Corrupted photos of corrupted politicans

Corrupted images

I found the Battlefield 4 Servers!!

I knew I could make you go blind!

Generative Texts

A Self Generating Poem is a poem that generates on its own with the help of the author and a software that uses the specific code, made by the author, that creates the poem. One example of a self generating poem is Taroko Gorge by Nick Monfort. This poem focuses on Taroko Gorge National Park in the mountains of Taiwan. The poem consists of lines describing or admiring Taroko Gorge, such as “Mist roams the coves. Flows hum. Shapes sweep the stone.” Although these lines were generated by the computer, they are still able to paint a picture in your mind and take your mind to a peaceful place. Another example of a self generating poem is Camel Tail by Sonny Rae Tempest. What makes this poem especially unique is how all of the lines come from Metallica lyrics. An example of some of the lines in this piece are, “While I tend to how I feel; Like a misery that keeps me focused though i've gone astray; Just listen, they play my song; Exploiting Their Supremacy”. So, this self generating poem is pretty much just a scrambled up Metallica song, which is pretty interesting. Although it’s obvious how unique and intriguing the idea of this poem is, the true author of this piece is not quite as obvious. You could say that the credit for this piece should all go to Metallica, since it is just a reorganization of their lyrics. But on the other hand, the code that made this idea possible was written by Nick Monfort and simplified by Tempest, so they could also be given credit as authors. Even though the code was written by Monfort and Tempest though, the computer is ultimately what put the lyrics in the order that they appear in, which is the end result of all of the previous lyric and code writing. This is what makes settling on one true author of these works practically impossible to do. Everybody can have an opinion on who the true author may be, but the more important question is whether or not everybody can find meaning in poems that have been generated by a computer.

Each self generating poem has a meaning to it. Sometimes, the meaning to the poem is too hard to see due to what may be at first a confusing pattern. Most of the self generating poems we looked at are modifications of Taroko Gorge. Taroko Gorge originally was made by Nick Montfort to give the reader a poetic perspective of walking through the Taroko Gorge national park, and it’s meaning is to convey nature. Camel Tail was a modification made by Sonny Rae Tempest, and it turns Taroko Gorge from a peaceful poem maker into a thrashing Metallica song generator. Nobody can truly understand a self generating poem’s meaning until looking at it as an author and a reader. For instance, when I wrote The Infinite Road Trip (http://web.archive.org/web/20160422184634/http://www.pitt.edu/~jtb87/InfRT.html), I did not truly see how much work was going into it. All I did was just edit some of the spacing of the lines and the word pools. Little did I know that what looked like light program editing was such a heavy modification. I just wanted to edit it into something that would show a sample of what it looks like for a child with ADHD (me) on a road trip. To me, it was a scraped together program, but to the professor, it was a perfectly chaotic view of what it looks like being on a road trip with ADHD. How do I view the roles of the reader, the author and the computer? While the computer views self generating poems as a thankless job, the reader can view it as the piece of endless literature, and the author can view it as an infinitely long mind unpack handled by the computer.

Pieces of Herself

The work of electronic literature, Pieces of Herself, is an interactive piece that delves into the complex idea of womanhood. The creator, Juliet Davis, focuses her piece on the subject of gender identity and the role of women in places such as the home, work, and the community. The environments that you encounter are all in black and white. As you move through the house and the outside area, you come across multiple colored objects that you can drag onto the woman’s plain body, that make her more colorful. As you drag these objects, the woman’s voice also tells different stories that involve what object you’re placing onto her body.

For example, in the shower you are able to drag strands of hair onto the woman, and she proceeds to talk about how her hair is getting grayer as it grows, so from time to time she decides to color it. The place of women in society as well as in their own home is explored in this piece through objects, sounds, and commentary in a very interesting and attention grabbing way.

In Pieces of Herself, as a man, I felt like I learned something. I got to see an in depth look at what makes up a woman, and how pieces of herself are taken away from every scenario she is in. Males do it too but in a different way, guys keep things to their self and don’t really let out information. Whereas in the piece that we view it shows a woman basically wearing it on her sleeve. This piece is very interactive, as you can create the woman by bringing pieces to her body. In a way this piece has you look at your life and what you have been through, by where you choose to put certain pieces. This is interaction that not many digital pieces have, which is what makes it so unique. In every scenario that mostly everyone has been in, the shower, the bedroom, and so on, you create the woman by the pieces you choose. I really enjoyed the creativity side that this piece gives you. It is totally up to you to design this woman, and create her in your own way, this again brings in the personal side, but also the person’s own creativity.

