Search Results for “quote with a new feeling”

Pods embed error: Pod not found

A World of Their/Our Own

View Assignment Details

New blog post: “ds106zone: You are About to Enter Another Dimension” bavatuesdays.com/ds106zone-you-… #ds106 #ds106 #soitbegins

— Jim Groom (@jimgroom) May 13, 2013

When Jim Groom lights up #ds106 you can feel the energy waves transmorgify. I for one am darned excited because I now get to be a humble open participant in ds106, and the 5 week may summer session of the #ds106zone already has that giddy feeling as people are riding the momentum.

When jim had first described the idea of re-writing/producing classic twilight Zone episodes with a modern slant, one that jumped out me was the last one from Season 1, A World Of His Own. Writer Gregory West apparently is so good at character creation, he can actually conjure them up in real peace just be describing them into his microphone. His wife, Victoria, is not pleased to see the blonde vixen Gregory creates to talk to, and alas, we see he undoes his creation by removing the tape and tossing it on the fire.

That is some creative power.

What I always liked about this episode is the fun play in the closing comments- usually Rod Serling is off in his own space with the commentary, but here he interacts with the characters, and we see how powerful Gregory West really is:

A Serling of His Own?

To make this GIF, I grabbed the second part of the series from YouTube, used pwnYouTube to save as MP4, and trimmed (MPEG StreamClip) the closing bit where Serling gets his dose. I save as a .mov since thats what PhotoShop CS5 can import into layers (using every 10th frame). I then went through the frames to remove as many non essential ones as needed, played with the timing. It’s a longer sequence than I normally do, but black and white videos are good fog GIFfing because you can reduce the color palette- I got it down to just `6 colors, so although 36 frames, its just a shade over 1 Mb.

I thought of this episode as maybe a recasting for the idea of moden digital identities. We create them ourselves, and maybe some people get good enough that their constructed personas are mistaken for real people. I cannot seem to find the info, but there was some case in New Zealand in the late 1990s, where some librarian won an internet award, and her whole persona turned out to be conjured up by some IT dude.

But it struck home at last week’s C|NET story about Google’s Schmidt: The Internet needs a delete button:

The Internet needs a delete button, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt said Monday.
Actions someone takes when young can haunt the person forever, Schmidt said, because the information will always be on the Internet. He used the example of a young person who committed a crime that could be expunged from his record when he’s an adult. But information about that crime could remain online, preventing the person from finding a job.

“In America, there’s a sense of fairness that’s culturally true for all of us,” Schmidt said. “The lack of a delete button on the Internet is a significant issue. There is a time when erasure is a right thing.”

Now if any entity has the ability to make content disappear, it is Google. They have numerous times made content “deleted” by removing it from the search results.

Introducing Googly West, who has a World of Its Own?

I know many people can nod with agreement about the sad case of created by Schmidt- but check this assumption at the door- “But information about that crime could remain online, preventing the person from finding a job.” This is not a technical issue but a policy one.

Now of course if said false news was out there about me, I might feel differently right?

No.

It is a weak argument to suggest that one false fact about me on the internet would prevent me from getting a job. And this is the thing about the internet- we have to accept that for the value of everything gained from free and open information, that there can be wrong information out there, maybe dangerous.

And that is why being an advocate of openness means that I am not a mere victim of someone else’s erroneous information, if I am actively maintaining and publishing my own stream of positive content. That is the heart fo Reclaiming Our Identity- not “taking it back” but Asserting it Ourselves. So if you are leaving your online tracks to be cast by Facebook/Google/Twitter et al, well you are not asserting.

But who am I to think I know more about the internet than the Executive Chairman of Google? I make no claim. But his claim that “we need a delete button” throws a stake in the heart of the concept of the open web, because it says then that someone. some entity some company say located in southern California, controls what is on or not on the internet. It says that someone gets to make a judgement call.

From my 20+ years of being online, that is not how the ecosystem works.

And we do not want to live in that Twilight Zone? It’s not Gregory West tossing our tapes on the fire or Eric Schmidt pressing a Big Red Button- that is one us to be actively doing/managing/asserting in out online activity.

