Breaking Images

Breaking Art to Make Art

Salvador Dali just got a little bit more weird.

The Breaking of a Picture

This is what the picture looks like originally. It is of a DCI marching band, the Bluecoats at DCI World Championships 2016 in Indianapolis, Indiana.

This next picture started as the same exact picture. However, this time I went into the file, changed it from JPG to TXT and broke it down by copying and pasting the text within the file.

The different ways of Donald Trump. Breaking the image.

Self-Generating Text & Bots

          

          The topic of self-generating text and bots can be controversial to say the least. Do these programs possess or produce emotions for their audiences? Who is responsible for the work these programs create? Is it the human being who wrote the code, or the computer itself? This discussion is solely based on one’s own personal opinion and beliefs, but Digital Dangers came up with a consensus as to what or who gets the credit for the productions made. To start with, yes, the individual who writes the code for self-generating programs has ownership of what will be produced. However, if the coder inputs materials that were previously written, such as lyrics, the author of the lyrics should also have some rights in the product because without their construction of the lyrics, the coder would not have had any material to write code for.
           A great example of this is a simplified program that Sonny Rae Tempest took from Nick Montfort, called “Camel Tail”. This piece is very fascinating because it takes iconic lyrics from the very well-known band, Metallica, and generates a random four line poem. We believe that Metallica has some right to this program because it uses the lyrics in which they wrote. However, we think Tempest would have the right to the text that is generated through the program itself. This is because the lyrics different from the original songs themselves because of the fact that only short snippets of lyrics are used in the order they are meant to be in. Some of what the text generated creates makes for the viewer, however, on some occasions the text that is generated is complete nonsense. This program would have never been created without Tempest or Metallica. That being said, we believe that both parties should have some sort of rights to the finished product when it gets down to the fine print.  

 Next, we switch gears to talk about bots. Unlike self-generating text, bots are more associated with social media. Twitter is a huge platform for bots to call home and reach many viewers. Some examples of Twitter bots are @NSA_PRISMbot, @congress-edits, and @TwoHeadlines. The NRA bot posts headlines that are fiction but believable responses from the NRA. While most of them are similar to the type of press releases the NRA puts out, they are still fictional. The information that this bot puts out are real numbers, locations, victim type and firearm usage. However, the bot jumbles all of the data up to get fictional posts. In contract, The Congress Edits Twitter page consists of strait facts. This bot tweets whenever anonymous edits are made to any Wikipedia page from an IP address associated with the U.S. Congress. This bot calls attention to possible fabrications that these articles can contain and is able to show the specific changes that are made. Two Headlines is more of a playful page. This bot takes two separate headlines from Google News, and pieces them together to reflect the news but not specific headlines. 
Another interesting example of a Twitter bot is @pentametron created by Ranjit Bhatnagar. Unlike the other examples of Twitter bots, @pentametron does not generate its own text. Instead, this bot filters though 10% of the Twitter stream while simultaneously also using an online dictionary service to find tweets to retweet that not only rhyme, but also follow the iambic pentameter, the preferred meter for most of Shakespeare's work. Iambic pentameter can also be described as being similar to a hear beat.
         The Twitter bot, @pentametron, is not meant to form coherent thoughts when filtering through its criteria for retweets. Instead, it aims to create a humorous juxtaposition of unrelated thoughts of real Twitter users paired together to form a never ending poem. This specific Twitter bot is different from the rest. This is because it questions whether the person who created the code for the bot, or the individuals who's tweets were selected are the author(s) for what is put on the page.

Whether or not any of the self-generating texts or bots produce emotion in their audiences depends on each individual viewer or group of people. Some bots that are considered protest bots, like the @NRA_Tally, can really create an uproar amongst certain audiences depending on what is exposes or entices people to dig into. The same can be said with the @congress-edits by showing what changes are being made to Wikipedia pages in real time. This means that people who are dedicated to this bot page can greater expose the edits and share the information with others. On the other hand, some would say that if a human is not creating the content of the piece, than there can be no emotion received by the reader. This is because they believe that if a computer is randomly selecting things, than there is no real meaning to any of it.

What is Digital Humanities

                

Digital humanities is a diverse up and coming multi-media platform that is breaking barriers of traditional humanities. We have to thank advancements in modern technology for changing the way literature, art, and communication can be viewed. The definition of what is digital humanities is constantly being challenged and changed. It serves as an umbrella term for many components of digital culture. It’s both made up of things that have been digitized, like a database of historic literature that has been made available on the internet, and things that have been born digital, meaning something that could not have existed without the creation of the computer and the digital platform. In terms of the content of the digital humanities courses I have and am currently taking, digital humanities manifests in areas like interactive fiction, electronic literaure, game studies, hypertext novels, and kinetic poetry.   A digital work usually challenges the viewer to be more interactive with the piece in order to tell the story. The viewer may be given options of how to navigate through a piece, each person that interacts with a piece may have a different view experience as well as a different story all together in some cases. The text of the piece may take the form of moving on the screen and paired with music to make the viewer more engaged like that of Y0UNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES. The ways digital humaniites is interpeted and composed are endless. There is no real definition, its about how the creation of technology influences traditional literaure to transform, to be viewed using different platforms, different viewing styles, incorporation of visuals or sound, an creative expression.

