Touch the firehose of ds106, the most recent flow of content from all of the blogs syndicated into ds106. As of right now, there have been 92780 posts brought in here going back to December 2010. If you want to be part of the flow, first learn more about ds106. Then, if you are truly ready and up to the task of creating web art, sign up and start doing it.

  20. cathleennardi

    The Daily Create – Just Do It!

    by
    | Syndicated
    November 5, 2013
    I really have missed ds106.  The Daily Create is such a beautiful concept, you really need to try it.  I am making up for my absence by doing as many as I can this week.

    It started off with Kevin Hodgson's (@dogtrax)  PhotoBlitz "New England Leaf Collage."  That got me inspired to check out the Daily Create since it had been awhile.  Birds.  Well, let me tell you, I get to see some awesome birds in Hawaii, but the ones I like the best are the cattle egrets who prance about our lawn morning, noon, and night.  Every try to take a picture?  They can feel your vibration once you start looking for your camera.  So, I moved out to a old fence that was overgrown and, luck a hunter in the blind waited for his prey.  As I sat there, I noticed this incredible looking fruit like yellow thing that I had never noticed before.  I took a picture.  There was a green one.  I decided to hell with the egret, let me do a Autumn Photo Blitz Maui style.  Bananas on the vine, wild poinsettia coming into season, red ginger, and the fruits of the harvest, papaya and lillikoi.  And the fruit like yellow thing?  It is a prickly melon.  I threw in a shot from where I was standing trying to catch a picture the egret just to make you jealous.

    Birds! Twitter, Hitchcock, Make it all About Birds



    So, as you can see, I came up empty with the egret, but @RockyLou inspired me to be creative with the idea with her "FreeBird".  I realized I had the perfect bird right in front of my face.  This is a lacquer tray with a peacock feather.  I really had to work at getting the lighting because it kept wanting to reflect all the daylight.  I finally put it up against the kitchen counter and turned all the lights on.  This reduced the glare dramatically.  We live with my 97 year old mother-in-law and I use the tray to bring her meals.  When Mariana Funes asked about the tray, it reminded me taking pictures is not enough.  You have to write about them and the process.  My process is fairly simplistic, so I go for the story.  Thanks, Mariana!

    Take a picture of a real dog or draw one and take a picture of the drawing.




    For over 20 years my husband and I have raised dogs.  Our last dog died about a month before we left the mainland.  I was just going to put up an old picture, but then I realized that our cat, Gita, who made the trip and is adapting well to his new environment (we call him the cane rat mauler), is really our cat - dog.  And, please don't tell him differently.  Fellow ds106er, Mariana, once again, asked about him and shared this clip of a cat who thinks he is also a dog.  I was sorry to have to tell my husband that the video of Gita with his head hanging out of his red pick up had already been taken, so it wouldn't be going viral (in the event he could ever actually get it).  Check it out, it's pretty funny.


    Trace a photo of yourself. Upload both the original and your drawing.



    I have not yet discovered my inner drawing artist, so I decided to use a couple of apps that I have been playing around with Mobile Monet and Manga.  I had actually used these to create some profile pictures when I started to create my digital identify.  I like the texture you can get with Monet (bottom) and I like the lines you can get with Manga (top).  I suppose I could've experimented a bit more, but, instead, I decided to show the original picture with my Dad taken in 1964 and another with a similar profile taken 20 years later.  Uh oh.  I'm on the left in both pictures........


    Stories in/of the Web





    While I read through Week 9:  Stories from the Web, I failed to produce any content.  As I was writing up this blog, I received a text from two friends in New Orleans with this picture. Sensing an opportunity at hand, I quickly looked up the local paper, but was unable to find any front page that I could use X-Ray Goggles, so instead, I found this jpeg and was able to tune my Gimp skills by inserting the picture.  The original text went to about 8 people, so I sent it to everyone.  Within minutes, I got the desired response.  It also allowed me to embed a message chat into my blog, which I had never done before.



    “I discovered today…”


    I discovered today that 60 seconds of a movie has an incredible amount of information.  Fellow ds106er, Mariana Funes magnified that minute by separating the audio and the video tracks of a movie clip for the Movie Reading assignment.  Having worked in a Film/Sound Recording Studio in the 80's, I sat through countless mixes for WGBH's Nature series.  Sometimes getting the layers of sound just right took hours.  Steve Izzi, the lead engineer was a perfectionist and he could make it sound like you were right there in the natural habitat, weaving sounds together into a montage that was clear, clean and crisp.  Movie reading is bringing back that skill set that has been latent for over 30 years.  I guess I discovered 2 things today....

    Not realizing that I had missed the narrative Daily Create, I added this one.  It's always funny how you start out with one realization and then come to another.  I suppose that is part of our unconscious mind at work.  Making art gives expression to those deep voices inside ourselves, if we would only listen.

    So, as I said, I have missed ds106 and the Daily Create.  But even more, I have missed the community of creative artists who have been on this journey with me, and especially our resident shrink, Mariana, who this week reawakened my creative self.  Thank you.  #4LIFE


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  23. cathleennardi

    There is NO AWOL in #ds106

    by
    | Syndicated
    October 20, 2013
    The past two weeks have been devoted to Audio in #ds106 and I feel like I have been unconnected.Fortunately, there is nothing like AWOL in #ds106, because there are.........notifications from the group on their Daily Creates, their radio commercials an...
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  25. cathleennardi

    Haiku in Haiku

    by
    | Syndicated
    October 8, 2013


    It’s October! Write a haiku about any special October day


    When was the last time you wrote a Haiku?  5-7-5?  I am fortunate to live in Haiku, Hawaii and took the opportunity to make a Visual Haiku.  Quite frankly, I need to improve my GIMP skills, so it was a great way to explore layers, typeface and manipulation. Did you know that typography evokes a sense of place?