Woah, what started as a GIF ended up in a rant. I’m eager to play some more with the Zone, but GIFs are low hanging fruit, it will get more interesting when we see more design riffs and mashups/remixes happen.

Get in the Zone!

View Assignment Details

Lyric Tag — ???

View Assignment Details

For this week, I needed to complete a couple of audio assignments from the repository.

When I saw Music Tag, I knew I had to do it. Really, I like anything with mixing music.

This is the assignment description:

Lyrics and songs are great ways to tell stories. Have you notice similar themes extend genres… lyrics overlapping. Your task is to create a story by using audio snippets from songs. The trick is you have to have the last word of your clip, be the same word that starts the next clip. Use at least 5 different songs, try to include different genres or decades.

I originally wanted to do something that was more than the typical story you hear in songs, but when I started doing that, the song clips were so short you couldn’t appreciate the songs at all. So I created a break-up story, basically.

The assignment gave a short tutorial on how to do this. It suggested using YouTube and recording them into Audacity. That’s not my thing.

Instead, I’m going to take you through what I did. I didn’t use YouTube videos, but I’m putting the links to the songs from YouTube so you can hear what songs I used.

The Short Version

This took the longest time. I started with a Taylor Swift song, “Breathe,” because one of the lines linked to another song I had been listening to recently, “Without You,” originally by David Guetta and Usher, but in this assignment, I used the Glee version.

But then I realized that I couldn’t start with the Taylor Swift song. First off, the part I wanted to use would have been so long, probably around 50 seconds, and this is supposed to be Music Tag!

Now this is when I started having to do some real work.

I went to lyrics sites of songs that I wanted to use, and I started matching up words so they didn’t sound strange. I put all the lyrics into a text document so I could lay out my story.

Then I pulled all the songs into a playlist in iTunes.

I used Audacity for this assignment because this was pretty basic editing.

I imported one song at a time, cut it down to just before the word or just in the middle in of the word I wanted to “play tag” with. Then I imported the next song until I had finished my story.

Here is the finished product

The list of songs in order with the lyrics used

Imagine Dragons, “It’s Time”

So this is what you meant
When you said that you were spent
And now…

Taylor Swift, “Breathe”

Now I don’t know what to be without you around
And we know it’s never simple, never easy
Never a clean break, no one here to save me
You’re the only thing I know like the back of my hand
And I can’t breathe, without

Glee Cast, “Without You”

Without you, without you
I am lost, I am vain
I will never be

Red, “Never Be The Same”

Be the same, I’m caught inside the memories, the promises,
Our yesterdays, when I belonged to you

Ellie Goulding, “Every Time You Go”

You said I’m arresting, you said I had heat
I really thought that we’d go further, the second time we meet
Cause I’m tired of trying to

Ra Ra Riot, “Can You Tell”

To wait, I think about you nightly
Oh, can you tell I’m losing sleep?
Oh, what am I supposed

The Script, “Breakeven”

Supposed to do when the best part of me was always you
And, what am I supposed to say when I’m all choked up and you’re okay
I’m falling

Katy Perry, “Wide Awake”

Falling from cloud nine, crashing from the high
I’m letting go tonight, yea, I’m

David Guetta feat. Sia, “Titanium”

I’m bulletproof, nothing to lose
Fire away, fire away
Ricochet, you take your aim, fire away, fire away
You shoot me down

La Roux, “Bulletproof”

Down, now I’ll never let you sweep me off my feet
This time baby, I’ll be bulletproof
This time baby, I’ll be bulletproof

So what’s the story?

I wanted to do the entire relationship, but I was already at 10 songs, so I thought I should stop…

So I went for the breakup. Breakups are messy.

I wanted to do the story of the ups and downs of a break up–for a girl especially.

Now, I’m a bit surprised that this worked out in a different way, too. The guy (male-lead songs) is whiny and the girl (female-lead songs) is getting over him. So I’m going to act like this was completely my idea and not a coincidence.