  

Mr. Plimpton's Revenge - Second Blog

"Mr. Plimpton’s Revenge" is a Google Maps essay that is very enticing for a first time reader. At the time, the author was an undergraduate writing major at the University of Pittsburgh Oakland who lived the typical college life. This meaning that he had a shitty car, was tight on cash, and mixed drugs with more drugs without any concern for the repercussions they would cause the next day. The author was given the task to pick up a big shot of a man when it came to the world of journalism. To the readers surprise, the undergrad was able to pick up the esteemed writer, Mr. Plimpton, from the airport after a long night of mixing drugs, which was the norm. He was thoroughly embarrassed with how much he babbled to Mr. Plimpton, but even more so when he was not able to treat his guest to Chinese food on Forbes Avenue. This was because he had used his last five dollars to put gas in his tank. The story takes a few unexpected twists when the two men run into each other throughout the years in different cities such as Harrisburg and on the streets of New York City. The author considers himself Mr. Plimpton’s stalker because they continued to ironically run into each other in the strangest places. 

This piece changes how a traditional story can be read. Not only is it telling a story of misfortunate and embarrassingly awkward encounters with Mr. Plimpton, but now we can physically navigate to where the strange encounters took place. The reader can physically view exactly where the author was standing when he yelled across the street at Mr. Plimpton. This viewing experience adds another dimension of understanding to the story. We can see how unlikely it was that the author and Mr. Plimpton just so happen to be at the same place at the same time at several different locations, all of which are not particularly close in relation nor connected to similar events. The layout of the piece also works as a metaphor for time, as the directions of the piece progress, so does the time in which the event happened. The viewer can get a sense that the layout of the piece was used to show how different occurances in our life act as a set of directions of where we end up next. This is a set of directions in which unexpectedly lead the author to Mr. Plimpton.The viewer cannot just click from direction to direction out of order and still understand the story, it must be viewed the same way a person would view real directions or that person will just end up lost and confused. Using Google Maps as a platform for composing a story is a very clever way to utilize an existing technology and twist it's purpose into a completely new thing. 

Public Secrets - Third Blog Post

          Public secrets, by Sharon Daniel and Erik Loyer, gives the audience an inside look on the prison-industrial complex in central California. This female correctional facility is the largest correctional facility in the United States. Sharon Daniels is a legal advocate who spent three years collecting information, recorded some of the women inside the system, and allowed them to narrate their experiences while also giving a look at the conditions they were living in. The majority of the general population has no clue about the types of personal or environmental situations these women are put in everyday. This piece of work helps in exposing the secrets of the prison system, and gives those on the outside a better understanding of what actually happens within the prison. The piece is truly compelling both in content and in presentation. The viewer is given the choice to either explore secrets from within the prison and secrets that the women have from their time outside of the prision. Small blurbs of texts from different stories display themselves all over the screen and the viewer must choose which one to pursue by hovering over the text with their mouse and clicking on the text to engage with it. The individual story will begin playing, from there the reader can choose to either listen to another story on the same screen or to look further into other related stories by clicking on a suggested topic within the viewed blurb of text. It also helps in creating different ways one can view and consider the issues brought up in these women's stories. 

          Stories like these that came from a correctional facility in California were unheard of due to a "ban" that prohibited journalists from one-on-one interviews with inmates. The ban also stopped prisoners’ correspondence with the media, and banned the use of cameras, recording devices, and writing instruments in interviews with the media. Also, inmates did not have access to computers, cameras, or any type of media equipment. In fact, Assembly member Tom Ammiano created a bill in 2012 that would have allowed the media access to prisons in California. This bill was vetoed by Gov. Jerry Brown who stated, “Furthermore, giving criminals celebrity status through repeated appearances on television will glorify their crimes and hurt victims and their families… I agree that too little media access may be harmful, but too much can be as well. This bill gives too much.” In response, Tom Ammiano stated, “Press access isn’t just to sell newspapers. It’s a way for the public to know that the prisons it pays for are well-run" (https://prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity.wordpress.com).

During the time this piece was published, it was and still is eye opening. In fact, it is especially eye opening to someone who is unaware of all the restrictions these women face. Yes, they are prisoners, but they still deserve some type of basic human rights even though the California justice system thinks otherwise. 

