WE DID IT!!! The project is done, class is over, and we survived. This project was very fun to do but the grind never stops because I have another project due and a concert tomorrow.
The story is about an AI that has human memories downloaded into its software. This is all confusing and overwhelming at first, as it now has access to sensations and memories it was never built to experience. Even still, it quickly focuses on the joys of living. There’s parties and celebrations and elation, until it sees the darker side of humanity. Depression, poverty, pain, the other side of the proverbial coin. This is so distressing to the AI that scientists unplug it out of fear that its hardware would melt from processing. As the AI is turned off or unplugged, I equated it to dreaming, showing images of a brain sending signals and rapid eye movement or REM sleep. Through the dream, the AI can see that there’s good and bad to humanity, but for all the hurt that exists, there’s someone else to help. Yeah, falling off a bike isn’t fun, but it gets us from place to place and lets us enjoy a nice breeze. Overall, the message I’m conveying is that even though we hurt, it is human to form connections and help each other.
Sam came up with the story idea. It reminded me of Touch by Daft Punk, and the animated music video was born from there. We used about every free stock video site we could find for clips, and I eventually ended up using CapCut to edit the thing. There were many features that let me do a lot with editing. I added captions and text and some transitions where I felt appropriate, however there probably could’ve been more transitions overall. We added stock sound effects for specific moments to make them stand out. I hope this gives you a good glimpse into humanity and makes you feel something.
Communication is such an important part of groupwork. Unfortunately, one of our group members left this week, so we have decided to pivot the direction of our project. It’s looking more like it’ll be a music video/animated music video following our characters and a storyline. I will be doing a lot of editing this week. Earlier, I posted a Progress Update, but that was before things changed. I think everything will work out if we plan accordingly!
Girl, this week has been too much. I had an event reschedule, ended up with three group projects, was double booked whenever I had things to do, and had people have to bail on meeting up with me. If you’re interested in listening to Mozart’s Requiem, I’m singing the entire thing on Sunday. I need to make my therapy appointments more frequent. Anyway, as per usual, I did three daily creates:
We had a zoom meeting to discuss our ideas for the project, and I decided to edit everything together with a (unknown to me at the time) double booked schedule. I don’t know why I did this, but we have a solid head start for the final project. My group members and I found stock images, video, music, sound effects, and took some pictures ourselves. We put everything together in a google drive folder and I edited it in OpenShot Video Editor. I put all the files together at specific times, making some images last longer or shorter, making sure everything fits in with the music, and trimming some audio and video to make everything fit. We wanted the trailer to be like an introduction to our characters, which would be expanded upon in the final project. To be honest I probably should’ve used Krita and CapCut and OpenShot Video Editor, but hey, we’ve got two weeks to work on that. We plan on writing out a script for the final project in our next zoom meeting. I very much appreciate that my group members found or made files for their characters/stories and sent them to me, because that would’ve been a bit of a nightmare to figure out. Thank you to listening to my ramblings, I’ll see you next week.
We had a lighter week this week and got to listen to some radio shows. I was only able to listen on Wednesday because of night classes, and I actually skipped part of a club meeting for it, but I enjoyed getting to talk about the process. I completed my Radio Show Review about The Opposites Show today, though I had been working on it since Wednesday. I also completed three daily creates this week.
Oh my goodness we finally made it! Don’t get me wrong, it was fun to think about what the news might look like in a futuristic cyberpunk world, but that was stressful. My groupmates were done with their sections of the radio show by about Wednesday, and I was panicking and scrambling to keep up with them. I hope I gave them enough time for editing. I think it’ll end up nice and I’m glad I worked with them. I made two daily creates this week and my portion of the radio show. I wrote it and recorded and edited it on Audacity, merging it with my intro. The entire script was spoken in one take, and errors were edited out.
And here is my pride and joy, along with its transcript. (keep in mind the transcript was originally written for me, so there may be grammar errors)
Introduction: Welcome to ds106 radio in Chicago. We have headlines, alerts, and forecast. Now back to your host for the weather, and as always, thank you for listening.
Transcript: It’s 8 am in Chicago today and roughly 10 sol for any listeners from the Mars colony. It looks like a sunny day today, only thing obstructing the sun right now being the smog, which is predicted to dissipate starting at roughly 12 pm today as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is powering on their atmospheric filtration systems they’ve set up all around the city. As a reminder, the national oceanic and atmospheric administration has issued the following warning: Please refrain from touching, moving, or attempting to enter the atmospheric filtration systems. Do not stand within 15 feet of any filtration device while active, especially if you are pregnant, elderly, or with small children. The mayor wishes to remind everyone that until the atmospheric filtration systems have been deactivated, no one is allowed on the roof of any building in the city of Chicago. The high for today will be a warm 68 degrees with a low of 51, another record breaker for this week. Our current Air Quality Index is up to 113 today, so respirators are not needed for outside activity. And do keep in mind this number is expected to go down in coming the hours after the filtration systems are activated.
Coming up next, police are investigating recent reports of robots traversing through abandoned subway tunnels. This behavior is considered emergent, as there has not been any evidence to suggest that the robots are communicating or have communicated with people about this. Emergent behavior in machines is when they act in a new way outside of their programming. This has become much more common since the singularity, leading scientists to believe robots are capable of much more than they let on. As for travelling underground, computer engineers believe this strange behavior may involve their pathfinding software, with one stating, “They may have made a calculation that using the old tunnels is faster than walking through crowds, so they may be testing that hypothesis.” It is of note that robots are typically spotted going underground in pairs, and this is not thought to be a dangerous behavior at this time. Even still, the police recommend that you do not follow them, as the tunnels are dangerous and cave ins could occur at any moment.
Now, as a follow up for the previous story from last week when a local high school was under an active shooter alert. The armed assailants who took the hostages did release the victims unharmed, but have yet to be found themselves. The current suspects are believed to attend this high school and will be tried as adults. The motivation for this crime is still unknown, and it is unknown if the hostages had any relation to the perpetrators. The police are still on a manhunt for the two suspects, and have taken potential accomplices in for questioning. This case is unusual because of the EMP attack, which prevented the recording of any evidence as the crime took place. Police Chief Owen Andrews stated, “It’s been a long time since we’ve had to rely on witness testimony, but we will get to the bottom of this and bring justice to the victims and their families.”
And last up on our list is a heartwarming story. ‘A cuddly pile of kittens are saved’! An anonymous donation of one million dollars to the One Tail At A Time adoption center has prevented the destruction of the East Wing, where stray cats are housed. Recently, the adoption center had put up statements on their website about financials, and the very real possibility that they would have to tear down or close off the east wing. Thanks to this kind soul, who is rumored to be singer and songwriter Casanova, One Tail at a Time will continue to rescue and house stray cats and rehabilitate them before putting them up for adoption. Staff hopes this mysterious donor steps forward so they can be thanked in person.
If you saw this assignment posted late, no you didn’t. I got sick and prioritized my computer science work (my major). Even still, I think I made some banger assignments this week. For example:
I enjoyed creating some of these, despite the stress of the week. Hopefully things will settle down more and hopefully my groupmates and I make an awesome radio show that we are proud of.
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.
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.
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!
