    This is my Black Mirror Video Essay.

  • Week 4 Summary

    Well, that was hard. I can’t say I’ll be too keen on editing audio again after this week, but this is what I managed to do.
    Three daily creates: 4769, 4770, and 4771.

    Four audio assignments: Sound Effects Story, ds106 Radio Bumper, Coldplay in Chrome Music Lab, and Fake News.

    Things are getting rough as I have harder coding assignments in my other classes and tests and quizzes and projects. Work life balance is very interesting because I no longer have a roommate which results in me not talking to anyone for a week and then taking up an hour or more of someone’s time when I have 50 things to do by Friday. Good luck everyone I hope you’re coping better than me.

  • Week 3 Summary

    This week is beginning to become a blur, but I remember I did my daily creates earlier in the week and posted a comment on the ds106 site. I’m not sure if it was approved, but I tried anyway. I also received the joyous news that our assignments and summaries don’t have to strictly adhere to the “at least two paragraphs describing the story behind your art” on top of everything else you have to write rule. Still, I find myself completing the assignments and enjoying making or editing images but come to a standstill when it’s time to write about it on a website. Oh well, just 13 more weeks (including exam week), right?

    I did the daily creates for Sunday, Monday, and Wednesday, pictured below. I made the Australian flag and outline on Krita, found pictures of Busch Gardens on google, and made an anti-word cloud based on a page of the Hunger Games. The bird is meant to represent a mockingbird.

    For the three weekly assignments, I made Vibrant Parking Deck, Rain World Overseer Hologram, and Resistance Logo. This week was limited to design and visual assignments.

    I may or may not have forgotten about the Photoblitz for a while, but I still got it done in time. These were my prompts and my pictures.

    This class is still a bit stressful, but I’m starting to figure out how it works. Hopefully I will become less averse to writing in the coming weeks.

  • Rain World Overseer Hologram

    PSA Billboard Assignment for Week 3

    I got a little carried away on this one. Only two of our assignments have to be about our story this week, so I decided to make this one different. This is related to the game Rain World, which is a difficult game about being trapped in never ending cycles. This little blue creature on the bottom right is called an overseer. They are autonomous little robots that observe things and share information with each other. They are also able to produce holograms, like the one in the middle of the screen, in order to share information with living beings. The intelligent species on the planet that made the overseers are referred to as the ancients. This hologram is meant to represent the opposition some ancients had to the building of a giant iterator (supercomputer) about the size of mount Everest. This iterator (named Five Pebbles) is already built and completed by the time the game takes place. I made this all on Krita, using different brushes and filters to make the hologram and stone wall look correct. I used the Soft Light filter for much of the hologram. I read the wiki page about overseers to draw one better and learned some interesting things about them that I hadn’t noticed before.

  • Photoblitz (Dorm Edition)

    These were my photoblitz prompts. I took multiple photos but edited it down to one picture per prompt. I also included pictures of the time I started the assignment, and the time it ended.

    The first photo, 6:03 pm.

    Next, I had to find a manufactured item. This could technically be a lot of things, but I decided to use my flashlight. I was a little confused by the elements portion of the prompt, so I turned the flashlight on and also showed the keychain portion just in case.

    Next, I knew exactly what to do for three items, because I have three empty spice jars waiting around. There used to be four, but that one has a peppery seasoning in it now.

    The shadow was a little difficult to make, but I make a sort of rectangle shape by holding my coat above my head. I think the shadow would be hard to identify since it seems so boxy.

    There aren’t many edges in my room, but I did land on the edge of my table, and I think I managed to make it a bit artistic.

    Now for this one, why do you want to see my toes?

    This image could’ve also qualified for the three items prompt, but I decided to use it for the plastic object instead.

    This is a painting a previous roommate and I made. We followed a Bob Ross tutorial, and I like how it turned out. She used these trees to teach me how to paint them, what brush to use, and how colors can work together.

    In the end, it was 6:23 and my photoblitz was over.

  • Week 2 Summary

    I started off this week reading an email from Professor Bond about how our writing shouldn’t be academic but instead should be unique and include our voice. I started instantly freaking out because the only thing I’ve been good at all my life is academics and that just got erased from the program. Despite the stress and workload and the very difficult programming classes I’m taking this semester, I managed to do five daily creates this week: Number 4756, Number 4757, Number 4758, Number 4759, and Number 4760.

    🐰
    🐰
    🐰
    🌳
    🦊
    🦊
    🚦
    🛣️
    🚶‍♂️

    Three rabbits play
    Two foxes wait
    One person in the way

    I also frantically wrote a blog post about my character because I thought we were just supposed to fill out the google form. Those assignments are nasty, only telling us what is expected of us on the very last sentence. Thankfully, this is a character that’s been developing as a concept for a few years now, so I shouldn’t have too much to worry about in that regard.

