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Category Archives: sappho
Opening Doors You Thought Might be Closed
I made this gif with http://makeagif.com/youtube-to-gif Who knew that creating a gif from a downloaded You Tube video could be so easy? I have been working much too hard at this for the past 3 weeks! Sure, the name of the video editor is on my gif, but the video sequence belongs to The Prisoner series, anyway.
Sappho has been planning an escape route out of the Village. and she thinks she has found one! In the “Once Upon a Time” episode, Number 6 is introduced to the idea of a waste disposal unit! Here he is contemplating the words of Number 2.
Time is running out! The long summer evenings end soon, and Sappho needs to break away from the internet before fall courses begin.
She has bought some Village deck shoes to help her retreat, but after watching the final Prisoner episode, “Fallout”, she is wondering whether life can ever be normal again!
At the recommendation of the Village Philosopher, she has taken out Dostoyevsky’s “The Idiot” and plans to read it in the next 3 weeks. After all, Nureyev had read all of Dostoyevsky!!
Prisoners, ‘idiots’, Village residents, fairy tales, Burgeron Trailer Blues-all have opened doors to the digital arts for Sappho. It has taken a lot of courageous experimentation on her part and a supportive online community which has tweeted and re-tweeted her work, +1 with comments on G+, a few backchannel emails, and WordPress posts w. comments-all bolstering her to find her own voice, and I think now, she has!
Thanking the DS106 community for opening doors and windows!
Variations on a Theme: “Where Am I?”
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- Sappho, planning her escape
Sappho is up late at night, midsummer, adding some visuals- moving and not- to her repertoire of working on one of the Prisoner themes of “Where Am I?” She is planning her own escape from the Village while working on her art, but is increasingly under the influence of gifanitus, a Village condition of ‘mutuality’. She is eating well and exercising, hoping to become more ‘unmutual’.
Finally, Sappho also put together a small trailer about Freedom and Prison.
And now, it’s time for bed! BCing you…….
Sappho: Languishing in the Village
Sappho thinks she’s been languishing in the summer heat at the Village a bit too long. Her art and design classes have been instructional, and she has had a few conversations with Number 6 privately in his bungalow and over tea at the Village Bistro. Her vision seems to be tainted now with rose colored glasses. Sappho went to visit Dr. M. in her bungalow to help Sappho with the dilemma of separating illusion from reality and was instructed by Dr M. to contemplate a ‘daily create’ challenge. Dr. M. advised daily contemplation of the following adage ‘Interrupt the flowerbeds and finality will follow’. Sappho was able to transpose nouns in this adage and create a mash-up artwork at the Village Studio to help give her a more expansive view of her changing perspectives during her stay at the Village. 
Sappho compared her artwork with that of some of her compatriots over a midsummer Village dinner and found that her ideas differed vastly. She still could not maintain ‘design integrity’, a seeming requirement for success in Village life. Dr. M. had even created a sample artwork to help the many Village patients who were dealing with multiple realities.
Sappho was still mainly interested in still photography and writing; although, Village preferences favored the mesmerizing gif format. She understood the gif persuasion – especially its hypnotic qualities which left Villagers in the trance-like state so advantageous to Number 2. She decided to rent a penny farthing at the Village rental shop by the beach and take a day trip to the Bovine County Fairy Tale Fest. The question was whether she could actually escape the Village for a spell or not.
Credits
All writing by @janweb3
Mash-up art by @janweb3
Second flower mash-up art by Mariana Funes
Jim Groom glasses and penny- farthing gif by John Johnston
Sappho’s Designs
DS106: Capture/Screenshot a scene from an episode of a TV show or a movie and try to make a poster for that episode or movie. Try to make it cool! Be creative!
Here is my gif from the opening and repeated scenes of ‘The Prisoner’. I used Free Video Cutter to make the gif.
I entitled this gif “Where am I?”
Here are some of the comments I received on G+ for this gif.
Jul 19, 2015
It is Awesome!
Jul 19, 2015
Very nice dear. I like the effect you’ve got there of going around-and-around. Although for those of us with motion sickness issues, I’m feeling awfully dizzy.
Jul 19, 2015
Yes, very dizzying. Wasn’t exactly what I was going for, but I’ll take what I can get on my first try.
Jul 19, 2015
I have to say you did a great job on this +janet webster . It looks like something +John Johnston would’ve made. A smooth GIF that tells a story in more ways than one. Bravo!
Jul 19, 2015
Bravo! Well made.
I kinda recognize the fast style of Mariana’s gifs too in it.
I kinda recognize the fast style of Mariana’s gifs too in it.
Jul 19, 2015
Not necessarily intentional 😉
Jul 19, 2015
Well that’s how it works, you get influenced without knowing it.
Jul 19, 2015
Cool! Glad you found a way. It is a lovely one. Make sure you add the tags for the assignment when you do your post so you get credit units! +janet webster
Jul 20, 2015
+Nana Lou thank for the compliment. This looks a bit deeper than me:-) I see the repetitive nature of the series, resign and be dammed again and again. nice stuff.
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Still inspired by the above gif made by John Johnston, I took the still images from my own gif’s clip captured from John Johnston’s blog and made a book-cover or poster for ‘The Prisoner’ series. I wanted to keep the monochromatic scheme of the typewriter and photo still of #6 with the XXXXXXXXXXX across his face. The word ‘Resigned’ is a key word in the themes presented in this series, so I used it as a title instead of “The Prisoner”.
The floating head (a la John the Baptist) is somewhat unnerving, but I wanted to give that sense in my composition. I also like to build in ambiguity to my compositions.
I don’t have a lot of time to devote to these assignments, and I usually do them late at night, so I look for quick and easy technical solutions to my creative ideas.
The Burgeron Family 