Tag Archives: ds106

Day 49: discovering the connections

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Day 49’s assignment was: “Quantity over quality. Work with a lot of something. It could be dried grains from the kitchen, a jar of buttons you have in your closet or all your t-shirts.” 

I was both super behind on this assignment and yet also super ahead. Let me explain:

When I was on flickr about a month ago, I saw a photo someone had uploaded displaying their Facebook network connections. I thought it was a really interesting graph and that I would love to do one for my own network connections. I downloaded the program Gephi and using this fabulous tutorial, got to work.

About halfway through with messing with this, I got distracted by a side project and left the graph unfinished. Flashforward to Day 49’s project which I should have done 13 days ago (oops!). I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with this project, hence why I put it off for so long.

Then I remembered that I had my graph (filled with many, many connections!) half undone. I got back to work on it, using this other tutorial to help me color my different network sets.

The result:

 

Basically what I have here is 7 main groups in my network:

1. College Friends (Purple)

2. Family & their/our friends (Pink)

3. Friends from my American Contiki Tour (teal)

4. Friend from my NZ Contiki Tour (green)

5. Friends from my Australian Study Abroad Experience (Orange)

6. High School Friends (Light Blue)

7. Friends from the Camp in HS (dark blue)

plus a few randoms here and there whom do not have connections with any of my other friends.

 

I find it interesting to see a visual display of my friendships like this because the size of the node doesn’t always correspond to my real relationships with these people.

For example, two of my best friends from HS whom I talk on the phone with all the time and we hang out a lot, are just tiny specks on this graph. You can’t even see their names.

Also, a lot of the friends I made while doing those Contiki Tours have fairly large sized nodules. While I did make some pretty fabulous friends from these tours, I think the reason that they make such a big appearance on the graph is that I have a lot of pictures with/of them. So while some of these people I only hung out with them in person for 2-3 weeks, I might/do have more photos with them than I do with friends I have known for years.

However, the people with the largest nodes are definitely the people who I communicate the most with (or at least I do on facebook!)

Overall, I think it’s really cool what you can do in Gephi to chart your network connections. I’m curious to see how this all changes over time.

Day 57 & 54: The mailman will think I am crazy…

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Day 57’s assignment was “Use a disposable plastic bag to create something new today.” 

Now for an earlier assignment, Day 54, I made a drawing comprised entirely of dots.

I decided I wanted to mail this drawing off along with a letter I was sending to my friend Kayla. So for today’s assignment I decided to use part of a plastic bag from Target to decorate the outside of the envelope I was going to mail it all in.

 

 

I am sure the mailman will think I am insane.

 

Day 53: The smell of rain

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“Day 53: Make something in which the sense of smell is the essential component.”

Today should have been a day of baking cookies or making some other delectably delicious dessert.

But a quick roadtrip to Fredvegas took baking out of the picture.

It is impossible to capture smell in a photograph or a video… you can capture people’s reactions to smells, but that isn’t the same thing.

If you could have been with me when I took the photograph, you would have smelled the clean scent of rain in the air. The air smelled like damp earth and the promise of the spring to come. I wish there was a way to bottle that smell.

 

Day 46: New Glasses= A Whole New World

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Day 46: Face it. What can you do with a face- yours or someone else’s? This doesn’t have to be face painting; you could use food or something else to decorate it, or try modeling it into a new shape with hands or tape and documenting it. 

Running five days late on this I decided to be inspired by today’s events.

Got new glasses. How I feel: 


So nice to have glasses that are smudge and scratch free! 😀

Original Aladdin image taken from here. 

I added the hipster glasses (although my new glasses are definitely NOT hipster) in Pixlr.

Day 49: Art with Salt

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Day 49’s assignment was: “Be a minimalist today. Work with only white materials. Try working white on white for a real challenge.”

I was inspired by this post on 9gag and by this video to play around with salt today:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVDRCYs9L10&feature=player_embedded

This is the first time I’ve actually attempted to make anything with salt and for a background I used a black t-shirt (mistake: the material make it difficult to move the salt around without bouncing it all over the place!)

I decided to start of simple and then possibly work my way up to a masterpiece as the Joker salt image. One day in the future….

 

 

 

 

 

Day 52: Man drawn upside down

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Day 52’s assignment was: “Work upside down. Create something in such a way that you have to rotate it 180 degrees to display/see it when it is finished.”

I wasn’t sure what to make with this so I turned to the all powerful google. I found this interesting slideshow that explained how drawing upside down not only improves one’s observational skills, but also shifts brain activity from left side to right. Furthermore, it helps the artist see lines connecting to one another, not just the shape as a whole.

Although I don’t often draw things, I decided to give it a go. My first attempt was to re-create an image of a chair. The proportions were off when I turned it the right way round, so I decided to draw something a little easier.

Using the picture on Slide 11 as the basis for my drawing I got to work.

Definitely was more work to attempt to draw this upside down. The result wasn’t half bad (considering I rarely draw).

Day 51: Queen Taft!

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Day 51’s assignment was: “Make something that would not normally be considered cute and cuddly into something that is.”

Today was president’s day so I decided I wanted to have my project involve a president, preferably having him wear a tiara and tutu. Megan Mc suggested William H. Taft so I got to work.

I used Pixlr to add the tiara, then added the color in Picnik. I love the result!

 

 

I should have used a bigger picture; definitely will do it next time I make something like this! 😉

Day 48: House of Cards Challenge

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Day 48’s assignment was: How tall can you make something that can stand on its own?

First image I had in my head was to make a house of cards. I got to work and for about half an hour attempted to make it the tallest card house I could.

The first image came from here.

Day 38: Iced Troll

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Day 38’s assignment was “Work underwater. Fill up a large bowl, vase, or old fish tank with water and create something inside it.”

I’m wary of working with water ever since I drowned my camera during one of these 366 creativity project a month ago. Since it was freezing today I decided to reflect this in my project by making something that I actually would freeze.

I put a troll into a bucket of water and set it outside. I had this image that my project would be reminiscent on Han Solo frozen in carbonite.

 During the night the wind moved my troll around and the morning sun/ warmer temperature’s melted some of the ice. The result wasn’t exactly what I was expecting, but it is interesting. I think might redo this project another day, just so I could get better pictures/ more pictures of what I wanted.  Also, a problem with using trolls is that they always have a smile on their face; Winter sucks! The troll should be frowning!!