Archives: Weekly Task

Two Futures

My first narrative was done as a Twine, and can be viewed here.

tl;dr: I focused on world-building; in the aftermath of multiple Pandemics, humanity became increasingly dependent on digital technology and the Web as a way to connect during Physical Distancing. People work and learn from home. However, schools still hold an important role as gathering places, where students can access mentors and collaborate with one another in person.

The second narrative is a recorded discussion between me and my partner.

 

tl;dl: Max and I discuss efficiency, augmented reality, telepathic devices, and the trend towards aggregate news sources.

Shownotes (in case you want to listen, but also want to skip ahead!)

        • 1:15     more efficient writing and reading
        • 4:15     augmented reality
        • 7:00     hologram ads
        • 10:45   more augmented reality
        • 12:30   advancing the pen and keyboard
        • 16:25   speech-to-text and writing stories
        • 19:00   mind-movies (e.g. “NeuroVision (TM)”)
        • 23:20   editing writing
        • 24:15   telepathic mind-movie collaboration
        • 25:45   reflecting on changes in past 20 years
        • 27:14   aggregate news and social media — the push to be more than a content consumer

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Hello Network, my old friend
I can connect with you again,
Because our new modem has arrived.
After that lightning strike our house survived!

(Please excuse my terrible parody. I’m just very excited to be back online after two weeks untethered!)

I was boggled when I first saw the cats-cradle of a network that our music choices formed on Palladio. I spent a while experimenting, to get a feel for what I was looking at. Tugging on nodes, switching the data targets and sources, narrowing things down to just one track and its connections, etc. Every time I thought I had figured it out, I found something new that unraveled my understanding of how our data was interconnected.

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Algorithms of Predictive Text

“My idea of Technology is not available for remote playback”

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Attention Economy

Screenshot at end of User Inyerface

 

What a nightmare. It took me two playthroughs to complete User Inyerface! As if the timer and related pop-ups weren’t distracting enough while I tried to navigate this monstrosity, I kept getting system pop-ups for software-updates and for a canceled daily school-meeting. Oh, and I started getting strange Credit-Check emails and my AntiVirus alerted me of a possible Trojan at the same time.

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Golden Record Curation

I had to make some strict decisions in order to curate the Golden Record down to 10 songs. At first, I wanted to show an evolution of music, progressing from the more traditional tones to Rock. However, I quickly realized that doing that made most of my tracks originate in the West. I changed tactics and instead made my criteria focus on global and temporal diversity, and the human voice. I could not find a playable version of the Pygmy girls’ initiation song, but I chose to include it over the percussion music from Senegal as it seemed likely to include vocals (which the latter lacks).

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“Get in over your head as often and as joyfully as possible.” –Alexander Isley

When I saw that we were returning to our first task, I wanted to see if I could take what I had previously constructed further. Ernesto had commented that how I approached the first bag task said more about me than its actual contents. I wanted to push myself to make something I hadn’t before. It only seemed logical, still thrilling as I was from my remixed Twine-game, to attempt to make my animation interactive through code.

In a way, this task is a response from my inner-teen, who was submerged in the Internet when many of our readings were being published. It is a reply to the academic examination of the cyberculture I was part of. There was a charm to those early days of Web 2.0… something gritty and experimental, celebrating personal expression without standardized filters. Seeing a profile page with coloured text, animated backgrounds, and auto-playing music demonstrated not only the maker’s interests but also their digital prowess. I miss the bizarre Flash games, the personalized MySpaces, and the wacky CD-ROM games where you clicked things to see what would happen. In that spirit, and with the New London Group’s advocacy for multiliteracies fresh in my mind, I approached this project.

Please experience it before reading about my process.

If there is no audio, try switching to a different browser, such as Edge; Chrome can have auto-audio-playing issues. Or, make an itch.io account and, in your Account Settings, turn on “Require a click to run HTML5 game embeds”. I also tested it on my phone, and it works (sort of, it has some trouble with scaling).

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A Tale of Two Twines

I played with Twine once before in ETEC 565D (Digital Games & Learning). Our task was to use it to represent our readings on the power of using game-making for learning. I decided I would create a kind of interactive-experimental-essay. I wanted to  make something that flowed like a conversation. I intentionally disabled the back-button and coded options to appear or disappear depending on what had already been discussed (such as the reader’s options after the HOW passage.) In retrospect, I suppose I made the conversation more linear by denying the reader the ability to return to previous passages, but rarely in a conversation do you say to the other person “Could you repeat everything you just told me about how building games strengthens learning communities?”. 

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Voice to Text

My Story

This is a story about my new house 10 years ago my parents moved this neighbourhood and it was love at first sight and I was bummed that it wasn’t the ones my parents had purchaseda few years later it did go on the market but unfortunately I was in the middle of my undergrad and couldn’t possibly buy it myself at that time jump ahead to the summer of 2017 when the wildfires hit the Cariboo chilcotin this neighbourhood was the first in the northern Caribou area to burn three houses were lost two of which are right across the street from my new house I was there for most of it I’m at my parents house my dad and I were fighting bushfires grass fires root fires and watering our neighbours gardens it was a very strange time because while we could legally be home during the evacuation order we could not return if we left the property otherwise we would be charged with insanity dad and I especially took care of this house because it was my dream home whether or not I would ever get to live in it jump ahead 2 after the fires when I met the previous owners and jokingly said to them that if they wanted to move away for retirement to let me know because I I would love to buy their houseturns out they were planning to retire sooner rather than later and they gave us a timeline of about 5 years which was shortened to a year which was shortened to a matter of months we got to go inside for the first time in October and it was eerie because it’s floor plan was identical to every dreamhome I ever built for myself in The Sims miraculously my partner and I were able to raise the down payment and actually get a mortgage and now we’re here and it’s crazy and I’m so overwhelmingly I know it’s corny but I’m so overwhelmingly blessed I can stand on my porch and if I was a good spitter and the wind was blowing in the right direction I would be able to spit on the the tree that is half burnt so not only am I lucky that I get to live in this beautiful home with its beautiful views I’m lucky that this house is even still standingand part of that luck is self-made because I stayed when so many others left the Caribbean I helped protect this house and others in this neighbourhood PS I was raised with fire training and my dad was certified by the US Navy to fight fires and had been a bushfire volunteer for decades I understand that people with less fire knowledge felt safer following the evacuation order and leaving for Prince George in Kamloops during the 2017 wildfires

– Recorded using Google Keyboard’s Voice-to-Text button

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