While listening to the Voyager’s Golden Record, I chose 10 out of 27 pieces of music. This was a difficult task as there were many more songs I would have included. I decided on these pieces as if I were an alien or a foreigner listening to the music for the first time. Some pieces that I omitted were too high-pitched for my liking making it hard to listen to the whole track, however, the following ten are pieces that I would see an alien swaying to. According to Rumsey in her online discussion, she mentions that we, as humans, need to reflect on the past in order to figure out what is needed for the future (Browns University, 2017). Therefore, hearing these pieces could allow an alien to recreate the music as there were not many complex instrumental sounds in these tec pieces of music.

I am not an instrumental specialist at all, however, these are pieces of music that my own ear appreciated. The 10 songs that I chose also reminded me of certain events and places that I have travelled to in my life, or just simply I enjoyed the sounds and tunes of the song.

Here are my top 10 picks.

• Peru, wedding song, recorded by John Cohen. 0:38
• “Melancholy Blues,” performed by Louis Armstrong and his Hot Seven. 3:05
• “Johnny B. Goode,” written and performed by Chuck Berry. 2:38
• India, raga, “Jaat Kahan Ho,” sung by Surshri Kesar Bai Kerkar. 3:30
• Holborne, Paueans, Galliards, Almains and Other Short Aeirs, “The Fairie Round,” performed by David Munrow and the Early Music Consort of London. 1:17
• Mexico, “El Cascabel,” performed by Lorenzo Barcelata and the Mariachi México. 3:14
• Bach, “Gavotte en rondeaux” from the Partita No. 3 in E major for Violin, performed by Arthur Grumiaux. 2:55
• Bach, Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 in F. First Movement, Munich Bach Orchestra, Karl Richter, conductor. 4:40
• Tchenhoukoumen, Senegal, percussion, recorded by Charles Duvelle. 2:08
• Beethoven, Fifth Symphony, First Movement, the Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, conductor. 7:20

References

Brown University. (2017).  Abby Smith Rumsey: “Digital Memory: What Can We Afford to Lose?”. Accessed via YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=4&v=FBrahqg9ZMc&feature=emb_logo

The next post I am going to link to is Jacob’s emoji story.

Firstly, I am going to share the comment I posted on his blog site:

“At first, I was like what is the title?!….Then I said it out loud. I see what you did there. Very clever. It is almost like that game where you say the words on the card that look like gibberish, but then when someone hears it, it sounds like something you know. I then glanced and skimmed the emojis and saw the hand gesture and alien heads which confirmed the tv show. I only saw it when I was younger and my older brother would watch it so I don’t know the storyline or plot, but I was able to guess it right away just from the title and some hints.”

Jacob and I both did TV shows, however he did Star Trek and I did Squid Game. First of all, we both used different emoji pictures. I used the ones from Apple on my iPhone. Jacob, on the other hand, used a different program. Using a different emoji program made it more difficult for me to understand the story because I had to really look at the emoji to determine what it was. For example, some of the facial expressions were hard to figure out as the eyebrows and hands were not as prominent as the ones from Apple. 

What I do wonder is how Jacob decided on these images. Did he type in a word to find the emoji that he wanted? Or did he just scroll through all of the emojis and pick one that seemed to sum up what he was trying to explain?

I also believe that Jacob summed up the entire storyline of Star Trek which, to me, is a very difficult task to do as you have to make sure that all the details and information are correct. Did Jacob recall all the events that happened from start to finish? Or did he look up the episode summaries to refresh his memory? I know that when I wrote out the emoji story for Squid Game, I decided to just do episode one since I felt like this emoji story would be much too long and complex. After I completed the emojis for episode one, I then wanted to make sure that I was not forgetting anything, so I googled the episode summary and it allowed me to add an event that I missed. I wonder if Jacob did the same thing. 

Jacob mentions that the “usage of these emojis does not necessarily follow any standardized set of meanings, how someone approaches these visuals can seriously diverge their understanding from my intent” (para. 3). This is very true and something I had not considered. I feel like if a person who has seen this TV show understands which show it is, they will be able to figure out what the emojis are trying to explain. I also believe that even if two people were to do the same show in this emoji form, they would have completely different outcomes. Even though the plot is the same, it may have derived a different meaning. 

References 

Jacob (2021, October 17). Task 6 – Emoji Story. https://blogs.ubc.ca/gleckmanetec540/2021/10/17/task-6-emoji-story/

The next task I am going to link to is going to be Grant’s Twine Task.