All the male singers are the guy’s perspective of the breakup: kind of upbeat in the beginning. The woman is confused and hurt, missing him. Then we go back to the guy, and he’s starting to struggle with being alone. But the girl is starting to get over him and isn’t feeling so down anymore. The guy is losing sleep over this and having trouble with how “okay” she is doing. She’s not perfect, though, still feeling like she’s “crashing from the high,” but she’s “letting go” finally. The last two songs are her basically saying she’s okay now and isn’t affected by him anymore.

I’m pretty happy with how this turned out. It was definitely the most fun to create this story and have it turn out so well. It flows, and that is what I wanted.

View Assignment Details

Open as in “for business”

View Assignment Details

Featured Image “open for business” cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo by @cogdog

Whether you are outraged, amused, or overwhelmed with ennui by the flurry of Instagram ToS sentiments, I agree with Gina Tripani:

Deeply happy users are questioning/debating their favorite tools’ Terms of Service, demanding their makers clarify the language. Iteration!

— Gina Trapani (@ginatrapani) December 19, 2012

I saw a few of these appear in my instagram feed:

Dear Users:
You are not our customers, you are the cattle we drive to market and auction off to the highest bidder. Enjoy your feed and keep producing the milk!

I thought it would be better to see a bit of e-motion with all those words; in honour of #GIFest, here is what I think Angry ToS panda would post to instagram:

screenshot of instgram with animated gif cows

Cows nodding, “Isn’t this great? We get all the food we want! For FREE!”

Okay, I know the metaphor is getting over used and there are already many analyses at what Instagram’s terms of service really means, from I’m Not The Product, But I Play One On The Internet to Instagram isn’t a Public Utility.

Already, the outrage has prompted Instagram to pipe their new ToS through a newspeak social media filter so it is basically the same but doesn’t sound so gross. Just like Facebook’s, of course.

Truth be told, I really just wanted to make a cool animated #GIFest based on this hilarious video @cogdog shared.

I contemplated using it to deride MOOCs, as is (apparently) my #DS106radio duty. Alas, I had originally started a post in response to the supreme abject harbinger’s inquiry: “why does anyone use instagram?”

So, why do I use Instagram? Initially, the short answer (for me) is that the app was fast and easy to use. There are elements of community that were unexpected and pleasant, but mostly it was the fastest way to go from seeing a cool thing, to getting a shot, cropping and posting to multiple locations.

The main decision boiled down to whether I wanted any kind of reuse (for myself or anyone else). If yes, I post to Flickr. If I don’t care then I use instagram. Usually, if starting in instagram, I would post to both. I would never, ever post my DSLR pics to instagram because if I have to go to all that trouble, I sure as hell am going to putting my photos somewhere useful, like Flickr.

On a rare occasion, I’ve wanted to use someone else’s instagram photo in a blog post. Even if they wanted to give me permission, sharing and reusing is really difficult. It may even be ToS violating, though IANAL so I’m not sure. When in doubt, I do what I think I should be able to do.

Using the app “share” button, it only links to a page, not the image itself. Using the web interface, right clicks on the image are disabled. There are workarounds. What you have to do, from your instagram profile page, is find the individual picture page, then Inspect Element (chrome), find the crazy url that ends with .jpg.









: How to embed a picture from Instagram

Compare that to how simple it is to just use Alan Levine‘s simply awesome cc attribution helper

Screenshot of Chrome cc attribution extension by Alan Levine

How to embed an image from Flickr

I already used Flickr’s old mobile app every day before they updated it so I’m not going to go on about how killer the new one is, except to say, it’s efficient and does what I want.

If you need more thoughtful analyses, I suggest you read Ma’ayan Plaut’s rationale for quitting instagram from yesterday and now today, why she stands by her decision. Now if you’re really feeling riled up, go sign the petition to make the Flickr API a National Historic Landmark.

