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Archive for the ‘ds106’ Category
Audio Weekly letter home 5
Tuesday, June 26th, 2012The Daily Creates…Not Quite Daily
Tuesday, June 26th, 2012At ds106, we are in the midst of two weeks of audio training…learning…creating…and in my case, FUMBLING!
I’ve been super busy with work, deadline looming. Too many extended days has kept me away from my daily participation in The Daily Creates. Truth be told, I did them pretty much all at once. I know that’s not the purpose behind them, but I vow to do better this week.
tdc 164—Take a picture of construction.
This Site Under Construction
I kinda feel like I copped out a little on this one. I pass many construction zones on my commute to work, but I have never been able to stop and take a pic. In my frantic attempt to complete my required number of Daily Creates this week, I tried to get creative on construction. First I thought of doing “cardstruction” but was unable to find a deck of cards to work with AND I noticed someone else had already used that idea. Wanting to be original, I did an internet search for sites under construction and I found this neat front page of a webpage under construction! I took a screenshot, converted to a jpeg, and now I have a picture of construction! Haha!
tdc166—Take a photo of something that makes you sick.
Jager!
So I’m thinking about things that make me sick for this challenge. And I’m wondering…why in the world would anyone want to photograph of something that makes them sick! Ha! When I think “sick”, I think literally getting sick, vomiting. Well, I vomit when I have the flu…or when I was pregnant, but I can’t really photograph THAT, so what else makes me sick? Too much drink! The truly foul offender, Goldschlager, is no longer allow in my home, because the shear sight or smell of it makes my stomach flip! Well, Jagermeister can be just as vulgar and I had some in my freezer. And it was pulled from the depths of its frozen home for a quick photo shoot…and then back to the freezer it went, without even cracking it open. Nothing special about the photography here, just point and shoot from an angle.
Dust Bunnies Living on the Edge
Another prime example of ds106, changing the way I look at things! I tried to take the challenge to heart and really look for something that I hadn’t noticed before. I started roaming my house, focusing on the rooms I spend the most time in: living room, kitchen, even the front porch. But I found a surprise in my bedroom! I changed my usual range of vision and looked high and low. Up high, near the peak of the cathedral ceiling, there is a ledge. I never go up there, it’s about 9 feet above the floor. For the same reason, I don’t display anything up there either, because then I’d have to climb up there to clean it. Well, I think I really should climb up there for the first time in 6 years. Apparently there is so much dust accumulating up there that even the dust bunnies are ready to commit Harry Carry. They are closing in on me, waiting to accost me in my sleep! I had to make some adjustment to the camera to capture the image. Without fiddling with the settings, the first few images didn’t show the fine details of dust. Zoom, adjust, and shoot, then I got it! Maybe I’ll have time to do some deep cleaning after my summer classes are over. This is a little embarrassing!
Evidence of Strange Activities at Camp
Monday, June 25th, 2012I think it’s probably obvious to anyone who is following camp and watching our weekly videos (particularly this week’s) that Alan and I are feeling the stress of directing Magic MacGuffin. I apologize that we aired our metaphorical dirty laundry today, but you can’t imagine how crazy it is to corral all the things that are involved in running camp this summer.
I feel like it’s time for me to start being more open about the things that are going on that concern me. I’ve mentioned several times in videos that I haven’t really seen Alan around camp for the last several weeks (since he returned from headquarters, actually). Despite attempting to set up meetings at various camp locales, I can never seem to pin him down.
Yesterday, I noticed his backpack on the ground next to the central campfire. I took a look for him, but couldn’t find him. On a whim, I dropped a digital recorder that I happened to have handy into the front pocket. It’s a pretty nifty device that transmits wirelessly back to my iPad. Unfortunately, I was only able to capture the first 45 seconds or so of his activity — presumably something happened at the end to interfere with the signal.
I’m putting this here because I need everyone’s help understanding what I’m hearing and determining what to do next. I’ve known Alan professionally for several years, and I was eager to direct camp with him this summer based on his stellar reputation as a teacher, technologist, and generally good guy. But, honestly, after the last few weeks (and seeing the evidence I’ve begun to undercover), I’m not sure what to think…
Early Demos from My New Fake Band
Monday, June 25th, 2012
In a few different broadcasts over the past year, I’ve messed around with some of the various filters and effects available with the free version of Nicecast and found its dials and visual interface both a lot of fun and helpful in the makeshift studios I’ve set up in my classrooms and house.
With a new one-man-band on the horizon, an extension of a #ds106 Visual Assignment, I turned to Nicecast and recorded a live session that yielded the following tracks. Ladies and gentlemen of Camp Magic Macguffin, I give you Dactyloceras lucina!
Not generally in my “wheelhouse of sound,” I was going after a certain, heavy, atmospheric texture that seemed appropriate for my randomly generated band name and album cover. “Goth soul,” Alan Levine calls it, which GNA Garcia clarifies as “rhythmic Emo-noise,” which is what I think I managed to create.
Dactyloceras lucina – Untitled Jam 1 by Bryanjack
The stupidity that keeps us from knowing any better by Bryanjack
A DJ is Born
Monday, June 25th, 2012TerrorVision Animated
Monday, June 25th, 2012One of the craziest and most memorable films of the 80s is the ultra-camp, TV alien invasion film TerrorVision (1986). I kind of think of it as the b-film alter ego of Videodrome. I wrote about TerrorVision back in 2008 when I had dreams of doing a series of posts about b-movies in the 80s and the rise of VCR culture—I never got around to it, surprise, surprise, and the post still stands as a monument to my blogging whimsy.
