#which are printed or audio objects
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the thing you need to understand about brienne and jaime’s white sword tower scene is that it’s their first date
loras is their waiter
#jaime x brienne#asoiaf#this is about asoiaf#i’m talking about the books#book post#about the books#which are printed or audio objects#and were never filmed#so nothing on film applies#or should be mentioned to me at any time for any reason
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Saw something earlier that had a couple things in it that burns my butter. Not naming any names because I'm not trying to call someone out. I just need to vent.
One
People need to remember which continuity the fic they are reading is from.
MCU Daredevil, Comics Daredevil, and Daredevil 2003 are entirely separate universes.
It is never wrong for a fic writer to present the events / characters / a characters powers as they are presented in that particular universe.
For example, it is not wrong to describe Matt as having brown hair when it's the MCU just because comics Matt is (usually) a red head.
Two
I have very firm policy about ignoring canon when it is being bloody stupid. To paraphrase Nick Fury: "I realize that canon has made its decision. But since it was a stupid ass decision, I have elected to ignore it."
Yes, I realize 'being bloody stupid' is a subjective opinion and people's thresholds on that are going to vary. But anything that throws me out of the story is going to get tossed out. Period.
For example, I do not care that in the Daredevil comics that Matt has been known to read printed material / computer screens by touch. Or tell what color something is purely by touch. It is not happening in my fics. It's dumb.
And frankly rather ableist.
God forbid Matt cannot read something because it wasn't printed in braille or available in an audio format, etc. Or cannot tell what color these otherwise identical objects are. You might think he was blind or something (obvious sarcasm is obvious).
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The Haunting Perfection of Ballora
Slight Content warning: Mentions of child murder
With Five Nights at Freddy's: Help Wanted 2 releasing sometime next month, we will be seeing the return of everybody's favourite ballerina, so I thought this would be a good time to start talking about her again. Now, as much as I hope this will mean the inclusion of some much needed lore for our girl, this is not what I wish to solely focus on today. Although we will touch on the topic, I'd mostly like to talk about Ballora's overall design and how she left such an impact on me in the short amount of time we had with her.
Ballora is arguably the single most humanoid animatronic in the game's canon. While Circus Baby is obviously human-like, Ballora is especially human because of her proportions. Her figure, her hands and her facial structure all really bring her to life. Now, here is where I will briefly interject to mention the "who/why" of it all because I think regardless of how little we know about Ballora, these questions play an important part in understanding her human appearance. Circus Baby is the only other humanoid animatronic we have in the game, but we know her place. Being modelled after and later killing William Afton's daughter, Elizabeth, she is an important character to the story and lore. So then, who is Ballora and why is she so human? Well, although I don't have any definitive answers, many have speculated that Ballora is, in some way, connected to/representative of Mrs. Afton. As a result, it's become difficult for me personally to separate her from the image of a motherly figure, which I think adds some layers to her creep-factor. I mean, a mother is supposed to keep children safe, right? ...Right?
Now, in Sister Location we get the following blue prints.
Points B and C are pretty self explanatory. Ballora can stabilise herself and alert herself to any objects that may cause a collision to prevent accidents. However, points A and B are a little trickier to discern any actual meaning from at first glance. For a full run down of all the Sister Location blueprints as well as theories on how the animatronics work together to fulfil their 'purposes', I'll refer you to this post by an unfortunately deleted user. The important takeaway is as follows: Ballora is all about audio. She can sing, play music and she herself can even hear. However, she doesn't use these features for killing, at least not primarily. She, like Funtime Foxy, is more of a lure for kids and adults alike, to gather them away from Circus Baby and/or Funtime Freddy as they are the designated killers. She uses her voice and her music related functions as bait to aid them. I highly recommend checking out the post if you get the chance.
Moving on, I wanna talk about Five Nights at Freddy's AR: Special Delivery. Scott Cawthon said on a steam post in 2016 "I would imagine that she actually glides on a track most of the time, but after leaving the track she uses all four limbs to crawl more like a spider." This is exactly what we see in Special Delivery. Ballora is one of the only animatronics to crawl at the player, rather than the usual walk/run. As Scott mentioned, it gives her a spider-like quality that I think contrasts her elegance in a super neat way. She becomes this really unsettling, distressing creature, rather than the dainty and beautiful ballerina we came to know in Sister Location. We also see in both games the long, sharp teeth that fill out her mouth under her face plates which I think add to what I mentioned above. Here's a lovely image of what her crawl looks like for any previously lucky readers than might have never seen it before. :)
I think Ballora is a really intriguing character to talk about. On one hand I do think there's a point to be made about her having some connection to the Afton family. Afterall, the other Funtime Animatronics are pink, the colour most associated with ballerinas. So, why was Ballora given a purple and blue colour palate instead? She was also built around the same time as Circus Baby, a character that was modelled after the likeness of a specific someone, so, surely she, being so humanoid, must have been modelled after someone too? Don't even get me started on her song. The amount of ways you can interpret the first 4 lines alone is something I think we all still struggle with. That said, I do understand people not buying into the theory. There hasn't been much tangible evidence to properly give the theory legs, none of what I've said can sustain it alone.
Regardless of where you stand with her in terms of the lore, I still love Ballora's design and overall aesthetic. The sad ballerina left dancing through the halls of an empty gallery, struggling to find her place in the story or the world she was born into. She has a melancholy about her but, as we see in Special Delivery, she also has this animalistic nature that makes her incredibly nerve-wracking to come face-to-face with. Overall, I think Ballora has a bone chilling design and I hope we see a lot more of her in Help Wanted 2. I don't think she was given the time of day to truly shine and reach her potential, but here's to the future of FNAF, I cant wait to see what it has in store!
#fnaf#five nights at freddys#ballora#media analysis#essay writing#help wanted#special delivery#sister location#fnaf theory
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ONEIRIC YAM (POT)
2024
INTERACTIVE SONIC SCULPTURE / 3D PRINTED FABRICATION, PLASTIC FLOWER POT, ELECTRONICS, SOIL, PHONE FOR AUDIO INPUT, ZINE
14.5 X 14.5 X 12 CM
youtube
ONEIRIC YAM (POT) is an interactive installation piece incorporating 3D printed objects, electronics, sound, and zines.
The Oneiric Yam is an oneiric, crypto-botanical structure (it relates to dreams and mythological or unproven plants). It grows out of the ground in an irregular egg shape and sports a hollow interior and holes in the walls. At night, spores are released into the air through those holes. When animals (including humans) inhale them, they begin to dream.
Several leds illuminate the yam from the inside. an audio jack can be plugged in to play an ambient synthesized track, overlayed with dreams recited by Elevenlab's text-to-speech AI.
The zine SEAMOUNT ONEIRONAUTICS! builds the world surrounding the Oneiric Yam, contextualizing it within a sci-fi story about a lone researcher.
The Oneiric Yam is the main subject of my Seamount Oneironautics series of works, which focus on dreams, lucid dreaming, and crypto-biology.
For this project, I focused on enclosures: enclosing the circuit in the Yam, enclosing the Yam in a pot, and enclosing/contextualizing the piece within a story (the zine).
#new media#dream journal#comics#art#media art#lucid dreaming#dreams#dreaming#cryptids#electronics#zine#oneiric#cryptid#Youtube
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60 Years of Doctor Who Anniversary Marathon - Davison 12th Review
Worlds of Big Finish - Spin-off
Does anyone remember that Disney Afternoon magazine that ran in the 90s?
In it, they would feature articles on upcoming movies and shows, and regularly print comics featuring the current Disney Afternoon properties.
Well during the magazine’s early run Disney attempted a five part crossover with all of it’s main series. Despite the fact none of the shows, save for two, had any connection to one another, took place in different locations and time periods, and had wildly different tones and premises.
They’re solution?
Have the heroes face a reoccurring enemy by having them all come into contact with a particular plot MacGuffin one by one.
The story was called The Legend of the Chaos God.
Worlds of Big Finish is basically that, but done with Big Finish characters instead of Disney.
Each part is a mini-adventure highlighting one of the company’s numerous audio spin-offs; some Doctor Who related, some not.
Each hero faces off against an over arching enemy, the Magog in this case, on their own, until the next person in line comes across the crossover’s plot MacGuffin. Only instead of a evil ruby that possesses people, we get a book of prophecies that makes people go insane.
First up to bat is Graceless, and it’s also the most relevant part for this section of the marathon.
Graceless is about two sisters who can teleport themselves anywhere in time or space. They are two humanoid tracers created by the White and Black Guardians to find the key to time.
The ‘white’ sister, Abby, was assigned to assist the Fifth Doctor during Big Finish’s Key to Time squeal “Key 2 Time”. While the ‘black’ sister, Zara, was their main opponent in the race to find the key.
Zara, however, grew tired of her objective as she became ever more human. Eventually she and Abby reunited and form an alliance against the Guardians with the Fifth Doctor’s help.
Now while I have heard their introduction story, I myself have never listened to Graceless before now. According to people who have listened to it, it’s a very serialized story with a lot of slow burn character development.
With that in mind, this might be the weakest entry in the crossover.
The episode is supposed to take place between seasons two and three of the Graceless series, as such we get an opening that somewhat ties into that ongoing story line, which is arguably not the best way to kick off a crossover that’s supposed to be a sampling of various series to newcomers.
None of that continuity winds up mattering that much to the actual plot, but because this backstory is the inciting incident that kicks off the entire crossover, it can leave the viewer feeling a little lost.
There’s also the added problem of the fact that because this episode is what establishes the premise of the crossover, setting up the plot MacGuffin and where it comes from, the story has little identity.
You don’t get a good idea of who Abby and Zara are, nor what their ongoing series is about. The plot has a supernatural investigator vibe to it, what with the sisters’ precognition and physic abilities... and the fact that they are solving a murder mystery, but I get the feeling from other reviewers this isn’t the norm for the main series.
With that, the Sherlock Holmes entry was probably my favorite story of the box set.
There’s no tangible connection to Doctor Who here besides being a Big Finish project and being in this particular crossover, it’s just a straight up Sherlock Holmes adaption.
