In case you missed it, a plastic water bottle showed up in a Downton Abbey Season 5 promotional picture. Opinions on the appearance of the bottle ran from epic fail to clever publicity. But, the best coverage of the story came from the Today Show who collected lots of remixes of the photo, showing off the creative spirit of many Internet users. Might make a good Daily Create assignment…
“You’re amazing. You have this talent, and you don’t use it.”
“But…everyone takes photographs.”
“Sure they do. But not everyone takes a long series of photographs which illustrate a whole way of life.” She tapped off the ash. “It’s all there isn’t it? The hard work, the dedication, the bad weather, the humdrum, the triumphs, the pain…I’ve only looked through these pictures once, and in no sort of order, and I know what your life’s like. I know it intimately. Because that’s how you’ve photographed it. I know your life from the inside. I see what you’ve seen. I see the enthusiasm in those owners. I see their variety. I see what you owe to the stable lads. I see the worry of trainers, it’s everywhere. I see the laughter in jockeys, and the stoicism. I see what you’ve felt. I see what you’ve understood about people. I see people in a way I hadn’t before, because of what you’ve seen.”
From Reflex, Dick Francis
I used my some of my time over the break to reconnect with The Daily Create. I wrote a few poems, posted some photos and found myself somewhat obsessed with Robert Falcon Scott, the tragic Antarctic explorer. Maybe it’s the Polar Vortex.
In response to the New Year’s Day assignment, I wrote Scott’s new year’s resolution for January 1912, which was to reach the South Pole first and claim glory for England. He and his team were already on their way to the South Pole, unaware that Roald Amundsen had beaten them by nearly a month.
Then, I decided to try out my first historical selfie:
The tent in the back is the one left by Amundsen.
In doing some research, I discovered Scott and his crew made their own group selfie the day they reached the South Pole. They did so by attaching a string to the camera shutter:
I started with tdc6: Create an audio of two sounds not normally heard together. I created Chicken TV.
In honor of the first year, I made the gift I pictured: a short slide show of photos taken as part of the daily create along with one of my other audio projects. The prompt was to make an audio recording of using an everyday object as a musical instrument. I chose chickens and made the chicken drum circle.
Thanks to the people who work hard to make the daily create exist. You helped me be just a little bit more creative…to stop and listen and look at my world and create from the materials around me.
I am quickly approaching my 30th day of blogging every day. I want to continue to incorporate blogging in my daily routine. One strategy I’m considering is having a meme for each day, much like Should Be Reading, one of the book blogs I follow. MizB encourages others to share in the meme on their own blogs or in the comments.
Here’s what I’m thinking about:
So, from the Twitterverse today: an article identifying real and fake Hurricane Sandy photos. I got the link from one of my graduate students.
It’s a reminder of how easy it is to make and widely distribute photographs these days. Civil War photographer Mathew Brady was known to rearrange battle sites but he couldn’t do any post image editing and create a scene from whole cloth. And then have it shared instantaneously on social networks where there seems to be little thought about the veracity of the image.
What did you find in the Twitterverse today?
Today’s assignment was to merge two photos of contrasting places together. I decided to try to do it in one photo: I took the picture from the porch of my 19th century farmhouse that has a clear view of a neighborhood across the street with its 20th century houses.
One of today’s entries in The Daily Create from ds106. The assignment was to take a photo that visually represents a sound. (http://tdc.ds106.us/)
I joined ds106, the open online digital storytelling course, almost on a whim this week. I was vaguely familiar with it, having seen some of the projects that were created last semester. It just seemed like the jolt I needed to reacquaint myself with the creative potential of my computer, which lately seems more like a productivity tool.
I’ve done two of The Daily Create assignments, both related to audio. When I set about to to do the first one yesterday–combine two sounds that wouldn’t normally be heard together–I knew what I wanted to do, but it had been so long since I had done anything with audio that it took me some time to figure out what tools to use for capturing and editing my audio. I ended up using my flip camera and then importing it into GarageBand for the mix down called Chicken TV.
Today, I did break the rules a bit as I did not capture any new audio. I had so much excess from yesterday and I spent the whole day in a meeting so I pulled some different clips and applied some effects to create my answer to the assignment to make an audio recording using an everyday object as a musical instrument. Probably many people would not consider chickens as everyday objects but I feed and water them everyday so I’m counting them. And somehow, I think breaking the rules is all part of the ds106 experience. Plus, I’m having fun so I don’t really care. I have fulfilled the fundamental mission of The Daily Create: Make Art Dammit!
I’m also participating in the 365 Project, taking and uploading a picture every week. So far, my photos have been fairly pedestrian, documenting my life. But I’m about ready to start experimenting with the Retro Camera app I downloaded some time ago to do some post-photo processing. Here are 12 of them:
1. Barn at Sunset, 2. Chair Decoration, 3. Chandelier, 4. Insulator, 5. Cabbage, 6. Chicken and Bottles, 7. Major the Puppy, 8. Smokehouse, 9. Happy Snowman Globe, 10. Virginia Statue of Religious Freedom, 11. Flocked Wallpaper, 12. Dottie
A colleague posted a link to the TED 2008 video about the Worldwide Telescope. What a fabulous project!
Her video led me to the TED website. What an amazing collection of videos of smart people thinking about the issues of our world. I chose the technology topic and found this video of Peter Gabriel from TED 2006. I’ve been a Gabriel fan since his Genesis days, and he is the reason I’ve been an Amnesty International member for some 20 years. In this video, he describes his WITNESS project, which trains people to use digital cameras to document human rights abuses. The group also works to get these videos distributed and provides a hub where visitors can upload their own videos and view others. It’s a different take on how technology can change the world:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLuv7lsvWco]
These stories always push me towards those big life questions: why me? why here? My video camera is usually right beside me on the desk, not to capture torture, but to capture birds. What a bucolic life I lead. But, I can add my voice to those who say that this is wrong and who are finding ways to use these collaborative technologies to make it impossible to hide human rights abuses.
During the summer of 1998, my husband and I drove across the United State in our Tioga Arrow motor home, following in the footsteps of Lewis and Clark. Besides using the web to do a lot of our planning, we used technology to record the trip, too. We took a Macintosh PowerBook and a Sony Mavica camera with us. We used Pagemill to create webpages and then stopped by Kinko’s to upload them and email our friends. We felt very cutting edge.
Now, we are planning a trip to San Antonio and another to Vancouver. I’m using a wiki page to keep track of the itinerary, my delicious account for web resources, and Google Earth to plot the maps. Of course, I also made my flight and car reservations on the web, too, but that seems really old at this point.
I anticipate being able to find wireless widely available. I have become very fond of public libraries since many of them offer wireless. But it’s also currently available at my credit union, too! And, I’ve heard from camping friends, that many campgrounds are offering it just like hotels.
And, the publishing tools are so much easier, too, allowing us to take advantage of the wide spread access. We’ll use our flickr account to upload pictures and put digital video on YouTube or my iWeb site.
Just for fun…here’s video from our last road trip:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2irIT7uJnxc]