From a female’s perspective, this piece really highlights the stereotypes that women are boxed into every day. When you reach the church scene in this story, the woman talks about having a baby. This has been a stereotype for a long time, that women are expected to have children whether they want to or not. The shower scene where the woman talks about coloring her hair that was mentioned earlier, offers another example of how women feel like they must look a certain way. The references to covering up gray hair and getting botox show the viewers what it is like to be an aging woman in society, while the kitchen scene brings up the issue of women still being viewed primarily as homemakers. This piece also shows the importance of feminism and that even though society has come very far in regards to equality for men and women, women are still held to unfair standards.

Mr. Plimpton's Revenge

Mr. Plimpton's Revenge is a piece of electronic literature, also known as a Google Maps essay. A Google Maps essay is a story that is told on the Google Maps webpage, and that walks you through the locations in which the characters were to make you feel as if you are part of the story.  This piece was told by Dinty Moore, a college student, in the year of 1977. Dinty and Mr. Plimpton met because Dinty was chosen to be Plimpton’s chauffeur when he was in the city to speak at the University of Pittsburgh. After this first encounterance, the two individuals ran into each other in many other places such as Harrisburg, New York City, and Baltimore. As readers read through this piece, they will question what Plimpton’s revenge actually is. But the real question is, is there any revenge at all?

This story is basically about an accidental stalking by a man who cringes at the thought of the first impression he gave to famous author, Mr. Plimpton. Every time Dinty unintentionally runs into Mr. Plimpton, he is afraid that Mr. Plimpton only remembers him as his scraggly, stoned college self. Dinty believes that the reason he ignores him in New York City is because Mr. Plimpton remembers him, but not very fondly. Though Dinty spends years worrying about the first impression to Mr. Plimpton, he soon finds out that Mr. Plimpton doesn’t even remember him. Mr. Plimpton’s revenge doesn’t really exist, since he does not even remember Dinty. What makes this piece entertaining and funny is having the two main characters be seeing things in a completely different way. The “revenge” that Mr. Plimpton gets is simply playing along with Dinty’s coworkers and pretending to remember that he drove him the the airport, when in reality all those times he saw Dinty in Harrisburg, New York City, and Baltimore, he wasn’t ignoring him, but just didn’t remember him.

This story being on Google Maps made it more of an interactive experience. As you can see to the right, the Google Map shows you all the locations you have been to help you understand the storyline better. You can see where the Pittsburgh Airport is, where the two characters had first met, along with many other significant locations that are marked for the reader.

This is not the first time I have seen an interactive map project, although I did find it relatively unique. Most of the others that I have seen before include just a simple commentary/anecdote on the marked location, a photo of the marked location, or (like this piece) telling a story with several locations. The way this story works out is that a student at the University of Pittsburgh ends out giving George Plimpton (a well known author at the time) an awkward escort for the first part (things such as having an odor, Plimpton having to pay for a restaurant check), and the second part focuses on the author having more awkward run-ins with Mr. Plimpton. At this point, the story shifts away from telling a story, but instead appears to be the author keeping a log of run ins. This keeps up until the last part, set in Baltimore, where an assistant to the author is chatting with Plimpton, and notes that the person he kept running into was the student who gave a sloppy escort. I found it interesting that the author uses both a journal and a story in this project, as it gives a background to the story, and also paces the story well. Overall, I found this piece to be well made and to communicate a good story.

What is Digital Humanities?

What is Digital Humanities? Well, Digital Humanities has a lot to do with a computer, and also people. Digital Humanities is basically a big melting pot of research and studies, and different things in that nature that all crossover with humanities. Humanities is plural for humanity which means the human race. Digital Humanities involves you being able to research, understand that research, then being able to come up with your own idea, and present that in electronic form. If someone is unfamiliar with a Computer, you can get around that.