Now I can’t speak for the main series, but this particular story did something very interesting with the character. It made Sherlock old.
Not so old that he can’t do the job anymore if asked, but he is nearing retirement and Watson himself has already stepped away from the job due to illness.
Instead it’s Sherlock’s brother, Mycroft, whom he is working with here, which is a delightful dynamic that probably doesn’t get explored enough in Holmes adaptations.
After Sherlock Holmes we get Dorian Gray.
Like with Holmes, I mainly know about Dorian Gray from pop-culture osmosis. I’ve seen the black and white film staring Angela Lansbury and that adaptation of Alan Moore’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and that’s it.
Also like Holmes, Gray has nothing to due with Doctor Who outside of this one crossover.
Which is more the pity.
From what I can tell from this singular sample the series explores the premise of an immortal being who made a devil’s pact for eternal youth, and pushes it beyond what the original novel could explore.
That jumping off point actually would make for brilliant genuine Doctor Who crossover. Two immortals; one a morally gray anti-hero at best, the other an seemingly upright hero who often fails to live up to his lofty ideals, who are forced to work together to save the day..... Yes, Please!
But enough fantasies, the actual story is a tight little Gothic horror tale just as you would expect from a series based off of a classic Gothic horror novel.
Then for the fourth episode we meet Iris Wildthyme and Captain Turner again, bringing us back to the world of Doctor Who.
Funny enough this story is supposed to be the one that comes right before Comeback of the Scorchies, which we covered earlier in the marathon.
This arguably works better as an introduction for the series than that audio did, and is probably my second favorite story of the boxset. A perfect screwball comedy that really sells Iris Wildthyme as the Doctor Who parody that she is.
Vienna was the spin-off that I was the least familiar with coming into this crossover.
In fact I didn’t even know that it existed until I listened to this story.
From what I can gather, Vienna is a bounty hunter and an antagonist of the Seventh Doctor.
Not that this sample conveys that.
I mean we get she’s a bounty hunter, but there’s no mention of the Doctor at any point in the entire crossover so lucky google exists.
It was okay... a very middle of the road space noir pastiche.
Then there is Bernice Summerfield.
She’s a companion of the Seventh Doctor from the novels; an archaeologist from the 26th century. She proven so popular that she’s gotten spinoff novels, comics, audios, and even an animated web-series!
I’m guessing Bernice was the big draw for this crossover, hence why she’s the one to end things off.
And it’s actually my least favorite story here.
True the Graceless entry might fail to tell me what Graceless is about, but it’s still at least interesting.
This is just generic sci-fi plot 101 condensed down to 30 mins. There’s no time to build tension or make me care about the characters as the all die one by one.
The most interesting thing was the villain’s motivations but he gets ‘redeemed’ too quickly to make much of an impact.
However I will grant that the ending twist with the plot MacGuffin is really clever circular storytelling.
So is Worlds of Big Finish worth getting?
It depends on how invested you are with any of the spin-offs featured here.
None of the stories are necessarily bad, not even the Bernice Summerfield one... it’s just unless you already have a personal connection to any of the series featured you might find it hard to justify the cost of buying the whole set.
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"Passion" - An Original Short Story
You can listen to an audio recording of myself reading the story on my YouTube channel, right here: https://youtu.be/I41SApi9Xb8
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I tugged at the collar of my dress shirt and pulled at the tie wrapped snug around my throat. I've always hated ties, and it certainly did not help that it was the same set of church clothes that I had been wearing for the last half a decade. It wasn't so much the issue that we couldn't afford better clothes, because we could. Mom even suggested stopping by the store to grab another outfit, but we were already running late as it was. It wasn't even an issue last time I came to church. However, it had been a while since then, and since leaving for college I had bulked up a bit in some areas.
Mom noticed this struggle of mine and subtly jabbed her elbow into my side. It was her usual way of wordlessly conveying the message, "Stop making yourself look like a fool during the sermon!" I whispered something about perhaps taking my tie off, at least, which she responded by sucking her teeth and tossing her head to the side, her way of wordlessly saying, "Go ahead, if you want to embarrass me in front of all my bingo friends." I kept the tie on, and suffered through it.
● ● ●
I had left for college that previous summer. It was the first time I had been away from my family for an extended period. I recall my mom crying in the passenger seat and Dad practically throwing my suitcase into the dorm room. Meanwhile, Kristen was acting as my shadow. I was initially annoyed by her following me and her pressing questions: "What is this box for?" "Do you have this place all to yourself?" "Are you going to get a girlfriend?" But, after several minutes I came to appreciate her company. I understood that she was just unknowingly mimicking my own behavior from when both James and Simon went off to college. Perhaps it's just a rite of passage all younger siblings must accomplish.
"Clothes." "No." "I don't know."
My siblings and I have always been close– difficult to keep in line and constantly at each other's throats, but close nonetheless. We all drove our parents wild as children, but that's kind of what you sign up for when you have more kids than adults in the house. They could have stopped at me, and everyone was convinced that they would, but then they had Kristen. My brothers and I joked that our parents would've kept trying for a girl until they got one, and maybe we weren't too far off.
I can't imagine wanting that many children– not in the modern age at least. I get the old mindset of children dying young or wanting a bunch of sons so they can pass on the father's name or whatever, but all that just feels so archaic.
I was ten when she was born. No longer the baby of the family, which made me a little happy. The heightened pitch to my mother's tone that she directed at me ended almost immediately after she saw Kristen for the first time. That was nice, but it also meant that I no longer had that unconditional praise and affection that only a baby sibling can have. I actually had to work for that stuff. I had expectations to meet, achievements to work toward, and a completely new identity to discover.
I stood in my new room and arranged objects on my desk from an old cardboard box that had been in the attic for years– if not decades– before we stuffed them full of my own belongings. Kristen sat on my bed, occasionally asking me questions about my upcoming life. Eventually my hand gripped a leather-bound tome. Hefty from the pages inside, but even more so from the words printed in each chapter. I withdrew it from the box. My Bible. The Bible. The only one I knew, at least. I gripped the spine in such a way that, had my fingernails been longer, they could have possibly pierced the skin of the binding.
I placed the book on my desk, right next to my bed. Kristen looked at it for just a moment before turning her head to face me. Her eyes glistened in the warm summer light refracting from the nearby window overlooking the neighboring parking lot. I watched her mouth slowly open, as if the thought was lodged in her throat and she had to cough it out.
"I'm hungry."
● ● ●
I watched as they drove off. It was a very surreal experience; I felt this sudden emptiness in my stomach. The dread of loneliness swelled up within my chest and I just stood there for what felt like an hour, but was more likely just a minute or so.
● ● ●
Apollo arrived later that day. I remember him carrying several suitcases and bags of various sizes packed near to bursting. I understood why he may not have wanted to make multiple trips, but why he insisted on doing all the work himself was beyond me. It's not like he looked particularly athletic, he was actually quite small for someone about one year my senior. "What, did your parents not want to help you move?" I asked as I pulled a duffle bag from his shoulder and a suitcase from out of a death grip.
"Nah," he said between breaths, "It's just me." He then dropped his things to the ground and subsequently crumpled under his own weight, as if his legs were made of paper. Meanwhile, I just stood there, holding some luggage that felt like it was full of stones. I stared down at him, watching his chest rise as fall with each breath, and I became overwhelmed by this sense of pity. Though, I can't say I recognized it as such at the time.
● ● ●
Despite this ordeal, Apollo still had something left out in his car. I offered to retrieve it for him, but he insisted that he be the one to bring it up. I felt like I was in no place to argue, so I watched him step back out the door– not even a full minute after he had collapsed onto the floor of our dorm.
He returned a few minutes later, still short of breath, but carrying just one item. Obvious in identity from its size and shape; it was a guitar case. He set it down by the doorway and pressed his back against the wall. Sweat dripped down from his forehead. I grabbed a bottle of water and tossed it to him, and it collided with his chest before he juggled the container in his arms and chugged about half of it in one sitting.
We both ended up sitting on the floor. Apollo was still drenched in sweat and had gone through another two bottles of water, which were crushed and tossed haphazardly around him. However, he at least seemed cognizant. Eventually, the topic moved to our education and career goals, and he proceeded to explain how his goal was to major in music and pursue some sort of career as a musician.
Just as he explained this to me, my feelings toward Apollo shifted from a strange sort of pity to a clear and unadulterated contempt and loathing. My choice to attend college was to pursue a career in economics, and the work that I saw ahead of me was purely out of a desire for a stable job with a good income. That is what college is for, is it not? Is it not to gain training and knowledge of practical business experience, and the opportunity to find work in that field?
I knew then that there were people that majored in the creative arts, and that there was a place for them in society– I knew that. However, I also understood it to be a foolish venture. How many people pursue a career in the arts? Thousands? Tens of thousands, a year? How many of those that graduate make any semblance of success, whether financial or otherwise? How many even graduate? Perhaps most do, as I cannot imagine the work being nearly as taxing as a degree in math or the sciences. Surely a degree in music could not carry equivalent weight to one in economics, political science, or law.
● ● ●
We hardly spoke for the rest of the day. We retired to our separate rooms, only ever leaving to use the communal restroom. Later in the evening, I was at my desk scrolling through Facebook on my laptop. I saw photos and videos of my friends, finding their own life goals and passions. Blake moved into his dorm, just a couple of floors below me. Lauren and Tanner are now engaged. Chad and Michelle just had their second kid despite both of them struggling to keep the marriage afloat. We all saw it. People have stopped inviting them to events because they cannot coexist in the same room for more than ten minutes before one tries to strangle the other.
I click on the video of Michelle holding her baby. Her smile looks painted on. She is crying, but are they tears of joy over her new child or anxiety over the person holding the smartphone camera? Or perhaps it's the fact that they now have another thread intrinsically linking their lives together, making it harder for either of them to separate.
A pink balloon floats above Michelle's head, yet they call the child their, "beautiful little boy." Perhaps there were no more IT'S A BOY! balloons at Party City, or perhaps someone was expecting a different life for their child.