    My three assignments of the week, Richmond at Night, You Are Safe, and Cyberpunk Trading Card Game, were completed, and while the assignments themselves didn’t take too long and weren’t exceptionally difficult, I can’t say the same about the writing. I read somewhere that we need two paragraphs alone describing the story behind the art. I’m sorry, but I’m not verbose. I can tell you all of that in five sentences or less and save you ten minutes.

    Lastly, I wrote my film review, which was actually supposed to be done last week, but I was unaware that it was even an assignment we were supposed to do. In fact, I think there are potentially two more assignments total that I was supposed to write blog posts about, but one of them got absorbed into my Week 1 Summary. I still do not know if I will get credit for it.

  • Matrix Film Review

    The Matrix is a late 90s movie that still carries some vibes from the 80s about a man who goes by both Neo and Thomas. He’s living a double life, which is an interesting prelude to the dichotomy between the two lives he lives in the matrix, everything he knows and has ever experienced, and the real world, where humans are fighting for survival. As Neo, he is a hacker always on the lookout for police. He breaks the rules and lives outside of the box society wants to put him in. Perhaps this is why he chose the red pill.

    The mind and body disconnect between the matrix and the real world is very interesting to me because PTSD can cause a disconnect where you may feel like you have no emotional issue with something, but the moment you experience it, you feel physically sick. In the matrix, the mind is inside the simulation, while the body stays in the real world. Interestingly enough, if something happens to your body in the matrix, it will happen in the real world as well. The brain is very powerful, and it can be very difficult to convince it that stimuli it is experiencing is fake. Another interesting parallel between The Matrix and PTSD are the dreams. Dreams that feel so real, you’re not sure whether or not it actually happened. It is common for PTSD sufferers to experience hyper realistic nightmares that make them question reality, and Neo had trouble distinguishing what had actually happened and what was a dream within the matrix. Perhaps being treated in the real world after escaping the matrix is similar to receiving treatment for PTSD and seeing the world for what it is, and not the dangers that could lie in it.

    As for tech noir, this film shows a very dystopian future but also includes hope. Hope that all this ruin, destruction, and harvesting would end if people worked together and believed they could succeed. It has very dark and disturbing scenes that would make some people skip ahead, but the story ends on a high note. Maybe you don’t have to be some superhero, maybe you just have to believe, and the brain will do the rest.

  • Meet the Main Character

    Zer0 (Z-0903) is a sentient robot in a futuristic, cyberpunk society. In this world, robots are used for labor, protection, and all sorts of things that would be dangerous or undesirable for humans. Unfortunately, in this world, we’ve reached a point of advancement where the robots and AI we create are capable of independent thought, though we continue to treat them like objects. Since the robots are legally classified as conscious, they receive salaries for the dangerous jobs they’re assigned to, but they’re paid significantly less than humans. “Why give them extra pay when they don’t need a place to sleep?” some have argued. Ironically, these robots do “sleep” at charging stations. They’re able to fully recharge overnight for free because the government knows how big of a loss it would be if their money-making expendables were to stop working.

    Zer0’s job is to be a meat shield for important people like CEOs and presidents. While unable to carry a weapon himself, his reflexes are fast enough that he’s able to stand in the way of an oncoming bullet or push someone away from danger. He’s capable of feeling emotions and expressing them through the blue LEDs on his “face” monitor, though most humans he encounters still refer to robots as the impersonal it/its. He’s not happy with the way he’s treated, but he keeps his head down and doesn’t complain. He only speaks when necessary on the job, and sometimes people take his silence to mean stupidity. One day, it pays off when he overhears information that would be devastating for his kind should it come to pass. He joins an underground resistance and informs them of what he’s heard, kicking off the plot of the story.

  • Week 1 Summary

    It’s been a week! This is the first class I’ve ever taken that’s been open internet. I can’t even remember any class I’ve taken that’s used social media. Needless to say, I was very lost and very confused until I had a meeting with my professor. Right now, my goals are to simply figure out more about this class and what’s expected of me. I fear whatever I make won’t be one cohesive story, although I’m lucky that I ended up with a cyberpunk/tech noir theme. Hopefully some friends can point me to free software I can use for this course.

    Using a lot of tutorial videos and links, I made a website through UMW and named it after myself (linked below). I also made a mastodon account but I’m already having trouble logging back in, so I cannot link my account at this time. I hope this semester goes well and happy creating!

    https://ds106.emilyhalferty.com/

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