getting back in the saddle for #ds106

Hi again!

After too long of a hiatus from blogging and making art, I am ready to commit again to #ds106. It helps that I am back in North America after 3 years of living overseas in South Korea. ^^

First assignment for 2016 and getting back : Create a cattle brand.

It is supposed to take 20 minutes or less, but of course I can never just settle on one idea. Luckily my friend Megan Mc, a fellow #ds106 alumnus was there to help me out!

I ended up using my initials for the design rather than my plan to stylize my twitter handle: Cali4beach with C4B…. couldn’t find a good combination of that I liked. Megan Mc said my brand reminded her of some of the ships in Star Wars. Not intentional, but that’s cool anyways.   #tdc148

I lied

Over the weekend I sent Megan Mc a contrite tweet about not posting for our KoreaUsa photo site.

I promised to make it up to her by posting one over the weekend….but I didn’t.

So Megan probably thinks I am like this:

I liedI LIED2

 

When I am really more like this:

arrested development

 

As Ron would say:

priorities

I just love this.

Day 62: Sarah Kay meets Sarah Kay

While I find it annoying that there are so many Sarahs running around in the world, I find it amusing that there is another Sarah Kay in the USA. (hey, it rhymes!)

People like to call me Sarah K to distinguish me from all the other Sarahs they know. Somehow this has evolved to my friends writing my name as Sarah Kay which is more fashionable than just the “K”.

So when Megan Mc sent this TED Talk to me, I was prepared for awesomeness since the speaker is named Sarah Kay after all.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0snNB1yS3IE&list=FL0vshux8uaBgRe-f3h4HyKg&index=2

I was blown away. I think Sarah Kay is a great poet (the speaker, not me; I am terrible at writing poetry) and I love how she makes every word count. She has a powerful and compelling voice, and I only hope that one day I could be 1/10 as engaging as her when I give presentations and talk to people.

I love the idea of having a poet “perform” the poem in order to convey the deeper meaning than a reader could get just by simply reading the words of a poem.

Watching this TED Talk reminded of something my playwriting teacher at UMW, Mark Scharf, told me in class once: “There’s nothing like seeing a performance live with the actors right in front of you.”**

This is exactly how I feel about spoken poetry because with the rate of how fast or slow the performer talks, the intonation they use, not to mention the hand gestures they make, affects how the audience reacts to a word, a line, or even the whole poem in itself.

Sarah Kay mentioned that one of her activities she often asks her students to do is to list 10 things that they know to be true. They aren’t supposed to think too hard about it. They should just write the first things that pop in their head.

Here is what I ended up with:

1) I am American.


2) I am a girl.


3) I like photography and singing.

I just love this.
4) I like being a foreigner in Korea sometimes. Makes me feel special, like a unicorn.


5) I hate being a foreigner in Korea sometimes. I don’t like the attention.

6) I want to be a writer, but I don’t know if I am trying hard enough.


7) The beach makes me so happy I could cry.

I love this movie
8 ) People who like winter are crazy!!


9) My tongue trips and stumbles over words much like my feet over anything on the ground.


10) I think hugs are the best thing in the world.

Although too much of this kind of hugging might kill you

I find it interesting that all of what I wrote started with “I” or at least had to deal with me, myself and I. I suppose that I find it a lot easier to find truth in what I believe about myself, than is for me to make statements about other people or the world.

I have asked 10 people now (and counting) to tell me 3 statements they believe to be true because not only is it a great conversation starter, but I am generally curious what other people would list.

The most recent person I asked was my friend Gigi. Her list of 3 things she knows is true:
1) The sky is blue.
2) The road is hard
3) The store has a glass window.

Her statements had nothing to do with herself, but rather the external world around her. As for the other people I have talked with, their statements tend to range from all about themselves [the narcissistic lot, haha] to the people who only talk about environmental things.

All in all, spoken poetry is a topic I want to explore more as a listener and maybe a poet myself.  I am happy my re-introduction to this kind of performance art came from such a talented person as Sarah Kay.