View Assignment Details

Wind Plain, ruined city of the Gradient-Masters

View Assignment Details

Seriously. Someone needs to take the gradient tool away from me. Oh whoops, damage done, TOO LATE. I created this rendering of a ruined Earth-Master city from McKillip’s trilogy to complete my own Imaginary Places assignment.

First things first, here’s a list of all the stock images I used to create this image:

Main ruins – http://fav.me/d2k842p
Cairns – http://fav.me/d1gwgth
Walls – http://fav.me/dhizbr
Walls and boulders – http://fav.me/d162n6r
Sea and cliff background image – http://fav.me/d1non7z
Tower – http://fav.me/d5hrp55

Many, many thanks to all of them for sharing their images so dorks like me could slap ugly gradients on them in an attempt to create fanart. MOVING ON.

Technically, I kind of screwed up my own assignment here. This is kind of a mashup of three different places in McKillip’s world: King’s Mouth Plain and Wind Plain. Both are sites where the ruins of Earth-Master cities can be found, but they’re miles apart, and only King’s Mouth Plain is near the sea. That said, I really wanted to depict the dramatic image of the tumbled stone perched atop a cliff and the striking tower on Wind Plain that is so important to the end of the story. There were two descriptions of these places that always caught at my imagination while I was reading. The first was of Wind Plain:

It was a maze of broken columns, fallen walls, rooms without roofs, steps leading nowhere, arches shaken to the ground, all built of smooth, massive squares of brilliant stone all shades of red, green, gold, blue, grey, black, streaked and glittering with other colors melting through them… the one whole building in the city [was] a tower whose levels spiraled upward from a sprawling black base to a small, round, deep-blue chamber high at the top.

Riddle-Master Trilogy, pg. 40

The second was the first sight Raederle ever had of King’s Mouth Plain:

There was a stonework, enormous, puzzling, on a cliff not far from the city. It stood like some half-forgotten memory, or the fragments on a torn page of ancient, incomplete riddles. The stones she recognized, beautiful, massive, vivid with color. The structure itself, bigger than anything any man would have needed, had been shaken to the ground seemingy with as much ease as she would have shaken ripe apples out of a tree.

Riddle-Master Trilogy, pg. 248

I tried a few different methods to create the gorgeous, vivid stonework McKillip described, and honestly nothing quite achieved the effect I wanted. Part of that is simply my lack of practice with manipulating and combining images in Photoshop; it’s decidedly harder than it looks to do it well! The other part of it was trying to alter the color of each section of the ruin without losing any of the detail of the original image. I ended up creating layer masks for each section and colorizing them differently. At some point I decided to try screwing around with gradients just to see what would happen, and found that gave me by far the most interesting results in terms of color. As I’d been working for hours by that point on this one image, I made the dubious decision to throw aesthetics to the wind and run with it. You have seen the results, and may judge them for yourself.

In combining the two locations from McKillip’s work, mostly through the inclusion of Wind Tower, I’m committing to an inaccuracy that really bugs me in fanart and drives me up the wall in official adaptations. Why can’t people just get this stuff right? It’s not that difficult! I’ve now realized through firsthand experience that some of the alterations that occur when adapting print to visual mediums happen not because artists aren’t trying to be accurate, but because they are trying to convey more in a single image than they might with several more “accurate” pictures. Here, I wanted to capture the feeling of the looming, desolate city hanging over the sea as well as the iconic image of Wind Tower, giving the viewer in one glance what McKillip spends pages on. That ability to condense and distill a concept is one of the biggest advantages of any visual medium, and it was interesting to be able to play with it here in a way I’d never attempted before.

View Assignment Details

Daikatana Band

View Assignment Details

Don’t know what Daikatana is? Me either. BUT, I did land on it randomly by doing my fourth visual assignment, “An Album Cover“. I think this is the coolest visual assignment I’ve done yet. Click the link and learn more if you want to make your own album cover! Here’s how I made mine.