I click off of the video, and the next post is from Mom. It's two pictures proceeding a novella-sized wall of text. Picture 1. Her and I, shortly after I was born. She still looks youthful, alive, but tired. Very, very tired. I, on the other hand, look like I was molded out of clay, still yet to be cooked; unfinished in her hands.
Picture 2. Me in my senior photo. I really hate this image. I was so very tired and uncomfortable there in the studio, but you could hardly tell that just by looking. They made me wear that stupid bow tie and a tacky black and white suit– but just the top half. They didn't need to photograph anything below the waist; it was just a façade to look professional and well kept.
Though, credit where credit is due, the people doing the touch ups really did a good job of making it look like I was actually happy to be there. It's like looking into a mirror, but one that shows you a warped image of yourself. All the parts of you that make you look good, young, and attractive are accentuated, but you know where the falsehoods lie, and the more you look at it, the more you grow to hate this completely disingenuous version of yourself.
● ● ●
If the tight collar around my neck wasn't bad enough, the church was sweltering. The air conditioning was broken the last time I was there, but it was turning to autumn, so the priest just decided to not fix it. Come the spring and early summer, he still never got around to it. Now I and dozens of middle-aged people are sweating underneath our nice clothing.
The priest pulled out a handkerchief and wiped down the top of his sparkling bald head, then he proceeded to blow his nose into the rag, and he repeated this process several times throughout the sermon. Oftentimes, I couldn't pay attention to what he was actually saying; I just focused on this one repeated action.
● ● ●
The whole congregation stood for communion. The priest and two other elders moved into positions to hand out the wafers and wine.
It was the first time I had ever participated in the practice, and my mind could not rest as I stood in the line. My arms were quaking by my sides and I could find no good place to put them. I thrust them into my pockets, under my armpits, behind my back, everywhere felt wrong and disingenuous.
● ● ●
Apollo was by far the most social of the two of us. He always wanted to arrange time together, even if it was just walking and talking on the way to class. I often tried to find an excuse to avoid this, but some excuses can only last so long before your true intentions become obvious.
He would talk on and on about his classes, what kind of music he was listening to, virtually every aspect of his life. I responded with very little. It didn't seem to upset him; he seemed quite content to talk about himself. A trait that I was not particularly fond of.
Eventually, I began getting up and leaving the dorm before he even woke up. I had built my entire schedule off of trying to avoid him as much as possible. Any time I saw him on campus, I tried to keep my distance. If we ever passed each other, I would simply not acknowledge him and pretend I never saw him.
Despite this, I can't say I hated him– on the contrary, I began to hate myself. I felt as though I was punishing him for his eccentricities, and I never wanted that. The Lord said to "judge not, that ye be not judged" (Matthew 7:1), and I always took that ideology to heart, but my heart was conflicted, as it seems it has always been. Any time I saw his face, this familiar discomfort swelled within my chest, and the thoughts and feelings that I had often dismissed would race back to me.
● ● ●
"Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God" (1 Corinthians 6:9-10).
I remember the priest reading this passage from his pulpit at the front of the sanctuary. It certainly is a convenient piece of the Scripture. It's like a laundry list of sinful behavior to avoid.
As a child, my mind held on to this one set of verses. Perhaps because the Bible is so often left open to one's interpretation of its text, but there it was, written in plain ink, many concepts that someone needed to avoid to be deserving of eternity in heaven. Not a comprehensive list, of course, nor should it be the only verses to cite for a wholly moral lifestyle, but for me, it was a start.
It seemed that, in the eyes of God, you were either all in, or you were out. So, I spent the next few years becoming deeply engaged with the church and the Scripture. I wanted nothing more than to be the best follower I could be, lest I suffer an eternal damnation. Even the rest of my family considered my practice a bit extreme, but I only wished to do right by the eyes of the Lord, for such abstaining from sin should grant me the eternal love and favor of God.
Why, then, did my heart– the vessel by which my faith resided– swell with excitement at the thought of lying in bed with other men? Why did I long for another masculine body to hold me? For us to embrace each other as the gentle moonlight illuminated that which we could not normally see through the dark.
I had tried to turn these feelings toward one of the opposite sex, but that fell apart very quickly. She was a good person, but I could not love her. She always wanted to move the relationship forward, but I was still waiting for that spark of affection, of joy– of literally anything for me to attach to, so that I could say I loved her, and mean it– but it never came. I felt cornered into a situation I wanted no part in, so we separated, and I pushed the feelings down. I felt that if I must feel such a way, then that is fine, but I must not act on such desires, and I should convert this desire– this lust– into energy directed into my faith. I would have to pursue morality to such a degree so as to compensate for my innate sin. This, I decided, was my passion.
● ● ●
Snow began falling across the campus. Classes were canceled after several inches accumulated over the first couple of hours. I woke up to the alert on my phone, and decided to just stay in bed. It was easier than pretending.
Then, I heard it. The gentle chords of Apollo’s guitar piercing through the thin walls of the dorm. It was not uncommon for him to practice when classes were over, but I rarely ever listened. Other times I would put on headphones and drown it out with my own music, or listen to a podcast while doing homework, but this time I layed in bed and just let the music envelop me.
There was something there that I had never cared to hear before. I wish I could explain it in words how each note caressed me and comforted me, like the warm embrace of a parent or lover.
Then it suddenly stopped. A faint voice passed through the walls, though I do not recall understanding its words. All I do remember is the aching in my chest which returned when the music stopped. I tried to dismiss it, to be rid of the thoughts and feelings that crept back into my mind. "You don't really want this," I told myself, "Just stay true."
It was like a drug, and I was feeling the withdrawal.
"Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him" (James 1:12).
● ● ●
I tossed and turned until I reached over to my desk and grabbed the Bible. Still in bed, I opened the book and tried to read through the pain. My eyes couldn't focus, and I hardly recall reading anything. I was just mindlessly flailing through the pages, all of which looked like seas of off-color white with dots of black ink floating across its surface. Eventually, I landed on a page that had been marked with a sticky note. One that I had practically memorized word for word by this point: 1 Corinthians 6:9-10.
I stared at the paragraph for minutes or hours, I still do not recall, but I was pulled back as I read the next line. Verse 11: "And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God."
● ● ●
When Apollo opened his door, I saw a pair of reddened eyes staring back at me. I don’t remember what I said, but the next thing I knew we were sitting on his bed, talking. It was the most we’d talked in months, yet it felt like we had never stopped. I confessed that which had been on my mind, and apologized for how I had treated him throughout the months we had known each other. He responded with very little, and that was enough for me.
We both stopped to watch the snow pile up out the window in silence. The anxiety still filled my chest and had made its way up to my throat. I felt like I was choking on the words I wanted to say to him, unable to say anything more. I looked back at Apollo, and the puffy red around his eyes was almost entirely overpowered by the bright blue that glittered in their center. Staring back at me, his mouth moved, but I just barely heard the words escape, “Are you sure that this is what you want?”
I couldn't hesitate. “Yes.”
● ● ●
I raised my head to the priest and took a few steps closer to the altar. He brought the wafer up toward me and said, just as he had said to the previous hundred or so people, “The body of Christ.”
With my throat pushing against my collar, I was able to whimper out an, “Amen.” From there, I opened my mouth, extended my tongue, and accepted the body of Christ inside me. As the wafer dissolved, I felt the warmth of the room envelop me. Sweat dripped from my brow and my eyes opened to see the symbol of the crucifixion hanging over the entire congregation.
● ● ●
Looking down, I saw Apollo’s face, bright red and sweating. His bare chest raised and fell rhythmically with each breath he took. His fingernails had dug into my back, to a point in which I was afraid I would start bleeding. My own chest swelled and I felt that same feeling of fear and doubt in my throat, but it all seemed to fade as I saw Apollo look back up at me and smile. He had, in that moment, a smile like I had never seen before– it was a smile of true, unadulterated passion. A smile that I feared I would never be able to replicate.
I collapsed on his chest. He wrapped his arms tighter around me, and I reciprocated. A cold chill seemed to run through the room as the storm still raged outside, yet here we lay, warm in each other’s arms.
As my breathing began to steady, and his chest settled on a gentle rise and fall, there was one sound that persisted. Like the ticking of a clock, I heard the soft and measured beat of a heart.
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Heightened Multisensory Experiences
Week 1
Reflection:
I have worked with sound, mocap, video and 3D model editing. I was given different tasks in each of the fields, all to do with RMIT University projects. Christian Marclay works with investigation connections between sound, noise, photography, video and film. I hope to do something similar throughout the subject. This will help me progress through my discovery of what the project will be.
Progress:
In the first week, we were given a selection of words to choose from to base our project on to represent that emotion via a heightened multisensory experience.
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Research:
Academic:
Born in 1955 in San Rafael, California, and raised in Geneva, Switzerland, for more than thirty years, Marclay has explored the relationship between the visual and the audible through a variety of media, including sculpture, video, performance, collage, and music.
Marclay started his career in New York City’s East Village, where he became an early experimental DJ and musician, creating multiple series of works by destroying, collaging, and scratching vinyl records. Influenced by musique concrète, punk rock, and the work of John Cage, Marclay collaborated with a variety of artists, musicians, and performers during this time. The transformation of sound and musical objects into visuals and visuals back into audio experiences has been an important and ongoing part of the artist’s practice. Marclay’s signature playfulness with sound and image has become a feature of works such as Manga Scroll (2010), a sixty-five-foot-long collage of visual onomatopoeias meant to be performed aloud; Scream (2019), prints that collage together the vocal expressions of Japanese manga and Western comic-book characters; and 48 War Movies (2019), a video installation that cacophonously overlays the images and sounds of the titular number of war films. Marclay is best known for The Clock (2010), a work for which he collaged and sequenced views of clocks from a broad range of films to create a 24-hour video installation that also functions as a timekeeper. Collectively, his works tap into and comment on the subliminal power of mass visual and audio culture.
