VisualAssignments11: Blackout Poetry

 Visual Assignment 11. (View on Flickr.) This assignment is worth 3 stars. (10/10) This is my version of Blackout Poetry. This assignment was submitted by Tim Owens, and is absolutely beautiful. The text of my poem reads: “The aftermath of enthusiasm foreshadows a potentially ugly road ahead, and problems if all of the victories dampen [...]

Newspaper Blackout Poetry

_cokwr: 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., _cpzh4: Visual, _cre1l: http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lefip77ymk1qafoq6o1_500.jpg, _chk2m: Tim Owens, _ciyn3: 11, _ckd7g: , _clrrx: , _cztg3:

English Teacher in Tokyo – Blackout Poetry

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.

News Paper Blackout Poetry ds106 asignment #4

Description: 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.

IMG_1117[1]

I think out of all the projects this one was the most fun :)

Newspaper Blackout Poetry – 3 point versoin

Newspaper Blackout Poetry is  Visual Assignment 11. It was submitted by Tim Owens (@timmmmyboy  on twitter). The assignment description is 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.”

Blackout Poetry existed prior to becoming a ds106 assignment. Austin Kleon has been blogging newspaper blackouts for such a long time that he’s been able to publish a book on the topic. The book’s title: Newspaper Blackout.

Teacher_of_Year-BOP-ds106.egg  on Aviary

Looking over the list of past entries for this assignment category, I was drawn to three in particular. I appreciate how each person has taken the basic assignment and reinterpreted it in a personal and unique way. They are all worth checking out:

  •  Giulia’s “Newspaper Blackout” is typically amazing work from the ds106 archivist. Using a digital version of a newspaper instead of an actual paper certainly works, though it might not follow the assignment description to the letter.
  • Sarah on the other hand used an actual black marker on a current newspaper to provide a poetic angle on events of the day. This was from last Spring when events in Egypt and the rest of the Arab world were very much in the news.
  • The most recent entry is from CUNY York student Marissa. She too used pen on paper but this time it was with a book instead of newspaper.

As should be clear in looking over the great work above, there is really a lot of freedom to present the ds106 assignments as you see fit. In fact, if you don’t see something you want, you may submit your own.  For my submission, I decided to use a digital version of a newspaper. Now that we are in the 21st century, I see no need to handle real newspapers.

I began with the four words you see in the image. I came up with “teacher of the year” as an inspirational prod for your Prof. Lockman. I wonder if this will inspire him to live up the greatness which some on the internet seem to feel he is capable. I’m not going to hold my breathe on that one.

With the search terms “teacher” and “year” in mind I visited the Library of Congress Online Reading Room. From there, I clicked the link to the  News Archives on the Web which is maintained by Ibiblio. From the vast list of old and current newspapers maintained in digital form by Ibiblio, I chose the Brooklyn Eagle. The search terms then took me to an article from January 27, 1902.

Getting around this archive is a bit tricky at first. I will hope to create a video tutorial on how to do this someday. For now, all I can suggest is spending some time digging around. It’s kind of amusing and perhaps even informative to read the newspapers from long ago.

Here then is  quick summary of the steps I followed once I found the article:

  • Each of the articles are a series of GIF images so all I had to do was download the one which contained my search words (this was done by right-clicking and downloading to the desktop)
  • Once the image was downloaded, I opened up Aviary and uploaded the image to the free web-based image editor.
  • I enlarged the image enough so that the text would be readable on this blog (about a 60% enlargement through “resize image”)
  • Then I selected a black brush and made adjustments to hardness, opacity and flow so that some of the original text would show through
  • As I was a bit concerned that the word “the” came after the word “year” I then added a yellow trail with circles to guide the viewers eye through the message of the poem
In retrospect, I think the message would come across just fine without the yellow. But I think the contrast gives it a little something more.
It might be interesting to see the original image (before resizing) for those who want to read the entire paragraph before the blackout.
And this post I believe meets or exceeds all of Prof. Lockman’s requirements for a 3 point post. Perhaps the good professor would be kind enough to demonstrate some of the procedures described in this post when you meet with him next Tuesday. Further, I suggest that you ask him to explain the differences in scoring between this and the two earlier posts I made with the same image. Though I’m certain you keen students will have figured that out by now.

Newspaper Blackout Poetry – 2 point version

Teacher_of_Year-BOP-ds106.egg  on Aviary

Newspaper Blackout Poetry is  Visual Assignment 11. It was submitted by Tim Owens (@timmmmyboy  on twitter). The assignment description is 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 didn’t use an actual paper but an online archived version from the a January 27, 1902 edition of the Brooklyn Eagle that I found at Library of Congress Online Reading Room.

All of the articles on the Brooklyn Eagle’s site are image files so I downloaded this one and painted out the words in the free online image editor Aviary.

The poem I created from the article might not be very poetic. And I didn’t follow the exact instruction to use today’s paper. But this is ds106, the assignment description is just a starting point to spark the creative energies.

Blackout Poetry

This might be a tad depressing, but Egypt is on a lot of people’s minds right now…

attempt #1

working on my poetry skills

Poems, in a couple separate forms.

I have always enjoyed the power of images to influence what we interpret from words. I remember getting so frightened of a picture in a book as a child that I was absolutely unable to finish the rest of the text until I had come to terms with the picture. The rest of the book retained some of that initial horror that I had gotten from the picture.

Anyhow, these two poems were suggested as assignments for the digital storytelling class I’m currently enrolled in. I thought they looked like fun, so I completed them.

First: Newspaper Blackout Poetry

I had fun with that one, but it wasn’t as interesting to me as analyzing what came out of the Media Player poem assignment. (I’m currently listening to this playlist and find that the heavy synthesizers at the start of the poem is a very odd way to start a Saturday.)

Media Player Poem:

^-^

Punxsutawney Phil says Spring!

The last two days of daily shoots have made me incredibly anxious for spring.  On Wednesday, it was almost 60 degrees and all the daily shoots were outside minus jackets.  Then today, the daily shoot photo was about taking sky/horizon pictures.  All my pictures were just so colorless since the sky was gray and the trees are bare.  I am just waiting for it to be spring.

So this is why I decided to do Assignment 11 newspaper blackout poetry by Tim Owens.  I took a Bullet article about farms and a groundhog day clip and put them together.  I then blacked out all the words except those that are for spring.  They go nicely with the groundhog who predicted spring to come soon.  I also drew a few pictures to brighten up a very black picture.

Also, the picture may look blurry, but if you click it will pull it up bigger.  I had to scan it so it may not be super clear.