Step 1. Click for the random Wikipedia page. This will be your band name. I got Daikatana:

Step 2. Get a random quote. The last few words of the last quote is your new band’s album title. I got the quote, “After all is said and done, a lot more will be said than done.”:

Step 3. You go to a Flickr link, and the third photo is now your album cover:

Now what you do is create an album cover with what you found and customize it to your hearts content! Once again, I’m not the biggest fan of GIMP, but it will do what you need it to and save you $600 instead of buying Adobe Photoshop…although I do love it =( Anyways, I created this album cover:I think this all goes together awesomely! Daikatana, not only is a first person shooter(according to wiki) but it makes me think “Die, Katana!” The picture goes well because the black and white, as well as the style of the building give me an impression of an older/eerie feeling. Plus it’s deserted, like everyone died…(zombie apocalypse?) So then I have the witty quote left. Which I think is cool because if there was a zombie apocalypse, I feel more should be done than said…BUT THIS IS A MUSIC ALBUM SO IT ALL MAKES SENSE! More will be said BECAUSE they will sing! I put it in “Chiller” font to give it a creepier look.

I’m sorry if you don’t get it, but it makes PERFECT sense to me! And I had a blast doing it! Go create your own!

8/10

View Assignment Details

Turn down the lights- switch up the mood

View Assignment Details

Mr eggy CC licensed by sultoner

Train CCl licensed by ELEOTH

The Assignment

I did the Switch up the Mood visual assignment. The details are:

This assignment is to change the mood or tone of a photograph by altering the contrast, brightness, hue, saturation, exposure, etc.

I decided to use 2 photos of trains

The Process

After finding two suitable pictures with creative commons licensing, I opened up photoshop and got to work.

For both pictures I used the Image adjustments feature in the same order, but with different levels.

Color balance
Hue/Saturation
Brightness/Contrasts
Levels

I adjusted the levels until they were appealing.

The Story

There is something magical about a train, a feeling that I have had since early childhood. I still remember my first house by the train tracks. I would run outside when I heard the train coming, hoping to get a glimpse of the conductor. I would wave and pray for his wave back, and on some lucky days he would grace me with a toot of the trains horn. That is why I chose these photos to change-up the mood.

I really liked the original two photos, the ones on the left. I especially was attracted to the redness of these pictures. I wanted to adjust that redness to more of a blue feel, to “Switch up the Mood” T

The top picture reminds me of some sort of scene on the surface of Mars, but I feel that the new mood is a midnight train travelling through the mist of the twilight.

The Second photo has a very rustic and vintage feel to it. I changed the mood for a feel that is more modern.

View Assignment Details

Year End Triple Troll Attack

View Assignment Details

The Assignment: ds106 visual assignment #138 is the Triple Troll Attack. It was one of the more popular assignments with my class last semester. Perhaps that was because it has a simple premise and can be easily completed. Here’s the description from the assignment bank:

The assignment is to take a photo, a quote from a different character than the one in the picture, and a name from a third character different from the other two, place the quote in the picture, and “sign” it with the third person’s name. The three characters are to be from three different, but similar in genre, series. It’s known as “troll quoting.”

An important element of the Triple Troll Attack is to have some thematic thread connecting the three trolls. Such was done wonderfully by one of last semester’s students with a Disney Triple Troll.

The Process: Again working with Gimp and Inkscape, this process was more time-consuming than it would have been with Aviary or Photoshop. But I am pleased with the result and feel that I’m starting to make some progress in learning to manipulate images and text so I consider it time well spent.

The first step was to think of the three characters who comprise this Troll Attack. I’ll save discussion of that for the next section of the post. As I had the quote in mind before beginning the assignment I needed to come up with the person to wrongly attribute the quote to and an image for third troll. I selected Karl Malden as Father Barry because it was the highest resolution image I could find in a Google image search. Also, I love his performance in On the Waterfront.

This brings to mind the issue of using Creative Commons licensed images in ds106 assignments vs. found images on the web that might be held under copyright. I am persuaded by Stephen’s explanation in the disclaimer he gave for a recent assignment to the point feeling that I too will not bother to issue a disclaimer. Instead I will quote from his blog directly:

You might ask, what about the Creative Commons licensing and all that. I think my use of these images falls very much within the bounds of fair dealing – it’s a derivative work, it’s used for educational purposes, it makes social commentary, I earn nada from it, and I do not impact on the earnings of anyone else. I’m not going to run this disclaimer every time – I shouldn’t have to – fair dealing is my right, and I’m exercising it.