Marclay received his BFA from Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, and studied at Ecole Supérieure d’Art Visuel in Geneva, Switzerland. Among other awards and honors, he has received the Contemporary Vision Award from San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2016) and The Golden Lion from the Venice Biennale (2011). Major solo exhibitions include Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California (2019); Venice Biennale, Italy (2011, 2019); Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Spain (2019); Sapporo Art Museum, Japan (2017); Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau, Switzerland (2015); Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France (2012); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2010); Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul, South Korea (2010); MoMA PS1, New York (2009); Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain, Geneva, Switzerland (2008); Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne (2007); Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden (2006); Barbican Art Gallery, London, England (2005); and Tate Modern, London, England (2004).
Reflection:
Marclays way of work seemed the most ambitious of the artists I considered, so I decided to try to do something similar, even if not to the same degree.
Outside of class, thought about what project would be conceived was a tricky procedure due to multiple words to choose from and multiple ideas to choose. Not normal for these occasions, but it was this time.
Week 2
Progress:
In Week 2, we paid a visit to the RMIT Capitol building where we witnessed a couple of performances with lights and sounds using the Pharos software. A couple of ideas have now sprung into my mind.
Recreating the Matrix Code rain with brutal sound effects. The PHAROS software would be used to duplicate the code rain light effect. Some brutal sounding sound effects would be played as the bottom tip of the rain lights hit the ground, sort of like bombs being dropped from overhead. This could've also been mixed with the word terrifying due to the bomb inspiration drawn from the rapidly dropping lights bombing the audience isolated in the dark room.
Research:
Academic/Technical:
In the film, the code that comprises the Matrix itself is represented as downward-flowing green characters. This code uses a custom typeface designed by Simon Whiteley,[1] which includes mirror images of half-width kana characters and Western Latin letters and numerals.[2] In a 2017 interview at CNET, he attributed the design to his wife, who comes from Japan, and added, "I like to tell everybody that The Matrix's code is made out of Japanese sushi recipes".[3]
The effect resembles older generation green screen displays of monochrome phosphorescent computer monitors.[4] One predecessor exists in a "code-scene" of the movie Meteo, a Hungarian experimental-pop culture movie from 1990. The 1995 cyberpunk film Ghost in the Shell, a strong influence on The Matrix,[5][6] features similar opening credits.
No official version of the code's typeface actually used in the Matrix trilogy and in the website for the game Path of Neo has been released. Several imitations have been made, mostly screensavers.
Matrix digital rain. (2023). Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_digital_rain#:~:text=The%20effect%20resembles%20that%20of,pop%20culture%20movie%20from%201990.
2. Having different colours flash at different times like alarms in a plane cockpit. The word overwhelming could also be used for the project due to the amount and type of alarm flashes and sounds bombarding the audience into spatial disorientation and loss of situational awareness, fitting the word overwhelming very well.
Research:
Academic:
CONCURRENT TASK DEMANDS IN THE COCKPIT:
CHALLENGES AND VULNERABILITIES IN ROUTINE FLIGHT OPERATIONS
Reflection:
Outside of class, extra thought was put into about which of the two ideas to pursue and how to pursue the chosen one. Different cockpit alarms from different planes were looked at to look into further stages of the project. Potential foley sound would be involved to recreate any voice elements of the alarms.
Week 3
Reflection:
A couple of ideas seemed to spring to mind. One of which was the aforementioned cockpit simulation. Outside of class, some thought was put into what sort of brutal consequences would happen during the simulation which led to looking to the consequences of some real life air disasters.
Research:
Academic:
The Horror Film. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://books.google.com.au/books?hl=en&lr=&id=a0ZgaAcKJ9sC&oi=fnd&pg=PR5&dq=horror%2Bfilm&ots=d3kILW4B5V&sig=kS_AvCTrUXumAh7PGRx1_SVTqy0#v=onepage&q&f=false
The other which seemed to fit the word Brutal better was taking inspiration from horror movie scenes and combining them into one big brutally loud violent package at the RMIT Capitol.
1. ADJECTIVE
A brutal act or person is cruel and violent.
He was the victim of a very brutal murder.
...the brutal suppression of anti-government protests.
Jensen is a dangerous man, and can be very brutal and reckless.
Synonyms: cruel, harsh, savage, grim More Synonyms of brutal
brutally ADVERB [usually ADVERB with verb]
Her real parents had been brutally murdered.
Synonyms: cruelly, fiercely, savagely, ruthlessly More Synonyms of brutal
2. ADJECTIVE
If someone expresses something unpleasant with brutal honesty or frankness, they express it in a clear and accurate way, without attempting to disguise its unpleasantness.
It was refreshing to talk about themselves and their feelings with brutal honesty.
He took an anguished breath. He had to be brutal and say it.
brutally ADVERB [ADVERB adjective, ADVERB with verb]
The talks had been brutally frank.
Synonyms: mercilessly, fiercely, cruelly, relentlessly More Synonyms of brutal
3. ADJECTIVE
Brutal is used to describe things that have an unpleasant effect on people, especially when there is no attempt by anyone to reduce their effect.
The dip in prices this summer will be brutal.
The afternoon sun had been brutal.
The 20th century brought brutal change to some countries.
brutally ADVERB [usually ADVERB with verb, oft ADVERB adjective]
The early-morning New York air can be brutally cold.
Synonyms: savagely, cruelly, dangerously, ferociously More Synonyms of brutal
Definition from Collins Dictionary.
The war times were an inspiration for the Brutal word due to savagery of the impact both during and after the war. The sound of the bombs dropping and machine guns being fired would fit the word brutal perfectly. The colours would also have to be modified from just one plain colour to create a representation of blood and other brutal consequences of these savage times.
Week 4
Reflection:
I presented my idea of brutal, but not with a lot of confidence. As a result, I was disappointed with myself and wished I had done better. But I had also come up with the idea of the cockpit simulation, but using the word Terrifying instead.
I discussed it with my Lecturer and they thought the plane idea had the better potential to work. I decided the same. I also thought of the idea of using foley sounds and my own voice to recreate the sound of cockpit alarms as the simulation progressed.
Outside of class, I started to record my own voice using the Voice Memo app on my phone to record my own voice repeating phrases made by planes electronic voices as part of alarms. This was done after looking at some YouTube videos of plane alarms from different plane cockpits.
Due to a mild diagnosis of Aspergers Syndrome, I have keen attention to detail and pattern recognition. With this, I was able to create a pretty good imitation of the voices sounded, but for some recordings, I decided to take my own personal spin on the alarm voices to show how I would've voiced the alarms if I was the voice in the computer.
Research:
I took inspiration from TheFlightChannel and Air Crash Investigation due the realistic recreations of disaster flights and what happens during their respective sequences.
Technical:
TheFlightChannel is a YouTube channel where the creator uses Microsoft Flight Simulator to create disaster flights and gives an inside view of what goes on in the cockpit and an outside view of how the plane behaves to the respective commands from its computer. After the flight either crashes or lands or whatever, the video then gives a brief of what was discovered during the ensuing investigation. This could've fitted the word terrifying, mainly the flight portion of the video, especially from inside the cockpit and passenger cabin. It also allowed for a more accurate sound of the alarms.
youtube
youtube
The MAYDAY case of Aeroperú Flight 603.
'Air Crash Investigation 22 / May Day series 23' investigates legendary aviation disasters to find out what went wrong and why. It uses actors and actresses to portray the pilots, sound effects for the alarms and stuff and CGI for plane behaviour. The only downside is that the voices were not exactly the same in the specific planes as in real life.
TV, N. (n.d.). National Geographic - Air Crash Investigation. Retrieved from https://www.natgeotv.com/za/shows/natgeo/air-crash-investigation
Week 5
Project 1 - Matrix Rain.
Progress:
This project has pretty much been abandoned because of the steep learning curve of PHAROS and the limited time remaining. The first class of week 5 was my first time starting up PHAROS. My lecturer told me that PHAROS has a steep learning curve and feared that that curve, combined with the limited time remaining to complete the project, would be too ambitious to complete fully by the deadline.
Reflection:
If the project had been developed, it would've been great learning skills for me and I would've tried something I had never done before.
Project 2 - Terrifying Flight Simulation.
Progress:
This project is still under consideration, but no longer in the sense of the RMIT Capitol. Instead, it's now being considered as an animated and edited video with sound effects as it progresses. Outside of classes, I filmed some footage to make a terrifying perspective of a flight gone so horribly wrong including high speed dives, spinning and unwanted climbs and falls.
Research:
Academic:
Multiple accident flight cases were considered for inspiration for the terrifying experience.
The 2012 film 'Flight' Starring Denzel Washington served as a guide and inspiration of the terrifying chaos onboard a plane out of control and doomed to crash.
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The story of the film was loosely based on the crash of Alaska Airlines Flight 261 which crashed in 2000 with all 88 people dead. The cause was ultimately found to be improper maintenance by Alaska Airlines cost cutting after the economic downturn in the 1990's.
One of the flights considered was the case of Aeroperú Flight 603. A Boeing 757 that crashed shortly after take-off killing all 70 people on board. The investigation found that a maintenance worker had placed tape over the pitot static ports during cleaning, but forgot to remove the tape before departure. As a result, the blocked pitot tubes caused the planes computer to give multiple false and contradictory warnings such as rudder ratio, stall, overspeed and terrain.
Project 3 - Brutal Horror Film Fest.
Progress:
This project is also being considered as a video due to the aforementioned PHAROS learning curve and limited time. A horror video probably has a better chance of being done in the time due to a less steep learning curve.
Research:
Academic:
Sam Raimi served as an inspiration for the horror direction. In the past, he, along with his childhood friend, Bruce Campbell, made a short film called 'Within The Woods' which landed a larger budget to create the 1981 film 'Evil Dead'. The kills were violent, but also amusing in their own absurd fashion.
Project 4 - Meditative Nature Relaxation.
The word Meditative was also considered for the project due to the stress and mental torture I would have to put myself through to achieve the other projects with a more terrifying and brutal touch.
Outside of classes, upon my lecturers advice, I thought about a more peaceful type of experience to work on. This would save any potential future nightmares
Research:
Years ago, I played the game 'Flower' on the PS3. When first introduced to it, I became captivated by it's unique take on controls and the peaceful easy feeling it gave me. It will serve as criteria that the soundtrack and sound effects have to meet to stick to the mediative adjective.