Anyway, I’ve been reading more and more Tumblr blogs because it seems like most of the interesting animated GIFs and assorted design work is happening in that space, for whatever reason.One of the sites I ran across that I really enjoy is the “read comics till your eyes bleed” blog that is a constant stream of images, animated gifs, etc. Given tumblr’s design it’s hard to know what’s original to the blog and what’s not (one of the immediate visual limitations of tumblr as an admitted newbie) but whether original or not it is a pretty interesting collection of media artifacts, it comes recommended. What pushed me to write this post, however, was the fact that there was actually an animated GIF from TerrorVision, which throughout the 90s and 200s has gained a pretty loyal cult fanbase with good reason—so bad it’s so good.
Telling a joke in another language
Monday, June 25th, 2012Telling a joke in general is difficult enough… but in another language thats the challenge. I decided to do Spanish because I’m terrible at the language and thought it would be fun. I found my joke on www.spanishpronto.com
The translation of “Hay Tres clases de personas”- There are three kinds of people, “las que saben contar y las que no.”- Those who know how to count, and those who don’t.
I played the song “Zungazungazungazunga” by YellowMan and found the laughing voice on www.freesound.org.
Instead of using Final Cut Pro, I used my own talents of recording everything myself through Sound Cloud. It doesn’t sound as smooth as The Sound Effect Story, but still well worth knowing how to use both.
I decided to do this joke because I am terrible/awful/embarrassingly bad at math and thought it was very suitable. I chose to do Spanish like I said earlier because my attempts to learn it in High School was a fail… so I figured why not try and learn a joke in the language I can hardly speak!
A walk through the Jungle- Sound Effect Story
Monday, June 25th, 2012The Sound Effect Story was a lot of fun and great way for fellow bloggers of Camp Magic MacGruffin to show of their creative side. I did the sounds of a thunderstorm in a tropical jungle. I adore the outdoors and always prefer to be outside rather then in. With summer time being dead in the middle, only means summer rain and heat. I love thunderstorms and being outside in the midst of a rain storm, there is probably nothing more refreshing. I have never been in any type of Jungle, especially during a Thunder Storm. I could just assume this is what it would sound like though.
I started off with birds chirping and a light rain to slowly build the mood. I slowly built up to a heavier rain with some distant lightening in the back. The howling monkeys and birds flying away signify that something heavy is about to come. All of sudden the mood gets more intense with the crackling of lightening. The mood becomes lighter after this as the rain lightens up into a soft pitter patter.
I found all of the sounds on www.freesounds.org I used a program called Final Cut Pro to put all the sounds together to make a story of what a tropical storm would sound like. I incorporated monkeys howling after every lightening strike to give it a more authentic feeling of actually being there. After uploading all the sounds into Final Cut Pro, I used a method called “Rubber Banding” where you can transition each noise smoothly by lowering the noise at a gentle slope.
I originally saved this file as a AIFF then converted to MP4 so it would be smaller to download and more durable on Sound Cloud.
Enjoy a brief moment through the Jungle!
RainForestProject1 © by katherinekd101
This is a screen shot of Final Cut Pro. This is the Sound Effect Story put together
Who I am in two minutes… ready go!
Monday, June 25th, 2012This is the first blog post I have done for Audio week, let me just say this was a challenge in itself. Thats what school is all about though! Trial and Error.
The goal is to describe your life in two minutes or any kind of stubborn, obstacles, challenges you have overcome in your life that defines who you are as a person now.
I never viewed myself as the athletic type in any context. Especially being on a team that involves everyones input or else the whole team fails together. I decided for some reason that I felt in my gut to join the Crew Team at Mary Washington. It was one of the most life changing experiences I have had and will probably ever have at College.
Rowing is physically and mentally demanding. It is extremely time consuming and your life starts to revolve around the sport. I learned that I can work with a team but it takes patience and drive. By the end of the semester after losing every single Regatta (basically a rowing competition) we made it to finals and made it in third place at our last one. This was the most rewarding feeling to know that a whole semester of blood, sweat, and tears (literally all three) paid off. I never felt so accomplished in my life or happier to be apart of a team, knowing that I contributed to the success.
I recorded myself via Sound Cloud. I clicked the “share” button above the recorded audio. I was then given a code and pasted it directly into the “HTML” box on my word press post!
Week 5 – Stepping out of Comfort Zone
Monday, June 25th, 2012
cc licensed ( BY NC ) flickr photo shared by LarimdaME
Since Week 5 in Camp MacGuffin is all about audio, we are sending audio messages home instead of letters:
This is not so different from leaving a message on an answering machine and I felt it was OK to improvise rather than read from a paper.
As I have said in the recording, Week 5 was about stepping out of comfort zone. For one of my Daily Creates I had to sing. I mean, I didn’t have to do it, but I did. I don’t want to repeat what I said in the recording, but the atmosphere in the Camp is such that singing felt quite OK. I will even go so far as to embed the recording right here:
The Daily Create 165 – Share a campfire song on audio. Sing of bang drums.
Two days later we had to draw. I am terrible at drawing and I said so:
The Daily Create 167 – Draw a person using only geometrical shapes
Today’s Daily Create wasn’t difficult. We took a closer look at where we spend a lot of free time and photographed something we had never noticed before.
The Daily Create 168
It is not that I don’t notice Leonardo, it is just that I don’t notice him enough. Placed behind my back while I work at my desktop, he has kept me company through all my web adventures.
So, that’s all folks. See you in Week 6.
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