The comment I made on Grant’s task was:

“What a great Twine, Grant! It was perfect. It made me feel like I was down by the water. The sound effects allowed me to feel as if the experience was real. It made me feel calm and happy. My dog was even intrigued when he heard the seagulls. I like how you made it simple and fun to play along with. The pictures allowed me to visualize everything on this adventure, from being on the water, to going fishing, and then having my peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Best of all, I succeeded in this narrative game with one try!”

His story and mine are on completely different ends of the spectrum. His reflects that of a day on the water filled with whatever you choose. Mine, however, is a spooky, suspenseful thriller where you die with almost any choice.

Grant’s twine story is simple and easier to understand and navigate. Mine, on the other hand, is more complex and leads you down many paths. Throughout his twine story, Grant uses mainly two options for readers to choose from which makes the narrative game straightforward and effortless. As well, to me, the choices seemed to be made for readers to use their common sense to figure out which was the better path to take. I was able to go through this game once without having to try again because I made smart decisions along the way. If we reflect back to the twine game I created, mine is presented in a way that is more complex. For the most part, I provided three paths for readers to choose from which, I find, increased the anxiety of the reader since there were more uncertain paths to choose. My twine game was more so luck of the draw as there were many choices that ended poorly for the player. 

In Grant’s twine story, he added sound effects which allows readers to pretend that they are actually on this adventure in real life, whereas mine did not as it would have taken me way too long. According to Bell (2020), when sound effects are used in twine, the mood is set through the ambience. As well, Wharton and Collins (2011) describe that sound is able to influence the enjoyment and interpretation of the narrative game. This is absolutely true as the sound effects in Grant’s story allowed me to enjoy the game in a calming way. Bell (2020) also states that the sound and music throughout the twine allows readers to feel either less or more anxious and their heart rate is affected. Again, with Grant’s story, I was able to feel less anxious about the choices I was making and my heart rate was slow and steady. If I were to add sound effects into the game I created, I feel like there would be many emotions going through the players, their anxiety would be through the roof, and their heart rate would be elevated. I know that if I had more time, I would have been able to allow players to experience the game in a more realistic way that would affect their mind and body. 

References

Bell, K. (2020). Training perceptions through play: A case for building interactive autoethnographic experiences through Twine. In Silva, Adriana de Souza e, & R. Glover-Rijkse (Eds.), (1st ed., pp 47-64). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780367855055-5

Wharton, A., & Collins, K. (2011). Subjective measures of the influence of music customization on the video game play experience: A Pilot study. Game Studies, 11(2). Retrieved from http://gamestudies.org/1102/articles/wharton_collins.

The first linking assignment I am going to reflect on will be Braden Litt’s potato printing.

I decided to focus on Braden’s potato printing task as it was completely different from mine. Firstly, I am going to share the post I made on his task. 

“I never thought of writing the whole word on one potato. That was genius of you! You only had to waste one potato whereas I used five small potatoes and cut them in half. It must have been challenging to carve out the entire word mirrored. Did you end up having to start all over with any errors that you made? Or did you just cut the potato down and try to save it?

If I did an entire word on one potato, I would have had a difficult time making them all uniform. When you noticed that some were uneven, did you notice after stamping it with paint, or just by looking at the potato before printing?”

As mentioned in the post, Braden wrote his entire 5-letter word on one potato compared to the many small potatoes I used by cutting them in half. This is the first indication that my colleague’s experience was different from mine. If Braden were to make a mistake with the letters that he printed, he would have to completely start again. Whereas with my letters, if I were to make a mistake, which I did, I only had to redo that one letter. He had to pay close attention to the unity of all the letters, making sure that the height and widths were consistent. Again, if he were to make a mistake and make one of his letters shorter than the rest, the stamp would not have been complete as one of the letters would have been barely visible.

Initially, Braden spent time planning how he was going to create his stamp. This was a smart idea so that he would catch any mistakes prior to starting the cutting. As for myself, I just visualized the letter’s shape in my head before cutting out the letter. I wonder if I were to pre plan my approach, would that allow for less mistakes to happen? 

Finally, Braden wrote all of the letters in lowercase compared to mine that were all uppercase. This makes me wonder which approach was easier to carve out. I know that I wrote mine in all uppercase because I thought it would be easier with more straight lines compared to curves. If Braden were to carve out all uppercase letters, he would have avoided doing curves all together as all of his uppercase letters would have been straight lines. We also did words that were dissimilar. His word was “whale,” whereas mine was “words.” We both had the letter “w,” however, the rest of the letters were different. I wonder what made him choose the word “whale.”