Academic/Creative Practise:
Designed by Jenova Chen and Nicholas Clark, the focus was sparked by Chen, who felt that the primary purpose of entertainment products like video games was the feelings that they evoked in the audience and that the emotional range of most games was very limited. The team viewed their efforts as creating a work of art, removing gameplay elements and mechanics that were not provoking the desired response in the players. The music, composed by Vincent Diamante, dynamically responds to the player's actions and corresponds with the emotional cues in the game.
The idea of combining the chosen soundtracks, sound effects with flower interaction and the idea of playing as the wind itself gave me the feeling that I really was nature itself giving the planet a big helping hand to maintain it's beautiful appearances and fixing it whenever it turned dark and depressing, although this was not always the case with every level.
The song 'Flying' composed by Peder B. Helland served as a guide for the soundtrack to follow. Footage would be filmed of Mother Nature performing her duties throughout the world as we continued our daily business.
Peder B. Helland has been interested in music since early age. He was astonished by the fact you can create your own film music with only a computer and keyboard. After being sold on the idea, he set out to get the necessary equipment.
A keyboard his parents gifted to him enabled multiple layers of sounds and melodies on top of one another. By this point, he had already begun fiddling with this and sharing via YouTube. He was suited to the task having development a good understanding of music theory developed from some past piano lessons and playing a trombone in a marching band.
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Sandesh Kadur is a regarded as one of the best wildlife photographers. A person from National Geographic and a maker of stills and films that are a dramatic moving tribute to the animals he photographs.
This would serve as a guide to filming any potential wildlife if this was to be included in the project.
Week 6
Project 2 - Terrifying Flight Simulation.
Progress:
Some more thought was given to the flight simulation idea and a different adjective was considered. The word amazing was being considered due to the amazing views that can be seen from the airliner as you fly from A to B.
Outside of class, I made a couple of mockups or a terrifying flight gone horribly wrong, but the lecturer found it pretty underwhelm,ing, even though they were only prototypes.
Research:
Creative Practise/Technical:
There are a few elements to taking a good view from an airplane window:
What Is the Best Seat for Airplane Window Photos?
Know Your Route
Consider the Time of Day
Where Is the Sun?
What Camera to Use
What Lens to Use
Composition for Airplane Window Shots
Post Processing Airplane Window Photos
Register - Login. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.tumblr.com/edit/rmitsemester2project/723254008968609792
Reflection:
I was given an opportunity to explore this because of a flight a week away for a family birthday. I decided to use this flight to film outside the cabin at the beautiful views seen as the plane passes them overhead. One slight problem was some slight moving about, but this would be reduced by filming multiple individual films, slowing them down and adding smooth transitions in Adobe Premiere Pro to allow the viewer to take in the wonderful seen out of the plane window without any parts of the plane in the shot, wherever possible.
A mock-up was created for the lecturers to show what it could be like if that direction was decided upon. It seemed like a good direction, but in the end, it was again abandoned due to finding another project that seemed to have better chance of succeeding.
Week 7
Project 4 - Mediative Relaxing Nature.
Reflection:
Meditative was also previously considered as a potential adjective for the project. For this to work, the main elements of meditation had to be studied and then thought about how to work as many of them as possible into a heightened multisensory experience. I decided to research the main elements of meditation for use as a guide to ensure the project continues to contextualise the word and reaches the goal for the users to experience.
Research:
Creative Practise/Technical:
Elements of Meditation:
Focused Attention. This technique involves deep, even-paced breathing using the diaphragm muscle to expand your lungs. This slows your breathing, allowing you to take in more oxygen, and reduce the use of shoulder, neck and upper chest muscles while breathing so that you breathe more efficiently.
A Quiet Setting. Beginners practicing meditation may be easier if in a quiet spot with few distractions, including no television, radios or cell phones. As you get more skilled at meditation, you'll be able to do it anywhere, especially in high-stress situations where meditation benefits you the most, such as a traffic jam, a stressful work meeting or a long line at the grocery store.
A Comfortable Position. Meditation can be practised whether you're sitting, lying down, walking, or in other positions or activities. Just get comfortable to get the most out of your meditation. Aim to keep good posture during meditation.
Open Attitude. Let thoughts pass through your mind without judgment.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/meditation/in-depth/meditation/art-20045858
The game Flower was turned back to for inspiration. But not so much the visual experience, but the audio experience due to the soundtrack working beautifully well with the nature of the environment of the game and the gameplay itself. Some rather relaxing footage was filmed during my time in Brisbane as a Brookfield house.
One thing to be done was to work the audio. Heightening the audio was not a good idea due to the fact that increasing the volume would disrupt the 'meditative' factor of the experience. So instead the volume will be lowered to a level more acceptable to something of such a relaxing nature.
Also another potential obstacle is that the relaxed feel of the meditation may require people to close their eyes and let go. This would potentially render the whole image thing pointless no matter how beautiful it looks.
Outside class, some footage filmed at my grandparents house during the mid semester break was put into OneDrive onto my laptop and then put into Premiere Pro and the editing and experimentation began.
Project 5: Hypnotising Tunnel
Progress:
The word Hypnotising was also considered thanks to some new footage that was filmed while going through a Brisbane tunnel. The idea was to have the footage play with some hypnotising soundtrack playing in the background. The hypnotising factor would come from the lights passing through different surfaces as a certain speed. But after very little development, this went nowhere and was eventually abandoned due to limited time and limited ideas on how to make this project work.
Research:
Creative Practise:
Choosing someone to be hypnotised
Firstly, find someone that wants to be hypnotised. If they don't want to be hypnotised, they’re unlikely to go into hypnosis. All hypnosis is fundamentally ‘self-hypnosis’ (i.e. it’s a self-generated state). So, you can’t hypnotise anyone against their will, no matter how good a hypnotist you are…
Next, ensure the person is a suitable candidate and the hypnosis can be done in a safe manner. Not everyone is on the same safety level when it comes to hypnosis and others should not be hypnotised at all. So, ensure that the person has none of the following conditions/issues:
Psychological disorders
Personality disorders
Psychosis
Severe (clinical) depression
Uncontrolled epilepsy/seizures
Brain trauma
Dementia
Severe learning difficulties/cognitive deficits
Do not hypnotise anyone that suffers from any of the above conditions, for their safety.
How do you hypnotise someone? It’s actually pretty easy... (2023). Retrieved from https://hypnotc.com/how-do-you-do-hypnosis/
I decided to research any potential unforeseen obstacles to the meditation experience. Not all of them could be avoided due to not knowing every individuals body conditions and things like that.
Week 8
Project 4 - Meditative Relaxing Nature.
Research:
Creative Practise:
I have also been cautious of the potential negative meditation experiences that have caused certain people some amount of discomfort.
Research on meditation has mostly focussed on the putative benefits of meditation on health and well-being. Reports indicate that psychologically unpleasant experiences occur in the context of meditation practice. Little is known about the prevalence and potential causes of these experiences. The aim of these studies was to report the prevalence of particularly unpleasant meditation-related experiences in a large international sample of regular meditators, and explore the association of these experiences with demographic characteristics, meditation practice, repetitive negative thinking, mindfulness, and self-compassion. With the use of a cross-sectional online survey, 1,232 regular meditators with at least two months of meditation experience (mean age = 44.8 years ± 13.8, 53.6% female) responded to one question about particularly unpleasant meditation-related experiences. A total of 315 participants (25.6%, 95% CI: 23.1 to 28.0) reported having had particularly unpleasant meditation-related experiences, which was thought may have been caused by their meditation practice. Logistic regression models indicated unpleasant meditation-related experiences were less likely to occur in female participants and religious participants. Participants that indicated higher levels of repetitive negative thinking, those who only engaged in deconstructive types of meditation (e.g., vipassana/insight meditation), and those who attended a meditation retreat at any point in their life were more likely to report unpleasant meditation-related experiences. The high prevalence of particularly unpleasant meditation-related experiences reported here points to the importance of expanding the scientific conception of meditation beyond that of a (mental) health-promoting and self-regulating technique. It was proposed that understanding when these experiences are constitutive elements of meditative practice instead of merely negative effects could advance the field and, to that end, it was concluded with an overview of methodological and conceptual considerations that could be used to inform future research.
Progress:
The video has been trimmed to remove any moments of either the camera moving or other unwanted entities moving across the camera lens like a human hand.
The project was modified to make it more of a meditative heightened multisensory experience. One such modification was to change the speed of some of the clips used in the video to make it slower. This would encourage a slow and relaxed mood for the viewers as they were shown the wonderful view. Slow, smooth and seamless transitions were also implemented to get rid of any abruptness which could potentially disturb the meditative element of the experience.
A screenshot from the project in Adobe Premiere Pro.
Outside of class, I did a little experimentation with the audio to fit the video and the transitions.
Week 9
Project 4 - Mediative Serenity:
Progress:
Before the week, multiple transitions were put in to the video along with multiple different soundtracks to fit the transitions. But the transitions didn't work and the soundtracks changed abruptly enough to disturb the meditative nature of the experience. To reflect more of Marclays style of doing these things, I may put in some smoothly transitioned words saying the sound effects of sounds sourced via FreeSound. They will have to be smoothly put in to avoid abruptness and disturbance to the meditative element of the video.
Outside of class, I turned back to Freesound to find the perfect soundtrack to last the whole audio experience. I also thought about extending the experience, giving the audience more time to enter a meditative state. The lecturer recommended four minutes, but personally, I didn't think that was long enough to achieve true perfect meditation.
Reflection:
A presentation was done to show the Work In Progress of the main project. The serene Meditative project has now taken top priority.
One piece of feedback received was to remove any abruptness in the audio so, the next thing to do will be to remove all the soundtrack, even though the pieces created a really serene theme to the video and worked well with the visuals, and replace it with one big long audio that lasts the whole video. Transitions such as fade in and out will still be put into the audio to help it match with the transitions of the visual aspects, but now to a lesser degree due to much less soundtrack in the final video. The volume will also be adjusted accordingly to avoid too loud audio and destroying the meditative effect on the users/viewers.
