This might be a tad depressing, but Egypt is on a lot of people’s minds right now…
working on my poetry skills
Blackout Poetry
Monthly Archives: February 2011
Entre lo invisible y lo tangible, llegando a la homeostasis emocional
by: Gerardo Nigenda
I found this photo the other day which is part of a photo gallery of photos taken by blind photographers.
According to the website,
“Born in Oaxaca, Mexico, the 42-year-old Nigenda calls his images “Fotos cruzados,” or “intersecting photographs.” As he shoots, he stays aware of sounds, memories, and other sensations. Then he uses a Braille writer to punch texts expressing those the things he felt directly into the photo. The work invokes an elegant double blindness: Nigenda needs a sighted person to describe the photo, but the sighted rely on him to read the Braille. The title of this work translates roughly to: “Between the invisible and the tangible, reaching an emotional homeostasis.”
I love that he hand punched braille into the photo. Extremely inspiring that even though he’s blind, he can still create beautiful works of art! It also reminds me to be grateful for the fact that even though I wear glasses/contacts with somewhat strong prescription, I am able to see so much of the world. (:
5 Card Flickr Story
Five Card Story: Snowy
a ds106 story created by Cali4beach
flickr photo by ashleymeganlove
flickr photo by ravnclaw89
flickr photo by les.epinards
flickr photo by nessman
flickr photo by ravnclaw89
Today I got the phone call I’ve been dreading. Kyle was coming over in thirty minutes to pick up his cat.
OH SHIT! How am I going to tell him that Snowy ran away! CRAP!!
I decided I needed to make a cup of chamomile tea to calm myself down as I figured out what to say.
Suddenly, Jesus Jim Groom appeared before me in a razzle-dazzle color whirlwind.
“Be calm, my child” he said. “Bake Kyle some sugar cookies and all will be well.” Then Jesus Jim Groom disappeared in a puff of purple smoke.
Better get started on baking those cookies!
Survey the World- DS106 Radio Poster
As with most of the assignments I end up doing, they happen because I get distracted with my original idea with another idea, or a few more ideas. (ADD much? Or just inspired by greatness? O.o?)
So how did I end up making this poster for DS106 Radio?
DS106 Radio
Well it started with Patrick’s blog post about the assignment he created for creating your own album cover. Check it out for step by step details.
I loved the photo he ended up using because it’s the Santa Monica pier which I grew up near when I lived in California 🙂 and because of this I decided I should create my own album cover. I did the Wikipedia article randomizer to come up with the band name and after refreshing a few times (the article titles I first got were really bad. And I mean REALLY BAD) it came up with: Casper Jørgensen (Casper is a Danish professional racing cyclist FYI)
Then I used the random quote generator and ended up with the phrase: “Survey the World”
Now for the photo, I tried using what Patrick suggested for getting photos from Flickr, but I kept getting “All Rights Reserved” photos, so I headed to the Commons. The photo I ended up with wasn’t so random because I kind of scrolled through the photos, but I thought this was the funniest. Love that it’s part of an Australian war memorial and that the cat looks like it’s “surveying the world”
Now that I had my three ingredients for the album cover it was time for photoshopping. I was putting all of this together when I suddenly had a flash: Instead of putting Carl Jørgensen on this album cover, why not make a poster for DS106 radio? It would be more fitting for our class and all the radio lovers would go nuts for it.
So now instead of having another visual assignment under my belt, I have a design assignment done, woo woo! 🙂
Love Story (of sorts)
This all started with today’s assignment for the Daily Shoot:
“Power plugs are ubiquitous. Can you make a creative photo of such a common thing? #ds448”
It took me pretty much all day to figure out what I wanted to take a photo of because power plugs are so ordinary, I couldn’t think of any idea that wouldn’t look really trite. However, after looking a few photos that were already up I got an idea:
What if I took a photo of an Australian Plug trying to fit into an American outlet? American outlets always look so sad, so if I took a photo of something that couldn’t fit in the outlet, it would be even more sad.
Luckily I was at home for the Superbowl and was able to find my phone and charger that I used when I was studying abroad in Australia last year (funny note: my phone which has been off since mid-July still has a 1/2 battery life!)
I took a lot of photos of putting the Aussie plug into the American outlet, but this is the photo I liked the best.
Irreconcilable Differences
Then I was trying to think of something cool I could do with all the photos that I had left over from the shoot since some of them were kind of cool. Originally I was just going to do a complied screen shot, but then I noticed that all the image titles were numbers like: 2156.
I decided it would be funny if I made a song playlist poem for the photos, similar to what Colleen has done.
The poem turned out a tad more weird/creepy(?) than I thought it would be, but it was fun to have a different twist on the assignment!
Here is my masterpiece in all it’s glory (also check it out on my flickr gallery if you want)
The Lonely Gorilla ARG
Back in the Fall semester of 2009, Dr. Whalen’s class “New Media: The Virtual and the False” created it’s own alternate reality game called “The Lonely Gorilla.”
This video shows the highlights of the game, although it doesn’t even begin to show the amount of work, time and effort my classmates, Dr. Whalen and I had to put in this ARG to make it work.
The video is dedicated to Gavin and LeAnna who has inspired my roommate and I to create our own alternate reality game this semester as part of an independent study. (:
Just for those who care how the inspiration for this video came about:
Originally I decided that I wanted make a video for Assignment 3 for Ds106 because I thought it perfectly embodied what can happen because of Web 2.0. Also, “The Lonely Gorilla” was a totally kickass project and deserved a video documentary!!
However, I was obsessed with making the video the best it could be and it wasn’t going to get done by the time assignment 3 was due. So instead I did this for assignment 3 and saved my video project just for fun/ to get credit for creating my own assignment?
I ended up creating the video with One True Media. Since my video ended up being a little over 3 minutes long, I signed up for a month long subscription for about $4 in order to download it. But as I plan on making a few more videos on the site, I think it’s worth the money. The one problem I did have with One True Media is that because I had over 50 slides, it was kind of a hassle to go through all the slides and change any typo errors etc.
Cartoon Egypt(?) Vs. Real Life Egypt
On Wednesday I was flipping through “The Washington Post” when I stumbled across this comic strip for “Speed Bump” of his little kid asking his daddy to ride a mechanized camel in the middle of desert.
I thought it pretty funny, but there is such a contrast between this cartoon and what’s going on in Egypt right now with all the rioting/protesting against the government.
The juxtaposition between the two photos I thought was really interesting (if slightly blurry).
Egypt
What are your thoughts?
Day 1 of “The Daily Shoot”
Today’s theme for “The Daily Shoot” was “make a photograph that features repetition.”
I’m the VP of the UMW Photo Club and as such, am a photography nut so I really got into the photoshoot.
I ended up taking over thirty photos, but settling on eight to publish. I would like to thank my roomie Elena who owns a Pisocero set, my roomie Natalie’s mom who gave me gingerbread marshmallows and my last roomie Karen who lent me her S’mores. Also thanks to Megan Mc in this class(super helplful!) and Jabamba who provides an endless amount of amusement for me. 🙂
Now I’m off to do homework I should have done earlier!
Bow to the S'Mores