CLMOOC Collaborative Calendar 2024

CLMOOC Collaborative Calendar 2024

Another new year beckons — another CLMOOC collaboration happens.

A group of us from the Connected Learning network, connected as we have been over the years and living in different parts of the world, have come together once again to create a new year calendar of illustrations, photography, comics and puzzles.

And it’s free!

Head to the CLMOOC website to download your own copy for printing or viewing.

Peace (What The New Year Brings … please),
Kevin

Daily Create: Ten Clicks In

I submitted the idea for this morning’s Daily Create, using River to navigate through a series of artistic tiles and end on a page of art. I made a short video of my excursion with my ten clicks. I found it interesting and mesmerizing and rather soothing.

Peace (Wandering In),
Kevin

DS106: Remix Monday (Week 1)

DS106 Remix Mondays Week1

After a DS106 Daily Create prompt yesterday (Sunday) about coming up with a new day of celebration based on Stir-Up Sunday, I decided that a Remix Monday sounded cool. Then, I thought, maybe I should try to do it — to remix a single piece of art, five different ways, over five weeks, every Monday.

Remix It Mondays

I dove back into the DS106 archives and found this image and text by Guilia Forsythe that was used more than 10 years ago by the DS106 community (before my time) for a Kickstarter campaign, and began to brainstorm some ideas. I soon realized that the image was actually a remix itself, from a Sonic Youth album cover (Goo), and although the album cover seems to have a “fair use” license, it also seemed to say you had to use the entire album cover, not just pieces of it.

So, I mostly am focusing on the handwritten text that was part of the remix done way back when, although today, for my first remix (the next will be next Monday), I revamped the art itself, adding new images to replace the original, but keeping the same text, which celebrates the act of making art.

Peace (and Remix),
Kevin

Daily Create: A Meander

Beatles Lyric, Illustrated

I submitted today’s DS106 Daily Create prompt (perusing Beatles lyrics via a Beatles ‘bot for art). It took me a bit to figure out which lyrics I wanted to use and then how to illustrate them. Given my blog’s title, this lyric seemed just right for me.

Peace (and song),
Kevin

Video By AI: Saxophones, Dogs, Flowers and Faces

A neighbor of mine, after a street discussion about the potential and danger of AI to the world of art, suggested I give Runway AI a try, as it turns text and images into movement videos. I know this kind of technology (word to video) is still in early stages, so I was not all that surprised by the weirdness of the results. And yes, it was odd, all right.

I first started by uploading an image of our dog with a ball toy but it was so strange. Her face got really contorted and turned into another dog altogether (not nearly as cute!).

My next experiment was with text prompts. First, I asked for a saxophone player on a jazz club stage at night. I don’t know what kind of saxophone this is or why he is playing it with his nose, but … I was amused. (see above)

Next, I asked it in text for Wind Over Field of Sunflowers, and it is rather lovely. The flowers have an oversized head, cartoon-y look to them, and they move ever so slightly in the wind in a slow video pan. This one was the best of the bunch.

Finally, I uploaded an image of a face made in sand at the beach, and got … more weirdness. I don’t even know how it got to that ending.

Peace (and play),
Kevin

Daily Create: Playing With Corners and Folds

I’m not even sure what kept me working on this DS106 Daily Create prompt through the day yesterday but the prompt about paper folds first led to an image that I thought was interesting but not what I wanted (I used an online paper fold art generator off Github but it seemed more like some alien blob factory).

Folded Blobs

So then I wrote a short poem, about writing on paper as you fold the corners in.

start from a corner
and pull inward, sharp
edges folded at the
center of the writing
of a poem of the story
you were trying so
hard to make clear
before it disappeared

That visual stayed with me for a few hours, and then I went back to start to try to visualize the words actually being folded. This was done using a screenshot of my poem and then some filters and effects in Lunapic.

Folded Paper Poem

Later, I wondered if I could make the digital image more three-dimensional and found a site that sort of does that, or at least does it interestingly enough for me to work with. I took that video file of the flat poem becoming more dimensional and moved it into iMovie, where I kept on tinkering around.

Then I composed the music track, added narration, and it was done. Normally, a Daily Create takes about 15 minutes but this one just hung around in my head for the day, so I just kept on playing around. The video at the top of the post is what I ended up with.

Peace (and Folds),
Kevin

Art-Full Remix

Today’s Daily Create via DS106 had us using an online art generator (Type A Painting) that turns letters and words into neat art blocks. I wrote about remix (as did Sarah) and then decided to remix my original, using art filters and video fades.

Peace (and Play),
Kevin

Using AI To Animate Drawings

I came upon this site via ETMOOC2 and wondered about it’s potential for play in the classroom. It’s called Animated Drawings and is fueled by an AI engine via Meta (uh oh). It’s very simple to use: upload a drawing, and follow the steps, and get your drawing put into small bits of motion — dancing, walking, jumping, etc.

I did two experiments. One with a large face with small body and one with a saxophone body. I tried one with a starfish drawing but it just didn’t work. It was really weird.

Peace (and Motion),
Kevin

Poem: Landscape of the Digital

In A Dreamy Landscape

I’ve been doing periodic experiments with inputting parts of or entire poems into Ai Art Platforms, to see what comes out the other side. This one fit nicely with the poem’s main idea — of a dream landscape — that was written from a one-word prompt off Mastodon (“dreamy”). The AI platform I have been using the most these days is Adobe Firefly, since it allows a lot of manipulation of settings.

Peace (and landscapes),
Kevin