First things first, let me introduce you to a monster from my deep unconscious. It emerged this week on a request from the Gods of the Daily Create to ‘build a monster out of items in your kitchen and post of photo of it.’ Well, may I introduce Jobytopus:
He came alive to terrorise all potatoes in the kitchen and to allow me to photograph him in flagrante delicto with my new Camera+ App which I saw a dog use and hence have assumed it must be good – if it is good enough for the dog, it is good enough for a budding photographer who never wanted to be a photographer. Why not? I believe that it encourages living life for an audience rather than engage in the moment. But that is a story for another time. I am challenging my assumption on DS106 Headless 13 so I have started to build a Flickr photo stream – who would have thought it? Not this Headless Shrink, for sure.
He came to be created because I received my little Joby tripod for taking photos with my smartphone that morning. As soon as I saw the request for a kitchen monster I took him into the kitchen and started to create it. It took 5 minutes and it is the thing that has given me the most pleasure so far. It was like being a kid again. It resonated with something that Roger Hughes said in the video we were asked to watch this week:
Children have the kind of direct sensuous and complex relationship with the world around them [and] this is the lost paradise that art wants to give back to us as adults not as children.
It felt like I connected with the lost paradise of art as I created my monster. Of course, there is not telling about the quality of the output but Martha Burtis told us this week to:
Reflect critically about your own creations over the 6 months.
I love my Jobytopus and I will reflect critically on it over the next 6 months. meantime I chose to use it again on the next Daily create I chose to do this week. The task was to edit an existing video clip to include an unexpected object in the story.
I had heard about Onetruemedia from other DS106ers and although it was late in the day, I decided to give it a go. I felt it would count as an existing video as the site offers ready made video templates to drop your stuff into. How much fin was that to make? Well, I was on EST now. What is EST? Let’s ask Talky Tina:
It IS a timezone. It is a very cherished timezone for some ds106radio people and it is called the Eternal Sleepless Timezone
I get the feeling I am going to be on EST a lot in the next 6 months. How much fun can a person have whilst learning? The biggest challenge has been to stop creating and start reflecting. But critically reflecting on what we make, learning to evaluate the quality of what we produce as well as the fun quotient is an integral part of the DS106 process. It will be hard, it is very easy to get into making without reflecting.
To help me with this process, I have started an experiment. A private but open reflection space on Google sites. Let’s face it, who can ever find a Google site? I might as well be writing on parchment. I plan to do my weekly summaries there and use it as my rehearsal space. I need that.
Here is the video I made on Onetruemedia.
I had an exchange with Talky (as I now affectionately call her) on the Twitter and asked to be paid a bucket of heads for the video!
The least said about bucket of heads metaphors to learn about digital presence and storytelling the better. I did get a screenshot of the heads from another photo and then took the opportunity to pretty it up (sic?) in Gimp before sending to Talky. My evaluation is that it does not look too bad for a quick edit – but I know nothing yet about how to get photos to look right for different media. I just mess around and see if I like the result and this is not exactly Masters level.
I end this post with my final insight for this week. Animated gifs don’t have to be funny, one can create thoughtful gifs as well. I experimented with my first #thoughtgif earlier this week. I liked the concept so I decided to apply it to another daily create from this week. It asked us to make an impression: take a picture of an indentation. I made this:
As soon as I saw the daily create I thought about the footprints of Hua Chi and wanted to do something with that for this daily create. I also wanted to learn how to make animated gif from film without having to look at a tutorial. I wanted to run solo and get one done. I succeeded. I was not able to add the text I wanted on Gimp (I still struggle with layers – I wanted to add a top layer with text and who knows how to do that in Gimp). I am nothing if not determined when I get something in my headless head, and I wanted the text. I remembered that Google Plus allows you to add text to animated gifs when you upload. So, I added the text, downloaded it my computer again and then uploaded it again to Tumblr.
And this is only half way through the week, and just scratching the surface of all I am learning. I was annoyed at stepping out of daily creating to reflect today – but even this was a good reminder for me as an educator of how hard it is to stop and reflect when you want to keep acting in the world. My students struggle with pressing pause and today I had a reminder of why.
And suck it Tumblr – I found out how to get my posts to look like I want and embed my media where I want. I am not going to need to meet you up the stairs with Talky during the next 6 months. After that, I will go back to my WordPress blog because your editor truly sucks.
I too feel sad at times when I want company but have no friends or family around. Twitter is no different from the physical real. Sometimes those you know are busy doing something else that, in that moment, is more important to them than you are. The difference is that the nature of the technology is such that it can enhance feelings of loneliness as you can ‘see’ what those you know are doing. This would never be the case in the physical real. You do not get to see what those you know are doing when you are not with them. My advice as the headless shrink is to look at Twitter as if it were the physical real – get into the habit of not checking what others are doing unless they are sending resources for everyone. It is never good for loneliness to read other people’s private chats even the technology allow you to.