**I am paraphrasing Scharf’s words since he told my class this in 2008 so my memory of his exact words is a little on the fuzzy side.

What happens when you forget to make a Valentine for #ds106

The Heat Miser is gonna get ya!!

 

This year I had no idea what I wanted to make for Valentine’s Day, DS106 style.  I made my 2011 Superhero Valentine’s with the help of some of my funny roommates, and  I happened upon on the 2012 Romance Novel Valentine’s cards randomly while shopping.

But now 2013 in Korea, I couldn’t decide what to do.  I feel I have been a lot less creative while I’ve been living here; I haven’t converted anyone to the DS106 cult yet here :/

A few days ago, I was looking on Retronaut for ideas when I found this Valentine. I think it is hilarious because it  so weird!

Since I didn’t make anything for Valentine’s Day 2013 and  broke a 2 year tradition @__@, I know that the Heat Miser must be very unhappy. No….not just unhappy. He would be ANGRY.  What would the Heat Miser do in this situation?

Cook the Blondie! Haha.

PS: I am super impressed with Megan Mc’s 2013 Nerd Valentines! As always, she is rocking nerdom!

My favorite from the set:

I want to program a little robot to say this, haha. Megan rocks at life.

 

Day 294: Panorama of Gyeongbokgung Palace, Seoul

First time taking a Panorama with my phone. Not the best, but I love how the random man just showed up in my photo as he was walking by. It makes me laugh.

This photo is in response to Megan’s Koreausa challenge of City Skyline.

[photonav url=’/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/panorma-in-seoul1.jpg’]

 

I took this back in October, but took forever to post it because I thought it would be hard to find a Panorama display plugin. Turns out finding one took all of two seconds! @__@ Why did I wait so long? Le sigh.

The month of GO, GO, GO

The past month or so was a constant GO, GO, GO month.

By this I mean that every weekend, I was off doing something or going somewhere, and during the week I was swamped by teaching English, meeting people to do various things, and taking a Korean class.

But finally it is nearing the end of the semester and the end of my Korean class, which means I will a lot more free time on my hands.

I have been neglecting my blog/ flickr of late and I miss it. I miss doing art and writing blog posts only two people read (haha).

Somehow I have been sucked into a vicious cycle of posting a lot of #366creativityjournal projects all at once, and it’s terrible.

Nobody wants to look at 100 pictures at one time. Nobody wants to read 100 blogs post discussing life in Korea at one time.

Also, I think it is quite possibly Megan Mc has already disowned me because I haven’t posted anything for our Koreausa blog in ages. >.>

This weekend I vow to get my act together!

No. Excuses.

Day 224: Creepybear is waiting…

This is the story of Creepy Bear.

Once upon a time my friends Megan and Karen traveled to Kissimmee, Florida to play rugby.

Along the way they encountered a mystical claw machine. After several attempts Megan was successful in winning a light blue bear, dubbed “Creepy Bear” because of its blue body and mismatching furry & pink belly.

Megan was not quite sure she wanted to keep the so called Creepy Bear so he was passed around to the ruggers on the trip, who also thought the bear was scary!

And so the Creepy Bear game was created: Hide the creepy bear from someone (in their bag or in their apartment) in hopes that the person receiving the creepy bear does not find him and thus has to keep him until they get a chance to pass him on.

This game has gone on for two years now.

In this case, Karen hid Creepy Bear in Megan’s bag at the hotel. In the morning Megan opened her bag to discover Creepy Bear was waiting for her. Ahhh!

Thanks to Megan who made this awesomely creepy gif using the photos I took! 

New project! KoreaUsa Collaboration website

Ever since Megan Mc and I took DS106 in Spring 2011, we’ve become digital BFFS (and real life ones too!)

Megan MC

We are constantly challenging each other to be more innovative and to make more art. Continue reading

GAME ON: Rainbow Brite hits the big time

I’ve been meaning to post this for a while, but for some reason had gotten totally distracted and forgotten about it until now.

Every so often I check to see how people have been linked to my photos. One day I found that some of my Rainbow Brite photos had been linked to this online game. I was intrigued and decided to check it out. Continue reading