conferences

I set myself an ambitious day today: I was trying to finish two different digital story projects. (And participate in some discussions. And help out some of my fellow DPL folks. And attend a workshop!)

Well, so it turns out that I only finished one project. The other is still in progress, and even though it won’t be done til after I’m home from Digital Pedagogy Lab, I do want to finish it and share it here!

But without further ado, here’s the challenge project I chose:

And you can find my finished project  here

A special shout-out to Nefarei on deviantart for the awesome artwork I used for Xia’s profile pic, and of course huge thanks to Jim Henson and Brian Froud. You’ll see why once you read the story. 😉

My favorite part of today’s Media Exploration Day in Digital Storytelling at DPL 2018 was this project.

I did a slightly modified version of a prompt asking us to record sounds from a particular space and create a 5 minute soundscape of that space. But here’s the thing: for storytelling to feel real and important to me, it has to be rooted in a place (or issue, memory, etc) that’s meaningful to me. Even though I’m having a great time at this conference, I don’t have enough of a connection to the University of Mary Washington to feel like crafting a soundscape here would be an authentic thing for me to do. I needed to find a different place, and I chose London.

A little online research brought me to the London Sound Survey and their Creative Commons-licensed collection on archive.org.

I’m pretty happy with the results – I’ve never really done much audio work, and haven’t touched Audacity in years. In the spirit of full disclosure, I spent about 2 hours getting myself oriented in the software, choosing my sound files, and creating the soundscape. I hope that you are able to discover some different aspects of London than you might be expecting, and to experience several different parts of the city all at once – something that can only happen through the magic of digital storytelling.

Another Digital Storytelling mini-challenge: illustrate principles of design through photos taken in 20 minutes

repetition

alignment & hierarchy

contrast

space & color

As part of our Digital Storytelling course here at the 2018 Digital Pedagogy Lab, I completed a photoblitz challenge in 20 minutes in response to these prompts:

Find a grid pattern somewhere (brick sidewalk or ceiling tiles)

Get close! Photograph an ordinary object from as close as you can manage.

Illustrate attraction in a photograph today.

Out and about walking?

Trees come in all shapes and sizes. Make a photo of an interesting tree.

Take a picture of a word or sign that represents the kind of day you’re having.

Take a photo of two related objects of drastically different sizes.