My participation in ds106 is getting a lot less linear as assignments come and go and I continue to grab hold of that which catches my interest. That’s not to say I’m not participating, far from it. I’m 2 days in to the Daily Shoot project and I’m thinking I’ll probably recap each week of photos here on the blog instead of a post every day since I’m using Flickr for the photo uploading. However the most recent madness of the past 2 days has been the birth of ds106.tv. Continue reading
The Wizard of Oz 2.0
I have a confession to make. I’ve been playing around with a few of the more popular “web 2.0″ (God I hate that term, but I digress) sites in an attempt to recreate a story. And it’s a lot of fun. But I think I can do better, with your help.
The Setup
Continue the story of the Wizard of Oz, and in doing so create a whole new story and world, by bringing the characters to life through Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, etc. The sky is the limit. Perhaps Auntie Em and Uncle Henry have a phone number, that you setup using Google Voice and record a voicemail message. The characters all talk to each other in realtime, commenting on Facebook, leaving notes, playing games together. Maybe Uncle Henry spends all day on FarmVille and Auntie Em doesn’t quite “get” Facebook and leaves inappropriate comments riddled with bad punctuation (Ah relatives.) A whole new story takes hold using modern day programs and tools in a new way.
Continue reading
Bag Of Gold
I’m not going to admit to how long this took to do, other than to say instead of getting it done last week when it would have been more relevant to ds106, I’m finally getting it out today. I wanted to try my hand at “kinetic typography” after seeing Rob Nyland use it for his 30 second introduction. The music is CC-licensed Orchestral Filmmusic. Mad respect to you Adobe After Effects people, seriously. It’s not perfect, but I still love every second of it.
ds106 Radio
The world’s craziest MOOC has a radio station, which makes this whole thing about ten more levels underground. For those of you wanting to rock it in your sidebar here are instructions for WordPress:
- Go to Appearance > Widgets (assuming your theme supports widgets)
- Drag a new text widget into your sidebar
- Paste the following code into the text section:
Radio ds106
add your soundcraft to #ds106 radio
(password: wejamecono)
Big ups to D’Arcy for the guts of the code. And if anyone knows how to parse the song list with a script let me know!
The Transient Web
More thoughts and discussions seem to be rising to the surface daily as a result of Gardner Campbell’s “No More Digital Facelifts” video. Brad Kozlek and D’Arcy Norman take issue with the requirement of ds106 that you self-host your blog and the idea that a “Personal Cyberinfrastructure” requires becoming your own sysadmin. Continue reading
Everything is amazing, and no one is happy!
I finally got a chance to sit down and watch Gardner Campbell’s “No Digital Facelifts” and it’s almost too much to digest in one thought or post. I imagine I’ll be pointing back to it often over the next several weeks as ideas come to me. As he talked about the idea of having this “bag of gold” and offering it to people who so quickly become skeptical, wondering what they would do with it, I was reminded of a great clip of the comedian Louis C.K. talking about how everything is amazing and no one is happy. Have you seen it?
How quickly we feel the world owes us something that previously never existed.
How many things have we taken for granted today alone? Want to know how I woke up this morning? I set an alarm using a 10 inch touchscreen device that’s also connected to the internet. That alarm could have been any song I wanted it to be and with a few taps it’s set, and I woke up. Pretty amazing no? But check the comments when things go wrong.
Grab that bag of gold and show me what you’re made of.
ds106, an introduction.
A storm has been brewing for over a month now, and as of yesterday Jim Groom opened up the skies and it’s raining. Alan Levine is already talking to the voices in his head and Jabiz Raisdana is straight up swimming in it. It is on.
Ladies and Gentlemen, allow me to introduce myself.
Love The Way You Lie
Individual frames were taken from the music video using MPEG Streamclip (1 frame per second). A batch process was created to crop out extra black space, then run a Guassian filter. The whole folder of images was dropped into a slideshow in iPhoto and set to the same song, but a piano rendition.
This is a song that describes tying someone to a bed and then setting the house on fire. I’d like to think I’ve made something beautiful out of it.
Welcome to the rabbit hole.
Video Color Frames
Each frame of a video is extracted, and then averaged to a single color. Then they are all placed left to right and top to bottom on a large canvas. Here’s my first attempt, the music video to Lady Gaga – Telephone. As a sidenote, music videos are great for short experiments involving video.
Averaging Concepts in Flickr
I’m a huge fan of Jason Salavon’s work which typically involves deconstructing groups of images into an average. I started working on this with video before the holidays and ran into some roadblocks with the number of images I was dealing with turning my final image into mud. Darcy Norman has done something similar with his 365 photo project from last year, but split them up by month. Using his tip to work with less images helped me form my concept a bit more. Continue reading