Research:
Creative Practise:
Background
Anxiety disorders are among the most common psychiatric disorders and meditative therapies are frequently sought by patients who suffer from anxiety as a complementary therapy. Although multiple reviews exist on the general health benefits of meditation, no review has focused on the efficacy of meditation for anxiety specifically.
Methods
Medical databases were searched thoroughly with keywords relating to various types of meditation and anxiety. Over 1,000 abstracts were screened, and 200+ full articles were reviewed. Only randomized controlled trials (RCTs) were included. The Boutron (Boutron et al., 2005: J Clin Epidemiol 58:1233–1240) checklist to evaluate a report of a nonpharmaceutical trial (CLEAR-NPT) was used to assess study quality; 90% of the authors were contacted for additional information. Review Manager 5 was used for meta-analysis.
Results
A total of 36 RCTs were included in the meta-analysis (2,466 observations). Most RCTs were conducted among patients with anxiety as a secondary concern. The study quality ranged from 0.3 to 1.0 on the 0.0–1.0 scale (mean = 0.72). Standardized mean difference (SMD) was –0.52 in comparison with waiting-list control (p < .001; 25 RCTs), –0.59 in comparison with attention control (p < .001; seven RCTs), and –0.27 in comparison with alternative treatments (p < .01; 10 RCTs). Twenty-five studies reported statistically superior outcomes in the meditation group compared to control. No adverse effects were reported.
Conclusions
This review demonstrated some efficacy of meditative therapies in reducing anxiety symptoms, giving important clinical implications for applying meditative techniques in treating anxiety. However, most studies measured only improvement in anxiety symptoms, but not anxiety disorders as clinically diagnosed.
Week 10
Project 4: Meditative Nature
Progress:
So in adobe Premiere Pro, I extended it to about 10 minutes to allow the users more time to enter a state of satisfactory meditation. This meant sourcing music and sound effects that last the whole 10 minute video period.
Also, to reflect Christian Marclays style, I decided to put in some nature sound effects and some words that say which noises are being made as they come. They will be entering the video via a smooth transition to avoid abruptness. But upon reflection, this was decided against because the nature sound effects were deemed too much of an anchor back into the reality of the visual aspects. A backyard swimming pool.
Once the soundtracks were chosen, the next task was to switch the order of the clips around due to varying degrees of weirdness with the transitions. This was decided by how much movement there was during each transition. The one that moved most would be put last and the least movement would be put first, creating a sort of ascending order.
Reflection:
Outside of class, I reflected upon the recommended duration of the video. My lecturer recommended 3-4 minutes. I decided that wasn't really enough to allow the viewers to enter a meditative state.
My Lecturers said that the project was finally heading in the right direction. The audio sourced from Freesound sounded a little substandard though. So I was recommended to hunt for audio from better platforms such as Spotify and YouTube. I was told to consider the audio with the transitions. The order of the transitions was another thing I was told to consider. For example, changing the order so that the most subtle transition was first and the 5 transitions got weirder every time as the video progressed. Finding the right audio has become the priority before sorting the order of the clips. They also said that putting the word RELAX at the start and fitting it with a smooth transition into the video got at least one of them engaged.
Four soundtrack were picked, the first two were the best. 3 and 4 were too meaningful and had too hard a note respectively. The soundtracks chosen were 'Elipse Extended Version' and 'Primal Stream' both by Sleeping Music.
My lecturer told me to make more transitions or make them longer to avoid staying in a basic backyard landscape for too long, this will help make it more of a heightened multisensory experience.
Week 11:
Reflection:
When my lecturers took a look at the latest version of my project, they suggested jettisoning any violent accidental camera movements out of the project completely. They also suggested downloading a clearer version of the soundtrack files and editing the transitions so that they fit when the audio enhances or really tones up and then down.
Progress:
I have another copy of the video and trimmed it down to just under 7 minutes upon lecturer advice and have edited it so that the transitions happen when the soundtrack tone rises and then falls.
Week 12:
Reflection:
The project was once again previewed on the big screen in class. It left some dark side in it. I was told to fineness the volume automation so that the sound of the first track really dies down when the transition stops.
After that was done, the lecture said that the video was pretty much good to go for submission apart from a little added neatness to the ending.
Upon reflection, the final product was not as ambitious as I originally envisioned, it also developed unforeseen sensation for some, such as being brutal in a very obscure way and weird in other ways due to some feeling like they have just woken up from being drugged and the like. But all things considered it turned out pretty alright.
Progress:
The volume automation thing was becoming a bit of a farce. So I decided to revert to a previous technique allowing one of the soundtracks to fade to silence as each transition ended. I believed this to be the best thing due to two contradictory soundtracks and the limited time available.
To finish it up, I made the final audio transition slower to make it a neater ending and then finally submitted the finished project.
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Amazon.com: Eden Symbiotic: 9781493766444: Smith, Meriah Renna: Books
Unexpected Cargo: Smith, Meriah: 9781537355238: Amazon.com: Books
Even though they aren't perfect, I believe in both novels. As in, I think they're good and worth reading even though they're not perfect. I know they need editing, I can't do anything about it until I can find a job with living wages that I can actually keep.
As far as the art journals...well they're not terrible, but I could do better now that I have a better idea of what they look like in person. I just keep them there because I worked on them. Might never make another art journal for sale ever again because these two never sell and I can see why. Such things would hold interest only to myself anyway. I dream of making another journal, even a photo album, but never for sale again. In my opinion, they both rate a "meh" but the books are worth remaking again with needed corrections just so I can have my works in print in pride of place on my bookshelf.
The point of this is that yes, I want to let you know that these books exist. But since I've been making a lot of noise about my audiobook for Unexpected Cargo, you might thing all I was into was mpreg. So not true! It's just something on the side and I did write a strait up sci-fi fantasy novel with none of that in it. It was my passion project years in the making. I've partly outgrown it, but I'm still fond of it.
I don't have an audio for Eden Symbiotic...well, not a full one anyway. Just for the first chapter. Never went farther than that.
Warts and all, I think both Eden Symbiotic and Unexpected Cargo are worth your money. In fact, if I sell enough copies, I could use my earnings to hire an editor.
I bet that once fixed up, both would make good movies or miniseries. Having seen a lot of movies, TV shows and read a lot of books, I can be confident that my judgement is correct. Even Unexpected Cargo, which I happen to know is a bit weird. I guess that's what happens when I let an online dumpster dive inspire me.
Did you also notice that I was openly saying that not all my books are worth your money? I'm my own worst critic. I let it drive me to strive for better quality works instead of letting it drag me down. I know how good I am...most of the time. Still, honest feedback from more objective people is always appreciated and welcome. It gives me a better perspective and I learn useful things from them.
As near as I can tell, I match Anne McCaffery...or come close to being as good as her works. If I pit myself against someone one like Diana Gabbledon in her Outlander series, she'd kick my ass.
#cherokeegal1975#sci fi#fantasy#sci fi fantasy#mpreg#novels#advertisement#making a point#mpreg birth#symbiosis
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PSA: Book As Multimedia Interface 'Kill' The Authors and 'Give Birth' To The Readers
By Promise
Partially Powered by Chat GPT
What is a book? What is the definition of a book? The answer can vary as technology keeps challenging the conventional idea of a book. It does not have to be physical; it can be audio and electronic stored in the “cloud.” Our electronic devices allow us to access books from different formats and media easily. Amaranth Borsuk, an American poet and scholar, is curious about the evolution of books, and she wonders how books as interfaces will lead us in the future. Borsuk, therefore, wrote The Book to explore the book's history, technology, and future as a physical and conceptual object. The Book itself is a physical representation of this exploration, with its pages containing a mix of traditional printed text, digital images, and interactive elements such as pop-up pages and QR codes that link to online content. The Book is divided into five sections, each of which focuses on a different aspect of the book's evolution. These sections cover topics such as the earliest forms of writing, the development of the printing press, the rise of digital media, and the potential future of the book in an age of rapidly advancing technology.
The last chapter of Amaranth Borsuk's The Book, titled Colophon or Incipit, is a reflection on the book as a physical object and the role that it plays in our lives and culture. The title of the chapter refers to two traditional elements of a book: the colophon, which is a statement at the end of a book that provides information about the book's production and publication, and the incipit, which is the opening words or phrase of a text. In this chapter, Borsuk reflects on the many ways in which books have been used throughout history, from sacred texts to works of literature to scientific manuals. She notes that while books have traditionally been associated with authority and permanence, they are also mutable objects that can be transformed by their readers and the contexts in which they are read. Borsuk also considers the future of the book in an age of digital media and explores the ways in which digital technologies are changing the way we interact with texts. She argues that while digital media have certainly had an impact on the way we read and write, the book as a physical object remains an important and valuable part of our cultural heritage.
Brosuk’s Colophon or Incipit examines the idea of books as interfaces in the future. With technology, readers can now interact with the book with multimedia to enhance the experience of understanding the books’ ideas. As Brosuk points out, “consumers of books have never been passive…both we can the texts we read have bodies, and it is only when they come together that book takes shape” (43). Technology’s flexibility allows readers to interact with books actively more than ever which reminds me of Roland Barthes’s essay The Death of the Author. The essay is a theoretical exploration of the relationship between the author, the reader, and the meaning of a text. He argues that the author's intentions do not solely determine the meaning of a text but rather emerge through a dynamic interaction between the reader and the text. Barthes's essay is a dense, philosophical work that is primarily concerned with ideas and concepts rather than with the physical form of the book itself.
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Overall, Both Barthes and Borsuk deal with similar themes related to the meaning and interpretation of literature. Books as multimedia interfaces “kill” the author because “book” or “text” can exist in various formats of multimedia for readers or consumers to enjoy. Consumers interact with “text” differently; therefore, the meaning of the “text” vary depending on how consumer interact with multimedia which further prove Barthes’s theory of “the death of the authors,” it can also interpret as the birth of the readers or consumers.
Works Cited:
Borsuk, Amaranth. The Book, MIT Press, 2018. ProQuest Ebook Central,https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/west/detail.action?docID=5376610.
