Task 1 What’s in My Bag
Lucy’s Submission
Lucy included many of the same type of items in her bag as I did. We have snacks, a water bottle, an actual backpack, keys, wallet, and a notebook in common. Some of the differences include self-care items like medicine, ointments, handcreams, sunscreen from her bag, and mine includes more elements related to the activities that I take part in such as a volunteer badge, a softball, and a watercolour set. Regardless, we both noted that these items speak to our personalities, and the way we are perceived and understood by others in the world around us. Lucy seems much more prepared for environmental factors that may change around her, ensuring that she has what she needs to be comfortable. I’m usually that person who would be asking her for a Tylenol/Advil! Thank you Lucy for being that person! 😀 I am usually the person who only takes what’s essential for the activity that I’ll be engaging in—somewhat more of a minimalist. As I mentioned in my post, I took a photo of many items that make it into my bag at some point in time, but rarely would all of these items be in my bag at the same time. Lucy made a comment about the contents of her bag giving other people an impression of who she is on a particular level, but these items cannot fully demonstrate who she is personally or professionally. I certainly agree with this statement, and feel a similar sentiment. Although the technologies and texts that we carry with us can demonstrate some of our preferences, they cannot paint a full picture of who we are as people.
Task 3 Voice to Text
Carlo’s submission
Carlo’s speech-to-text task experience mirrored mine in the way that punctuation, run-on sentences, and incorrectly translated words were apparent in his unscripted anecdote. I also had words missing in my script, likely due to not pronouncing them clearly enough. Carlo did something a bit different with his script though; he went through and edited the output of his script to make it make more sense. He took a story that was intended to be somewhat informal, and turned it into something that followed the rules of punctuation and grammar. He noted that if he had scripted the story, it would have eliminated a lot of the errors that Speechnotes made in his dictation. However, the story potentially wouldn’t have included the same personality and ‘humanity’ if it was scripted and written out perfectly.
I saw many of these same parallels within my speech-to-text story. Although I used the iPhone speech-to-text functionality (as opposed to Speechnotes used by Carlo), we had similar observations about the lack of these technologies to capture tone, cadence, emotion, and other dramatic spoken effects. This made me think about the choice to use free tools rather than paid voice to text technologies, and whether or not there will be a way for speech to text technologies to capture tone, emotion, and dramatic effect. I mentioned to Carlo in a comment that there are new tools being developed that are starting to address this need:
“…This made me think of an AI tool I saw recently that does capture expression, albeit in a slightly different modality. Signapse (https://www.signapse.ai/) is an AI generated sign language interpretation tool that utilizes an emotive human-like AI. Facial expressions are super important in sign language, and this tool seems to pick up on those expressive cues in its translation. I can definitely see speech-to-text technologies getting to the point where they’re similarly identifying and conveying emotions in their transcription.”
Task 4 Manual Manuscripts
Brie’s submission
The first thing I noticed about Brie’s submission was that they also composed their manual manuscript on less traditional paper. Instead, they used “dot grid journal” paper, which lends itself to creative processes like bullet journaling. Brie noted that their hand-writing doesn’t go through the same “scattered, iterative looping” process that their typing generally does. Personally, I find composing through typing to be a more ‘formal’ method of writing. I tend to lean into the informality of hand-writing, allowing it to be scattered and iterative and as a means to recontextualize thoughts in multiple non-linear expressions, as a way to ‘work things out’. For me, hand-writing leans less on a clear final product, and is more about the process of expressing without needing to accomplish something specific at the end. I really appreciate how Brie made this connection, as it helped me to recognize this about my own writing process. Brie also mentions that word processors make suggestions for brevity and conciseness, and this impacts the final product of a piece of writing. This is an excellent point! When we write in a technologically mediated way, we are prompted to modify our writing in the moment by a force outside of our own ‘voice’. When writing a letter in a personal journal, perhaps there’s less of a desire to ‘correct’ our voice.
Brie’s site architecture
Brie’s assignments are hosted on UBC Blogs, and they selected a theme that provides a clean and spacious interface. The simplified navigation bar appears on each page, and allows viewers to navigate between 5 main sections: Home, Activity, Tasks, Linking Assignment and Final Project. This design is different than mine in that I’ve linked each Task in its own category, and those categories appear on the main navigation bar. I decided to do this because, as this course is reliant on the cohort reviewing each other’s tasks in a quick and easy way, it made sense to give each task its own category/link. However, this does clutter up the page a bit. I like that Brie’s Tasks are all included on a page of their own, in their own category. There is one challenge to this architecture though; it does require readers to scroll from the newer tasks at the top to the older ones at the bottom, which is a less direct way to ‘page’ directly to the task they’re looking for. However, each of Brie’s tasks has their own URL, and the CTRL + F function could be used to find specific task titles.
I also notice that Brie chose a theme that allowed for their text to take up more ‘real-estate’ in the middle of the page. I struggled at the beginning of this course, deciding between themes. I wanted to choose something that was clean, easy to follow, and provided enough space for the reader to be able to easily focus on the entries. I like Brie’s theme selection better for this, as I find the font choice in my theme to be somewhat small. I find that WordPress takes some ‘getting used to’, and although one can make changes to HTML code in posts, the themes seem a bit more complex to create and customize (at least for an unseasoned WordPress user). Brie seems like they’ve worked with WordPress before, and they’ve made their site intuitive to navigate.