    The papayas were picked on the property.  The background is a placemat that was the perfect backdrop.

    I was thrilled that my #designmeld partner +Ary Aranguiz followed my lead with her own visual Haiku.  It's all about inspiring each other to be more creative.


    Autumn Haiku

    What's your Haiku?
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  27. cathleennardi

    We Are All [Artists]

    by
    | Syndicated
    October 7, 2013
    We started off Design Week with inspiration from Tim Owens @timmmmyboy.  I loved it and used it as inspiration to create a Haiku Deck using all original photographs.  (First time ever!)We have been asked to reflect on all aspects of desi...
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  28. cathleennardi

    How Do You Know You Are Learning?

    by
    | Syndicated
    October 7, 2013
    List twenty ways you can document your learning. How many have you done this week?As you might imagine, because this was a written assignment (no frills, no pictures, no html code) I started to generate a list...and then half way through the exercise, ...
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  30. cathleennardi

    Digital Creativity: Harnessing the Collective Energy

    by
    | Syndicated
    September 30, 2013




    "It is innate for human beings to create stories and to create art."  ~Jason Eskanazi

    In Week 5 of DS106, we were challenged to create stories through our photographs. Using suggestions borrowed from David duChemin in his book Ten:  Ten Ways to Improve Your Craft,  we were asked to be more deliberate in taking photographs.  In an age where everyone takes pictures of everything ALL THE TIME, they are doing just that.  They are taking a picture to record an event, not a photograph -- a creation, a play on words,  light, or perspective.  Not since I took a photography course in college have I been so deliberate about taking photographs.  At the time I had a 35mm SLR that my father bought on a trip to Vietnam in 1965.  We developed our own film.  We captured ideas and translated them to images.

    The first exercise was a PhotoBlitz.   The exercise challenges you to think quickly and creatively.  You take 11 pictures given certain key words in 15 minutes that evoke the given idea.  I chose Ho'okipa Beach on Maui's North Shore for the exercise.  Other students expressed feeling awkward taking photographs in public (who is this weirdo)?  Beach goers are more relaxed and I was free to roam.  I chose to create a Haiku Deck on Visual Literacy using my pictures.  Schools focus on Literacy, Digital Literacy, Numerical Literacy and Cultural Literacy.  Rarely do we see focus on the importance of Visual Literacy and how it can be used to draw connections across the curriculum.

    We were then asked to select what we considered our five best pictures.  These were my favorites....

    PhotoBlitz!

    "And we find that people doing this week’s work come away noticing the world around them in more detail." ~Headless #ds106

    My next photography exercise was not assigned.  We took a Road Trip to Hana and I decided to try out the suggestions that I learned during the week.  Follow the rule of thirds, change your perspective, get pickier, pay attention to the moment.  No longer was I just clicking, I was actually designing the picture.  Not too bad for an amateur with an iPhone.  I also employed the Fast Tricks for the iPhone to further enhance my skill set.

    Sea ArchLava CliffsFollow the Path...The Jeep Goes Everywhere!Windmill Farm PerspectiveHamoa Beach
    Hamoa Beach #2Haleakala National Park SignA Zen Moment on the Beach

    Road Trips, a set on Flickr.

    The final exercise I was able to complete was to "pimp up" my Flickr account.  That included creating a set of my best photos.  I decided that I would select the Blue Ribbon photo for each week of #ds106.  This way I can see the progression of my work (hopefully)!  As you can see above, I was able to embed a Flickr set into my blog and used FlickrSLiDR to embed the Blue Ribbon Photo of the Week in a Flickr Slideshow below.

    Blue Ribbon of the Week


    Created with flickrSLiDR

    I spent a considerable amount of time looking at the work of fellow DS106ers, commenting on blogs, seeing incredibly creative images, methodology, and hard work that has been expended this week by the community.  I am energized by the collective energy that is evolving.  Each idea generated creates a flurry of activity, support and partnership.  Consider Rochelle Lockridge & Christine Hendrick's Audio Week in Review, or Ary Aranguiz's CollaboGiffing Project, Mariana Fuenes's determination to isolate the "eyes" in Ary's animated GIF and John Johnston's Photoblitz App..to name a few.   

    DS106 channels the collective energy into the creation of stories, sounds, and art that allow us to make make meaning of our experience.  In Is There Such a Thing as Digital Creativity by Julian Sefton, she suggests that the process of selection, manipulation and decision-making in meaning-making through comparison of editing across media...points to the way that digital creativity – or at least meaning-making in the digital era – brings together in the new ways processes that used to be separate and bound by academic convention.

    DS106 showcases the power of digital creativity by harnessing the collective energy of the group.  In eLearning and Digital Cultures: A multitudinous open online course, Jeremy Knox (a co-facilitator of the course),  observes that where work was collected and displayed together, the observer begins to get a sense, not of the individual merit of a single piece, but of the collective energy and intensity of the multitude...a shift away from thinking about individuals to thinking about connections, flows, and relations that exceed us as human beings.

    DS106 transforms digital creativity into an engaging (often intoxicating) social experience.  We move from passive participants to active content creators. In the sharing of our individual stories, we contribute to the collective energy of the group.   In his blog, Kevin Hodgson reminds us that  the activity of making shifts consumers away from mass-produced materials and therefore, provides an individualistic sense of creation; and that the social element of digital literacies has the potential to increase engagement and heighten the creative element of making something that will impact the world.


    What DS106 exemplifies is the synergistic creativity of the group, the importance of collaborative storytelling,and the opportunity to hone the skills necessary for creating, communicating, collaborating and networking in a digital world.



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