Barthes, Roland. “The Death of the Author.” Image, Music, Text, translated by Stephen Heath, Hill and Wang, 1977, pp. 142–48.
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A lanyard is traditional with small electronics
A lanyard is definitely an attachment used to require keys, badges, and various items to a specific thing. They are generally Industrial Safety Harnesses Belts used for collection or restraint, so are sometimes made with different materials, as well as nylon, polyester, silk, silk, and polyethylene terephthalate (PET). That name 'lanyard' appeared to be coined by Wedgwood, Hensleigh in 1855, when he / she published a book on false etymologies.
A lanyard is traditional with small electronics, such as mobile devices and other convenient electronic devices, to help keep them safe coming from dropping or becoming dropped. Most lanyards are attached with the device via a hole on the conclusion, called the cow hinderance. In some conditions, the strand can also be used as any headphone cord, and several earphones incorporate the actual audio signal to the ring. A popular example may be the Wii Remote wrist strap, which keeps it in place even during vigorous work out plans.
Many lanyards will be custom-printed with art logos of businesses in addition to events. You could print these logos with screen-printing, Jacquard loom weaving, or offset printing. Luckily they are used to attach keys and other small objects into a lanyard for single handed access. However, you must order 10 pieces or more to purchase this product or service. There is simply no minimum order number. In addition, lanyards work extremely well as key chains.
A lanyard can be a versatile attachment for a device. It can be used to pick up serious objects, hold gear, and secure other gear. It is additionally helpful for obtaining objects, so you should use it to make your wellbeing easier. It is a handy accessory for every purpose. You might attach a badge to it utilizing a lanyard. You might buy a lanyard to install an earphone.
A lanyard is commonly used to showcase ID cards, tickets, and badges. Its design is usually a woven or braided stuff. The lanyard will be divided at one end which includes a clip that is that come with the holder. A name badge is often attached to the actual linch-style hat by just a lanyard. They also serve like a keychain. If you happen to be a member of the Royal Navy, you ought to wear a light linch-style sleeved lanyard.
ANY lanyard suspension method uses a twine or strap for you to suspend a prosthesis. It feeds by means of an opening inside bottom of the actual socket. It makes it easy to draw the stump in the socket, and it makes it possible to don the prosthesis even though seated. It is likewise useful for seated users. If you are unable to reach the socket from the standing position, you possibly can still use a new lanyard-strap-style attachment.
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Demonic Jesus
I’d just moved into an apartment at Carriage Oaks III in Clarkston, Ga.
I walked the blocks surrounding my new apartments taking in my new neighborhood. I’d moved there to be within walking distance to the Clarkston campus of Georgia Perimeter College and I was hoping to find work nearby as well. The population was about half refugees and other immigrants; here were many Somalians, Ethiopians, Eritreans, Kenyans amongst many others. Most bars, restaurants, and gas stations in the area were owned by Eritreans, though there were a number of Korean owned businesses, and at least one bar/restaurant owned by an apparently Eastern European family, the origin of whom I never learned. Most of these businesses were very family oriented, and focused on hiring their owner’s relations and friends as well as members of the owner’s ethnic identity. I ended up working at the text book store near my campus.
But that wasn’t the point of this story. One day while job hunting, I came across what I would describe as a thrift or junk store. The store bore the appearance of an auto garage, with the opening its wide garage doors serving as the main entrance. Inside were shelves built on sawhorses upon which sat the store’s wares; toys, clothing, simple electronics, dish ware, audio and vhs cassettes, etc. Amongst these treasures sat with an ironic appeal was a lenticular print of our lord and savior, Jesus Christ. I’d become a kind of quasi-gnostic atheist by my early 20s and a 3D image of Jesus whose gaze seemed to follow you as you passed was just too odd for me to say no to. I purchased the portrait, took it home and affixed it to my wall above my stereo.
And there it sat. Days later the thrift/junk store disappeared. The space had been sold to a TitleMax.
The portrait was kind of classic, kind and docile white Jesus with copper brown hair and blue eyes. Similar to the coloration of Jesus I’d seen in portraits of Jesus as child in my Mormon upbringing, though with a different, slightly more aquiline and less muscular appearance.
I found absurd amusement in its eyes following me. It was initially disconcerting, but once the phrase “God is always watching.” made it to the surface of my conscious thought, I found my unease silly and viewed the objects maker as being either a devout and paranoid or cynical and manipulative. Guessing at the intent behind the creation of this strange portrait lent it increasing absurdity and an amusing appeal.
Weeks passed. School and work became my focus. This object of amused speculation disappeared into the background of all the other chaotically collected idiosyncratic nonsense.
I’d been up late several nights studying. A less than healthy reliance on caffeine throughout my work and school days would more than occasionally cause me episodes of insomnia. If I had cash, then I’d get drunk in order to sleep. And if I didn’t have cash, then there was an Ethiopian bar, the owner of which, whose name was Esau, would allow me to hold a tab with him. So this was my main strategy for insomnia, but sometimes there was just no affording booze and one simply had to bear with 2-3 days without sleep.
In the midst of an especially sleepless week I sat in the early AM listening classical music on the radio. Light illuminating the common areas of the complex spilled into my living room dimly lighting the others unlit space.
A voice spoke. From where was obscure to me for it didn’t seem to originate from anywhere in space. There was no clear direction identifiable in which I could check. However, I looked out of the window next to my radio as it played classical overtures. No one there. The back door in tiny kitchen which connected to the living room seemed like a contender for the origin of this voice even if it was in the direction opposite my window. Perhaps there was someone at my door? I checked. I opened the door and looked outside. No one there. I looked for a moment longer and listened. No voice. I closed the door and turned around to return to the living room. As I returned to the living room, the voice spoke again. The voice felt deep and churning. Something like rushing water and thunder as it crashed over the the symphony. The words, such as they were, were unintelligible to me. It was something like the experience of being spoken to in another language, the experience of knowing that something is being communicated, something important even, that there is sense and reason in the speech, but being completely unable to assess the meaning.
“What?”, I said.
The voice stopped.
“What? I didn’t understand you.”
I stood still. The statement had seemed profound, but the lack of intelligibility also made it feel empty. Meaningless, like a clever play on words perhaps? A kind of necker cube for intent? Was it this, or that? Nothing?
I returned to where I’d sat earlier listening to the radio, Jesus’ eyes following me there. The overture ended. The announcer’s voice spoke naming the various pieces which had played in the last programming block.
The next block began and I sat.
The voice spoke again.
Meaningless.
#jesus christ#writing#thoughts#easter#psychology#existentialism#mine#autobiography#paranormal#paranoia#insomnia#religion#short story
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Types, Techniques, and Benefits of Successful Radio Advertising
Radio advertising is still a potent weapon in the marketing toolbox, with its own styles, methods, and advantages over other media. Here's a detailed look into creating radio advertising strategies that work:
Strategies:
1. Target Audience Identification: Recognize the target audience's tastes, behaviors, and demographics. Make sure the message is suited to their needs.
2. Compelling Storytelling: Write captivating stories that arouse feelings in readers. Ads with a compelling narrative improve brand memory and make a lasting impact.
3. Frequency and Consistency: To support brand messaging, stay present on the radio consistently. Optimizing the schedule for optimum exposure to the intended audience is ensured.
4. Call to Action CTA: Provide concise and clear calls to action to elicit rapid reactions from the audience. Urge them to go to websites, make phone calls to hotlines, or go to actual businesses.
5. Integration with Other Channels: Transform radio advertising into an integrated brand experience through combining it with other media. Cross-promotion improves messaging and expands the audience. A top-notch advertising company can provide all the services, including radio advertising, you need to reach your objectives and expand your company.
Types:
1. Traditional Spot Commercials: Regular advertising spots run in between radio shows. They are perfect for conveying brief messages and come in a range of 15 to 60 seconds.
2. Sponsorships and endorsements: Join together with radio hosts or celebrities to promote goods and services. Host endorsements give the brand authority and respectability.
3. Native Advertising: Ads should be smoothly incorporated into radio programming to complement the show's tone and aesthetic. This method is less obtrusive and increases participation.
4. Promotional Events and Contests: Plan prizes, competitions, or on-air promos to entice listeners to participate. These interactive marketing initiatives increase brand awareness and interaction.
5. Podcast Advertising: Profit from the increasing craze for podcasts by placing ads or sponsorships inside pertinent audio material. Use customized messaging to reach specialized audiences.
Advantages:
1. Wide Reach and Targeting: Because radio covers a wide demography of listeners, marketers may target particular demographics depending on listener profiles and station formats.
2. Cost-Effectiveness: Radio advertising is more affordable than TV or print media, therefore companies of many kinds may take use of it.
3. Immediacy and Frequency: Radio commercials may be swiftly developed and broadcast, guaranteeing that promotions and events are communicated on time. Regular exposure improves remember of the brand.
4. Local Relevance: Hyper-local advertising options provided by regional stations enable firms to successfully target people within specified geographic areas.
5. Engagement and Emotional Impact: Audiences that hear stories told through audio are emotionally engaged, which increases brand connection and loyalty.
6. Flexibility and Creativity: Radio gives advertisers creative flexibility to create memorable jingles and immersive soundscapes that help them stand out from the competition.
To sum up, strategic strategy, innovative execution, and a thorough grasp of the advantages of the medium are necessary for successful radio advertising. Businesses may use radio to promote engagement, increase brand awareness, and accomplish marketing goals by utilizing its focused methods, variety of ad forms, and inherent benefits.
#Advertising#Digital Marketing#Digital Marketing Services#Services#Agency#Radio#Radio Advertising#Ad
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How to Work Better: Efficiency Tools Every Logo Designer Needs
A well-crafted logo design is vital for every successful business and C9 ADS is the best logo creator Australia as it’s often the first thing audiences see when they come across the company for the first time.
This means that as an in-demand logo designer you’ll be busy on multiple projects, each with competing demands and fast-approaching deadlines. To help you speed up your workflow, increase your productivity and efficiency and give you time to find more clients, I’m sharing my recommendations for the most useful tools to help you do just that.