Was there something particularly challenging in the process?

The five-letter word I decided on using for the potato stamps was “words.” I wanted to write the word letters but “words” was the next best thing. As a Kindergarten teacher, words are all around: on the walls, in books, on their paper, their names, etc. This is why I decided to choose this word. The first two letters, “W” and “O” were simple and straightforward but it took time to craft it how I wanted it to be. As I finished carving out the letter “R,” I showed my roommate how beautiful my “R” was and he said, “wait a minute, when you stamp that, it is going to be backwards.” Of course, with this process I then realized I messed up. I had to then cut it out in reverse so that when I did stamp it onto the paper, it would be correct. Another challenging part of this process was creating curved shapes with the knife. Thank goodness this mistake happened with just the “R” so I only wasted half of a potato. I knew that with the S, I had to mirror it.

How much time did it take for you to create the stamps? 

This process of cutting the stamps took about 20 minutes to complete, although I was not timing myself and I was multitasking. Each letter took about three minutes and I had to carve out the letter “R” again. I found myself cutting out all the straight edges of the letters first before tackling the curves and smaller nooks. If I wanted to create the entire alphabet with upper and lowercase letters, I believe it would take me roughly 160 minutes (2 hours and 40 minutes) without errors. Creating the stamp does take the majority of the time. Once all of the stamp prints are done and cut, the ink or paint transfer then takes some time to make sure that the paint is evenly distributed. However, I suppose if one did not want it perfect, they could just dip the letters into the paint instead of brushing it on which would save some time.

Have you noticed anything particular about the letters that you have chosen to reproduce?

I clearly decided to do the letters in uppercase as I wanted to use the majority of the potato. Uppercase letters are also letters that Kindergarteners will learn first before lowercase letters so uppercase letters were my automatic choice. The font I chose is also very standard and is a straight cut as opposed to bubble letters which are simpler to create. Also, I did just notice that those five letters are letters that I see more often than others. For example, my mom’s name starts with a “W,” my dad and brother’s name starts with a “R,” my name starts with a “S,” “D” could be for dad and dog, “W” could also be turned upside down to create a “M” for mom, my sister’s name, and the name of the school I work at, “O” because it’s a shape that is seen daily. Could this be why this word came to me? Or is it just purely a coincidence?

Considering the time and effort that took you to create a 5-letter word, how do you feel about the mechanization of writing? 

The paint I used was a Pine Green acrylic paint as that is what I had laying around. Yeah right, I had a whole bunch of colours as I am a craft freak and an obsessive collector of everything and anything crafty. However, I went with a dark colour as this is what I wanted to use for a bolder look once the words were printed. I lathered on a decent amount of paint so that the entire letter was covered generously. Then it was time to make two copies. The first print was darker and had more paint compared to the second print which was lighter. If I were to do another print, without applying anymore paint, I do believe that the letters would be patchy with the paint. I made the double prints letter by letter as I did not want the paint to fully dry out on the potato. This made the process easier to replicate.

The process and effort it took me to create a 5-letter word was time consuming and tedious. I had to make sure that each letter looked as perfect as possible. I also had to ensure that the thickness was consistent throughout. This entire process was challenging yet exciting as there was some technicality behind creating these letters. According to Bolter (2001), mechanization is involved in all writing as it is a technical skill. I made the letters and printed them onto the paper, they were quite large. However, this was not a concern of mine as this was just a simple five-letter word activity. If I wanted to create a story with these letters, the font would be too large to do so. According to Clement (1997), when Gutenberg and Schoeffer designed their first print, it “turned out to be too large” as they realized that they would only be able to fit so many lines of words on one piece of paper (p. 13). Even printing professionals make mistakes and have to adjust their sizing depending on the task. Like Bolter (2001) says, “each culture and each period has had its own complex economy of writing” (p. 21). Techniques that were used for some periods, will be different from those techniques used now. Bolter (2001) also observed that the mechanics of writing and its popularity were linked to efficient, clean, clear texts. In order to do this, time, accuracy, and efficiency must be obtained. Therefore, beautifully designed, hand-crafted print has faded throughout the years. It may not be as popular now due to the time and effort that is needed, however it is still in use by individuals who want invitations or cards hand-printed.

References

Bolter, Jay David. (2001). Writing space: Computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print [2^nd edition]. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Clement, Richard W. (1997). “Medieval and Renaissance book production (Links to an external site.)“. Library Faculty & Staff Publications. Paper 10. https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/lib_pubs/10