Once the image was secured, I opened it in Gimp and used Free Select Tool to separate Father Barry from the background. I made this a new layer and made the background layer all white (as this will have a stark effect on this blog).

I then searched the DaFont site and came up with Neuton Cursive, downloaded and installed it by pressing the install button after opening the unzipped file. This was another unnecessary step. But I’d just learned about the DaFont site today from MBS’s awesome She’s a Witch post and I wanted to use it while it was still fresh in my memory.

When I opened up InkScape, the font was there and I copied the text of the quote and added Fred Rogers’ name. That would be the one and only Mr. Rogers. I exported PNG files in a couple of different sizes just to have a comparison.

My reason for doing it this way is that at one point I heard that vector graphics are better for working with text than bitmap. I don’t know exactly what this means but I assume that the font edges stay truer and sharper the longer they remain as vector. Once getting rasterized in a bitmap, they lose the sharpness each time the image gets resized. If somebody can explain this better or correct my explanation on this, I’d be much obliged.

Anyhow, I then opened the quote PNG in Gimp, copied it and pasted it as a new layer on the Father Barry image with white background. I played with moving the image and text around a bit until deciding on the current layout. The original idea was to have the photo on the right and the quote on the left – but for some reason I decided against it.

The final step was to resize the image (this is where I probably lost any benefit gained from doing the text as vector first) and exported it as a PNG and uploaded it to this blog and began writing this long post.

The Story: There actually is a story to the quote and the additional trolls. But I’m afraid that will have to wait. I intended to have this post complete before the end of 2011. As it’s just now 11:30 pm and I have a few other things to tend to. I will let you, the dear and devoted reader, attempt to decipher the actual speaker of the quote (the third troll). Please leave your guesses in the comments. Also in the comments, I will attempt to explain the story that led me to select this quote and the three trolls.

Thank you and have an awesome 2012.

View Assignment Details

English Teacher in Tokyo – Blackout Poetry

View Assignment Details

For Native English Speakers Teaching in Japan.

Black out Poems are a contemporary form of poetry, lead by Austin Kleon who is the creator, I’m sure. I fell in love with the work I’ve seen at ds106 and their creative Blackout poetry assignments. I just had to do one!
I ran a quick Google search hoping to find a detailed Wikipedia entry, which to my demise wasn’t there. However, shortly after Austin Kleon’s search result, I found Kevin Harrell’s work: Creative Destruction which deserves a good look! I love the power in his words. He’s at the tip of the spear in Blackout Poetry.

The ds106 assignment was submitted by Tim Owens and states to:

“Grab a marker and today’s morning edition and start blacking out sections to create a new story. It could be a poem, a picture, or a novella, all drawn from the words of the latest news.”

I work at the Temple University Japan Campus library, so it was easy to grab a copy of the Daily Yomiuri. I found an article by Takamasa Sakurai, in which he describes his newly published book: Let’s Talk in English! (Eigo de hanso! ??????? )?He tells how Japan is connected to the world through social media. It was a great article!

After taking joy in reading it, I decided to make a Blackout Poem about this, conveying my feelings as an English Teacher in Japan; I think any English teaching foreigner will agree. However the words didn’t come out quite right. Following Otto Paertz’s advice on linking words; I put some digital art to work. Good ol’ Paint helped me guide my thoughts. Here it is:

Not having the artistic capabilities held by Giulia Forsythe–who drew out images in her digital black out poem, or Stephanie Hughes who made some hand-drawn interpretations of her dream–All I did was circle the picture of two Japanese high school students in the cover of Sakurai’s book. This is the second reason why I included his name in my work, the first being that I really liked his article.

Sans the lack of eloquence, my poem conveys the feeling of being an English teacher in Japan. We come here because we really like Japan, the young Asian students are the most zealous about learning English, and we both form friendships while doing it. It’s an immensely delightful feeling.