Increase Your Creative Output
First of all, look for ways to speed up your creative process. This doesn’t mean rushing through the designing part, but looking at ways to make it go more smoothly. Here’s a few handy tools I use.
Quickly Clean up Your Artwork with the Smart Remove Brush Tool
VectorScribe is a plugin for Adobe Illustrator by Astute Graphics that enhances the tools that are already available within the software.
One great feature that I use on every project is the Smart Removal Brush tool, which automatically removes excess anchor points within your artwork. This makes it easier to edit, reduces the file size and most importantly ensures that your logo design artwork has that professional finish!
Logo Package Express: Export a Comprehensive Logo Kit in Two Minutes
One of the most time consuming tasks that every logo designer will need to perform is the export of logo files.
If like me you provide multiple lockups in a wide range of formats for web and print this task could take a couple of hours to complete. But now there’s a faster way to do it.
How does 2 minutes sound? Now it’s possible
Logo Package Express is an incredible Adobe Illustrator extension that speeds up the process of creating and exporting multiple file formats of logos. Rather than having to modify and export the files one at a time, Logo Package Express will do it all for you. It will also conveniently sort the results into folders, each carefully labeled so it’s easy for the clients to find exactly what they need.
Quickly Visualize Your Current Designs with Live Surface
If you want your designs to succeed in the real world you need to test them.
One of the fastest ways to do that is to apply your designs to branding mockups so you can gauge how the logo will work in real-world application.
Even with the power of Photoshop Smart Objects, using branding mockups can still take a fair amount of time. If only there was a faster way.
That’s where Live Surface comes into play. It’s a piece of software that integrates directly with Illustrator, allowing you to visualize your designs on real world items without leaving Illustrator. It means you can test your logo, and quickly adjust the design as needed before clicking a single button to see an updated version in situ. It’s a real time saver, and something I use on every project.
The images can then be exported out, in high resolution to be used when presenting your designs.
Tools to Make Your Business More Efficient
As well as making the important creative work happen faster, there are also some great tools you can use to make the boring but necessary admin tasks take up less of your time. Here’s a look at some of my favorites.
Access Your Files on the Move with Dropbox
Whether it’s a client brief, a specific font or a logo you’re halfway through, Dropbox makes it easier than ever to access and edit your files from any device with an internet connection. Your account is designed so it syncs across all your devices, ensuring that you can edit, organize, and access the latest version of your designs whether you’re at the office or on the go.
Dropbox also makes collaboration easier, as you can send large files quickly, and people can view, comment or send extra information straight to the relevant folder. There’s now also Dropbox Paper, which acts as a virtual scrapbook to collect images, audio and video files which inspire you.
The free version gives you 2GB of storage space, with two additional package options with more space and a host of extra features. There’s also a business version so multiple users can access everything easily.
Calendly: Pain-Free Meeting Schedule Tool
Client meetings are essential in any business, but it’s easy to spend more time going back-and-forth with emails to find a convenient time to meet (whether that’s face to face or virtually) than on actually discussing work.
Calendly is designed to eliminate that. Just enter your availability preferences, then send a booking link to the other party. They select the time that suits them, and your meeting is organized just like that. And if they’re in a different timezone, Calendly will automatically show the local time too. It’s THAT amazing.
Doodle is a similar tool but a more effective one for when you want to work out times when a larger team is free to meet. That's how I organize the Mastermind calls in the C9 ADS group!
Create Your own Templates
If you find you’re sending the same standard emails or documents to prospects and clients, consider creating a range of templates you can have to hand and which only need a bit of editing to personalize it for the recipient.
I have a number of templates I use for all stages of the process that speed up my workflow considerably. These include emails for every step of the logo design process, as well as In Design templates for Presenting my designs that I can simply place my logos into, as well as a Logo Usage Guidelines document that I provide at the end of a project to show clients how and where they can use their new logo.
There’s no need to reinvent the wheel each time, so creating template emails and documents will save you hours.
Contact C9 ADS as we are the trusted logo designers australia and have the ability to to grow your business to the heights. We create logos full of creativity and uniqueness. Contact us for the best and creative.
#packaging agency#logo designing agency#logo design#logo creator australia#graphic designing agency#food packaging design
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Digital Marketing
A world without the internet is unthinkable in the modern era. With more than 4.5 billion active users worldwide, the internet has emerged as the primary location for information sharing and dissemination, whether it be fun with friends or family members or news in science and politics.
The way businesses advertise their goods and services has also altered as a result of this shift to the internet. The creation of websites, social media, and online advertisements have essentially replaced billboards, cold calls, and print ads in the marketing industry, which has centred around the web like most things these days.
We'll go into what digital marketing is in this guide and how you can utilise it to sell your business. We'll also deconstruct the various kinds of
Search engine optimization (SEO)
SEO, or search engine optimisation, is a fundamental component of digital marketing that involves optimising your website to appear higher in search engine results. They are more likely to click on your link, learn more about your company, and possibly even become consumers when your website ranks highly on Google and other search engines.
Enhancing the SEO of your website may be done in three main ways:
on page SEO - Using keyword research to optimise your website's pages is known as. You may rank well on search engine results pages and lead consumers through the sales funnel with relevant, authoritative content when you strategically place keywords across your website.
off page SEO - Enhancing your SEO by looking at pages outside of your website is known as. Inbound connections pointing to your website are referred to as
Technical SEO - The backend components of your website, including coding, structured data, image compression, and more, are the focus of technical SEO. By optimising these components, you can increase page speed and make it simpler for search engines to "read" your website.
Content marketing
One essential element of digital marketing is content marketing, which is closely related to SEO. In order to achieve the objectives of raising brand awareness, driving more visitors to your website, generating leads, and converting clients, you must create and promote content.
The content you create can take many forms:
Blog posts: Creating a blog - and using strategic, long tail keywords in your articles - is a great way to bring traffic to your site and engage your customers.
Ebooks and white papers: Adding in-depth, long-form content to your website establishes your expertise in the industry and builds trust among your audience. You can also offer this content for download in exchange for your readers’ contact information, helping you generate leads.
Videos: Website content doesn’t need to be in written form. Adding videos to your website is an engaging way to provide valuable information to your audience
.
Infographics: Another form of visual content, infographics are a fun, helpful way to make information easier for readers to conceptualize. Complex explanations and statistics are particularly well-suited to this content format.
Podcasts: This audible content format is a useful way to strengthen your connection with your audience and build a loyal community around your brand. Content can be interview-based or niche-focused like Wix's SERP's Up SEO Podcast. To start a podcast, try repurposing existing website content, such as blog posts, and adapting it for audio.
Webinars: A merging of “web” and “seminar,” webinars further engage your audience, establish your authority, and delight customers with the extra value they provide.
Social media marketing
Social media marketing is another essential component of a potent digital marketing plan. This entails advertising your brand on social media platforms to raise awareness of it, improve website traffic, and generate leads. Making content for well-known social media platforms like these will help you do this.
Facebook
Instagram
Twitter
You Tube
Pinterest
LinkedIn
You can post anything on your blog, from thought-provoking pieces to demo videos of your product. Select the channels where your audience is most engaged; frequently, this is determined by their interests and demographics, including age and location. In these channels, you can also invest in sustainable marketing, which has gained popularity as customer demand for eco-friendly items has increased.
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How to minimize data risk for generative AI and LLMs in the enterprise
While generative AI can enhance productivity and unearth new ideas, it also raises security, privacy, and governance problems. Enterprises are concerned that Large Language Models (LLMs) may learn from their prompts, leak confidential information, and expose critical data to hackers. Most businesses, particularly those in regulated industries, will find it impossible to input data and prompts for publicly hosted LLMs. Companies must carefully assess their approach to extracting benefits from LLMs while reducing these dangers.
Work within your current security and governance boundaries
To strike a compromise between data protection and creativity, organizations should apply the LLM to their data, enabling data teams to modify and customize it within their existing security perimeter. Large enterprises should operate and execute LLMs under their existing security environment, reducing silos and adopting easy data access controls. The objective is to have practical, reliable data that can be accessed quickly with an LLM in a safe, managed environment.
Create domain-specific Large Language Models (LLMs)
LLMs educated on the internet might offer privacy risks, errors, and biases because they have no access to an organization’s systems and data. Enterprises may modify and customize models, including hosted models like ChatGPT and open-source models, to make LLMs more relevant to their businesses. Tuning fundamental models necessitates massive quantities of data and computer power, but it is possible to fine-tune them for specific content domains with less data. Customizing LLMs with internal data can deliver business-relevant insights. LLMs can be optimized for certain use cases to minimize resource requirements and run more cost-effectively.
People Also read – LLMs are surprisingly great at compressing images and audio, DeepMind researchers find
Unstructured data surfaces for multimodal AI
Tuning a model for your internal systems and data requires access to all relevant information, most of which will be stored in formats other than text. Unstructured data makes up almost 80% of the world’s data, including business data that consists of emails, photographs, contracts, and educational videos. Technologies like natural language processing are used to gather information from unstructured sources, enabling data scientists to build and train multimodal AI models that can detect data connections and provide insights for businesses.
Using reliable providers who issue clear warranties
Authentic suppliers provide specific assurances for generative AI and LLMs, assuring quality, security, and dependability. This assurance of performance mitigates the risks associated with untrustworthy or insecure models. A thorough examination of the fine print and terms of service is required to ensure that models satisfy certain needs and adhere to rules and standards.
Conclusion
To conclude, working inside your existing security and governance perimeter, developing domain-specific LLMs, and collecting information from unstructured sources are all critical stages in reducing data risk for generative AI and LLMs in the workplace. To effectively exploit generative AI technology, proceed gradually yet slowly, eliminate silos, and build clear, consistent regulations. Accessing responsive and reliable data, hosting and deploying LLMs in a secure environment, and customizing models with internal data improve the accuracy and relevance of AI outputs. Finally, selecting recognized providers with clear warranties improves the dependability and security of your organization’s LLMs.
People Also read - Why generative AI is a double-edged sword for the cybersecurity sector
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