Task 6: Emoji Story
April Huang’s Submission
The first thing I noticed about April’s Emoji story is that she used about 1/3rd of the emoji’s I did. She mentioned that she chose to use an episode from a TV show she had watched very recently, while it was fresh in her mind. This is a bit different than my approach ( I watched a whole movie and transposed the plot into emoji’s during that process). I wonder if the fact that she used a TV show for her emoji story (which is shorter) and the fact that she relied on her memories of the plot contributed to a more succinct interpretation.
One thing that April noted is that she first wrote a few sentences that summarized the key moments in the show, and then selected emoji’s that best captured those ideas. This approach helped her to be more efficient with her emoji’s. It also seems that her show only appeared to have three main characters, some of which were repeated within her story. I also selected particular emoji’s to represent characters, however, the movie I selected had many more characters. Each part of the plot of my movie centered around particular characters. This could have contributed to why I felt the need spell out to whom things were happening in my movie with those representative emoji’s.
April also mentions very aptly that her movie plot seems straightforward to her due to her interpretation of the emoji’s she used. When looking at her story, I see the two-mask emoji as representative of drama, because I used it as such in my story. Although I’m not sure which TV show she is describing, I don’t think she is using that emoji with the same intention/meaning. I suspect the first line of her emoji story is the title of the TV show, but I’m not totally sure of that—it could be the title of the episode of the TV show. This is a bit different for a movie, as it has a concrete title. I did end up addressing the title after transposing the whole plot, which was needed for my process. For April’s process, this wasn’t as necessary. April’s observation that digital technology blurs the distinction between author and reader, empowering readers to interpret and engage with the content as creators is spot on here. Overall, we had very different processes and results, but we both depended on our own interpretation and the arrangement of the emojis sequentially to impart our storyline.
Task 8 Golden Record Curation
Steve Acree’s Submission
Steven’s selection criteria was similar to mine for this task. We both sought to include tracks that featured a diversity in continental geographic location, as well as stylistic or instrumental diversity. However, he included an additional criterion: how these pieces represent musical evolution over time. This was an interesting addition that ultimately made our curated lists differ. Additionally, he chose to select songs that featured the human voice more often, whereas I focused on choosing songs that featured both voice and diversity in instruments and tones. It is interesting that we only had 4 songs in common, despite some mutual categorization choices. Our interpretation of the criteria is what ended up making the difference, which is to be expected based on our differences in life experience and preferences.
“Hi Steve,
It looks like we both used similar criteria to curate our selections. I also looked at geographic regions/continents as well as stylistic diversity. You mentioned in your reflection that most of the pieces you selected featured the vocals prominently, such as Wedding Song. I also chose many pieces that featured vocals, but I also wanted to ensure that the instrument choices were as diverse as possible. So, I opted to select songs that featured as many unique instruments as possible. The criterion you chose regarding showcasing musical evolution is interesting, and one that I hadn’t considered! Choosing pieces over a timeline can certainly showcase the changes in the musical artform over time. The Golden Record digital recordings that are relatively ‘recent’ in the grand scheme of humans making music (some of the earliest instruments discovered date back to 35,000 years ago). This makes me think more about the Youtube video by Dr. Smith Rumsey (Brown University, 2017) regarding creating digital records for preservation for future generations and research. The records we have regarding music predating recording technologies are nil—we cannot refer to them. But they have made a massive impact on how we relate to music now, culturally, and amongst the human race as a whole. If we could somehow go back in time and get recordings of these very early beginnings of music, do you think they would be important to include by the timeline criterion you’ve suggested? It’s funny to think that, by the time any life form ostensibly finds this Golden Record, music will likely have changed to something beyond our current comprehension. Or, more likely, humans will have ceased to exist completely, but record of our existence will still be ‘out there’!
Thanks for your post!
-Lachelle”
Brown University. (2017, July 11). Abby Smith Rumsey: “Digital memory: What can we afford to lose?”. [Video]. YouTube
Task 12 – Speculative Futures
Steph’s Submission
I really appreciated Steph’s take on assignment 12. It was different than my submission in that it’s less of a narrative story, and more about describing her scenario. We both addressed the larger potential for mental health issues in the future, as well as isolation and disconnection. It’s interesting how looking to the future, it seems to be common to extrapolate on and magnify the current mental health crisis. Despite major technological and medical advancements, it’s difficult to imagine a future where mental health issues will lessen. I could definitely see a scenario like Steph described transpiring. A product like SereniTea could be positively and persuasively marketed, normalized, and become as widely accepted as drinking water or coffee. Perhaps it could even become ‘rewarded’, with SereniTea points accumulating for each purchase or consumption! Stephanie’s scenario really makes me consider whether it’s possible for society as we know it to address the root causes of anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues, rather than medicating and aiming for a calm and orderly status quo. Is this even possible, given the profitability of mental health issues in our capitalistic culture? I hang on to hope that it’s possible. Thanks for this thought experiment, Steph!