As for the work, it was far more appealing to do the Blackout by hand. It was relatively simple.

And here’s the original work by Takamasa Sakurai. As I said, it’s most interesting. Please notice the last paragraph, where he mentions keeping worldly relationships with from Japan through social media.

I’ve taught this last semester of preparatory English to Japanese high school students through the AEP program at my school, Temple University Japan. As the curriculum involves English conversation, we chat for the first 30 minutes of class. I find myself constantly telling them that phrase in both in Japanese and English “Let’s Talk in English!” As they soon start chatting in Japanese.

Here in Japan, teaching English is were the money is at. Straight talk, but for my American readers who haven’t lived in Japan before, my following words might be enigmatic.

As soon as I came to Japan I was working as a freelance conversation partner. I’m also a Chat Host at Com’Inn English Cafe (sorry, only Japanese page for this one!) Where I get paid to drink coffee and talk to people, and drink and Party! As an extroverted American, this comes naturally and I do it all the time back home, but here I’m getting paid for it!

I’ve learned so much about Japanese people there. Demographics range from Businessmen and Office Ladies, to International artists and doctors. I love my work at Com’Inn, and the owner and co-workers are my distant family. It was featured in a Japanese show (sorry, no English subtitles):

I love working there SO MUCH, but I’ve found the greatest joy in working with Japanese high school students.

View Assignment Details

On sunny haiku, and morning Pikachu

View Assignment Details

ds106 assignment on Haiku. This assignment has been getting considerable traction as of late, so although I initially resolved to stay away from it for perceived lack of understanding of what actually makes a haiku tick..

“Here in US schools, we are taught the haiku merely as the formula of syllables…”?-CogDog.

I re-thought my stand and am currently in an, “Eh, why not? You guys can bash me in the comments later,” kind of mood. Still, I think it’s kind of weird how a form of poetry is so intrinsically connected to a particular language and culture (Japanese) that comments such as these can be made, and quite legitimately argued:

“Haiku have very deep system, but it can work for only Japanese language, so this Haiku will be litbit different style from Japanese language Haiku.“ -Komiyama.

As for me I definitely feel that there is a kind of wall between haiku and any unfortunate non-Japanese (or non-Japanese speaker) who decides to take on the task of making a haiku of his/her own. This wall can of course be true, or only perceived but I’d like to get peoples’ opinions on the matter because I’m not entirely sure which it is. Similarly would anyone know of any other form of poetry (or literary form etc.) that might be specific to a certain language or culture? I can’t think of any at the moment but I would be surprised if haiku were to be the only case.

So anyway enough stalling. I said I’d present my own haiku and present it I will so here you go:

“Sunshine when I sleep

Comes early in the morning

Not now, Pikachu”

Sunshine by yeow_tuj via Share-Alike, Attribution CC Licensing. It’s my photo and I’ll do whatever I please with it!

I moved into my new apartment about 4 months ago, and while it’s awesome there is the slight issue of my sleeping area being right in front of a ginormous (omg this is actually a word?) window. The window’s frosted, but that doesn’t stop copious amounts of sunlight pouring into the room on sunny mornings and that’s what my haiku was trying to convey I guess. Everyone knows the feeling of not wanting to get up yet, but in addition to alarm clocks and lack of coffee I always feel that the sun itself is trying to slap me awake in the morning…and then when I’m actually up and conscious I look at my watch and I actually still had time to spare. And then there’s a huge Pikachu head behind me. I need my coffee.

As for the considerations I tried to follow the “rules” that I got from some related blogs (CogDog, Hamazaki, Komiyama, Lockman). Each of them brought something different to the table, which was nice when trying to compare and contrast and see what has to be done and what can be left open to interpretation…but at the same time it became a little confusing? CogDog and Lockman’s takes were quite thoughtful, with the former taking on an almost philosophical air and the latter being quite emotional/personal. Contrast this to the wildly differing styles of Hamazaki and Komiyama, wherein I found the former’s to be very instructional and insightful, almost rigid in its “professional” take (I wonder how long the post took..), while conversely when reading Komiyama’s haiku I get a very light-hearted, sentimental and playful feeling coming across that might or might not adhere as soundly to the principles of haiku, but definitely comes across to this uninformed non-Japanese as so much more engaging…on a fuzzy feline kind of level. I like cats, call me biased.