There are so many different stories from all types of women within this piece. If fact, it is hard to believe that everything is true… it is prison culture shock. One women protests that she believes the judicial system has the assumption that women are easier to contain than men. She also witnessed a man with a hefty record and a women who was never gotten in trouble before getting charged with the same exact crime from the same judge.  However, the man got 16 months, whereas the woman got five years. One may ask how something like that makes sense? Another women talks about how correctional officers who do not like an inmate will intentionally try to instigate fights between that inmate and another since the officer is not allowed to physically hit the prisoners. Another woman tells a story of a 23 year old who was arrested for throwing a beer can at a squad car and got sentenced 60 years to life. So many sections of this piece are baffling and start to burn a fire inside of the reader with disgust of how the judicial system is set up.

It is hard to get through all of the stories just because there is an abundance of them, it is sad listening to many of them. The television series ‘Orange is the New Black,” was based off of some of the situations in this piece and personally after watching the television show and reading some of the pieces, I began to make the connections. It is sickening how women in correctional facilities are treated in today's society. The United States also has the largest prison population in the world, and it is because of facilities like this. All of this is mostly based on how inmates are treated… both men and women. There is no opportunity for improvement while incarcerated in which it becomes what is best known as the "revolving door." This is when inmates who are released are more likely to return for committing more crimes because they have not learned any better while in prison. 

Digital Humanities Summarized

There is no one exact definition that describes digital humanities in full. It is a very broad term that encompasses a vast variety of meanings. It can be involved with the reading of electronic texts or hypertext readings. Some programs allow you to actually be involved in a certain poem or reading, allowing you to be further engaged. This is communicated through a vast amount of 1’s and 0’s that the computer can recognize. Digital Humanities involves a great deal of collaboration between partners or groups. There are systems out there that allow people to communicate on a very large scale including Xbox and Facebook. They both have digital hypertext that you are actually involved in. I also find this diagram explaining digital humanities research methods quite helpful when attempting to further understand the real meaning. I like how the tech part of it shows the scripting and the software components that are very important in the creation of most hypertext you see online today.

photo credit: http://www.library.illinois.edu/sc/services/Digital_Humanities/

What Exactly is Digital Humanities?

       Digital Humanities (DH) can be defined as many things. One way that someone can define DH is simply by breaking down the words themselves. For example, because it is Digital Humanities, one can take away that it has digital in it so that must mean that it is involving technology in one way or another that expresses information through binary code (using 0’s and 1’s). Also, with the word humanities, one can take away that it is involving the general knowledge of human culture, philosophy, and language. Also, underneath the umbrella of DH there are many different genres. This is because there are many different ways for one to express forms of literature through the use of technology. This means that each person can look at Digital Humanities in a different way, which would mean that they are going to define it differently compared to the person that is sitting next to them. A book like definition of what Digital Humanities is would be the critical study of how the technologies and techniques associated with the digital medium intersect with and alter humanities scholarship and scholarly communication. Again, this is practically saying that Digital Humanities is when the essence of humanities is being produced through technology. Another great thing to look at is the Wikipedia page on DH.

What is Digital Humanities?

The field Digital Humanities is broad although some people are close minded to its true potential. To break it down ‘digital’ simply is involving or relating to the use of computer technology and ‘humanities’ is coming to an understanding with human culture, history, literature, art, music and philosophy. So you basically marry these two definitions into one which gives you an academic field concerned with the application of computational tools and methods to traditional humanities disciplines such as literature, art, music, history and culture. The main goal is to shed light on old and new humanities research.

This is an ever-changing definition though, not one scholar will give you the same definitive answer as to what exactly Digital Humanities is just because it is such a massive field and those involved in it work on so many different things. Projects in this field use tools like 3-D mapping, electronic literary analysis, and digitization but that’s just a few things. Social media is widely used as well which I personally think is so interesting. I basically grew up surrounded by social media networks so I’ve been learning as things advance but I want to learn more about them and how to use the things we’ve learned in class even though it’s only been a few things so far.

Collaboration is also a huge part of this field, with sharing research and ongoing projects anything is possible. Individuals is this field are able to learn so much and its always changing so you definitely won’t be stuck behind a boring old desk all day doing the same thing day in and day out. You have the ability to learn about different cultures, anthropology, archaeology, geography, art, history, literature, religion and the list goes on.

The hyperlink attached here is what I thought was a really cool piece on the stories of  a 1971 strike at a northern Maine paper mill. Listening to this kinda takes you back to the time and the audience gets a rush of emotions with what's going on from the interviews and the narrator.  This is just one small example of the different things you can do in the Digital Humanities field, what I really love is the aspect of taking something old that people probably don't even know exists and making it new... giving it a twist and renewing it.