In Digital Humanities there a tons of forms of electronic literature this is a big example of Digital Humanities. Everyone can interact with this because this is the designed purpose. In Digital Humanities you come across the question Digitized, or Born Digital. So what are these two things? Born Digital is when you create something on a computer, for example a form of electronic literature, when you do this it is born into the internet universe. Digitized is simply put scanning a newspaper article onto the computer. It was not born into the internet universe, but you made it a part of it by scanning its hard copy form into electronic form, hereby making this digitized.

So again what is Digital Humanities?
To conclude, it is researching understanding the research forming your own opinion, and presenting this in a digital form. This is what I hope you can take away from this blog post, because this is most important.

What is Digital Humanities?

On the first day of my Digital Humanities class, I thought that the term “digital humanities” was going to have one simple definition. We first started off class by defining each word individually. The word digital can be expressed as a series of digits, such as zeros and ones. Humanities is defined as the study of humans. Then within just a few short minutes of being in class, I had learned that the this term, digital humanities can be defined in more ways that I could tell you in this short blog post. If you don’t believe me, check out the website What is Digital Humanities. The way that I would personally define digital humanities would be the interaction of humans through a digital outlook. For example, everything from electronic literature to social media can be grouped under digital humanities because it is humans interacting with technology. Digital humanity works can be described as either born digital or digitized. Born digital means that it was originally produced in digital form. However, digitized works are ones that have been changed from a printed text to a digital text. Digital humanities is a broad field that is continuously becoming more popular.

What is Digital Humanities?

Digital Humanities is the study of how technology evolves through the research and engagement of humans. It includes both digitalized objects along with objects that are “born-digital”. Things such as electronic literature and hypertext fiction are examples of digital objects that are created by people in the digital humanities field. It involves research of technology and digital objects. People involved in the digital humanities field study digital platforms in order to enhance the online experience of a large audience. Along with research, the creation of digital objects is a major part of digital humanities. The data that is found through research is used to create engaging digital objects, along with being used to make information more accessible and easier to navigate through.

These digital creations normally aim to tell the viewer some kind of story. These stories often make the viewer feel something, or become engaged in some way. Hypertext fiction, for example, directly engages the reader by letting them choose which direction to take the story. Though the author has already created all possible outcomes of the story, the reader feels involved because they are able to choose what they think should happen, being able to see the repercussions of their decisions. Digital humanities involves creation, research, and the archiving of creations, making it a versatile field that is constantly changing as new technology is discovered and  continues to evolve.

Image from: https://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/0116-digital-humanities.jpg

What is digital humanities? (Jacob)

Digital Humanities is humanities using digital methods. This is not just writing digitally. This is more. We are studying how technology influences people. A video is not just a bunch of morphing images and sound waves. An advertisement is more than an annoying television interruption. A forum is not just a place to circlejerk. A facebook feed is more than just trivial life events from acquaintances. Each of these is some way intending to give you a message. A video can make you feel pleasured, or can give you more information. An advertisement can show you just what exactly could be a new trend. A forum can connect you with a person of similar interests, and allow you to express feelings without being too direct. A Facebook feed can reignite emotions between 2 people. Finally, we are in a digital realm.

What we are specifically learning about is the way technology can help us tell an enhanced story. A person can make a program that randomly generates a poem that uses a very basic skeleton, but use a pool of words in the style of a Mad-Libs activity book. A social networking site can give you a chance to listen to stories from all of your friends without having each of them trying to scream their stories louder and causing massive confusion. A map with interactive pins can tell the story of a journey in an engaging manner as compared to just typing several confusing paragraphs. A video game such as Call of Duty can give a person the idea of what war is like without putting them in danger, stress, or through several chapters of a memoir.

While I have just provided several examples that take advantage of digital means of writing, a misconception you might have is that if it was not digital to begin with, it is not contributing to digital humanities. This is in no way the case. We can take analogue works and enhance them via digital means. No matter how it is written, if it is in some measure considered digital, then it still contributes to digital humanities. Digital humanities might not be something that you want to accept into your curriculum, but just by reading this post you are acknowledging the presence of a digital work. Even though you can attempt a futile argument such as claiming I wrote this on pen and paper first, it still appears using digital methods. Reading this post means you have just seen one of my (earliest) contributions to digital humanities.