Going back to Hamazaki’s post however, I definitely found the write-up to be the most informative, with the general guidelines of:

Use three lines of up to 17syllables. (I split mine into 5/7/5)
Use a season word (kigo). (Sunshine in the morning? Maybe Summer-ish. As CogDog says, “…no idea where they fit in the Japanese seasons.” But then again as Hamazaki says, “almost all the nouns were categorized into one of the four seasons a hundred years ago, but we cannot do that any more in these days,” so maybe I’ll be let off the hook this time..)
Use a cut or kire (sometimes indicated by a punctuation mark) to compare two images implicitly. (The last line)

So in conclusion there you have my haiku. Maybe it’s off, maybe it’s not. Maybe Ben’s comment is right? What do you guys think?

“I’m not sure it’s the translation into English that a Haiku potentially loses its authenticity, but rather then different pace and tone that many westerners, particularly Americans, bring to the form.” -Ben.

View Assignment Details

Spaces: Haiku It Up

View Assignment Details

From Tokyo we are seeing a nice ds106 activity surge in the Haiku It Up writing assignment created by Shinichiro- what is most lovely is how the author has elaborated on the meaning and structure of haiku beyond just the syllable forumala we learn in grade school here in the US.

Haiku, known as the shortest form of the poetry in the world, originally started in the 17th century in Japan. It became international in the late 20th century and now people all over the world make haiku of their own. There are several rules in Japanese traditional haiku and many of them are also adopted into the international haiku. The common rules are:

?Use three lines of up to 17 syllables.
?Use a season word (kigo).
?Use a cut or kire (sometimes indicated by a punctuation mark) to compare two images implicitly.

(From Wikipedia)

People often think that to express one’s feeling in the 17 syllables is enough for making haiku, but it’s not. The most basic concept of this poetic form is to resonate totally different imagery (often presented as nouns) and generate a new perspective/context/atmosphere/situation of the moment based on these imagery in the reader’s mind.

Okay, I am game. The ds106 assignment for Haiku it Up is

For the writing assignment, take a random Dailyshoot photograph and create a haiku using that image. Let the image inspire you to create a poetic haiku. Don’t know what a haiku is? The most common form for Haiku is three short lines. The first line usually contains five (5) syllables, the second line seven (7) syllables, and the third line contains five (5) syllables. Haiku doesn’t rhyme.

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog

Three wine barrels stacked
Promise of divine innards.
Vibrant space between.

My two nouns are “barrels” and “space” (and have no idea where they fit in the Japanese seasons). I was thinking that in a scene like this we tend to focus on the objects, what is in the positive space, and the wonderment of what is inside the barrels, yet that bright light and the shape of the between space was really the thing that drew me to take the photo. This leads to my attempt to inquire how often we put attention on the negative spaces, the places between what we see and do.

I could have chosen a random dailyshoot from the big pool, and I have not done my own since a few months ago, but I was curious to use one of my own. This is how I used flickr to find a random image. I use the URL you can use to generate a flickr badge or widget- http://flickr.com/badge.gne. I selected an HTML badge and in step, for content, chose an image from my photo set where I stored all my dailyshoots

In the layout step, I select 1 image, and the option for random. The size does not matter, but bigger gives you a better look at the image:

Finally on the Colors screen, we see a random image as a preview. I can just command click it to open it in a new tab. That’s my photo!

There is probably an easier way, but this is how I did it.

What a great assignment to take something as simple as a haiku, add in the photo element, and take the haiku beyond just the syllable counting. Aiming for the nouns to contrast is really where the mini story comes into it.

You sitting there reading
This blog post on the internet.
Make some art, damnit!