Everyday I take random images from my RSS reader, and composite them with random options fed into ImageMagick. Which I’ve mentioned before. WordPress really doesn’t have a way interlinking posts does it? Anyway.
Just looking at the blocks of things you can do w/ WordPress, oh look a verse block. I did start writing a poem the other day.
Standing on the shoulders of giants First of all they are not giants They were just regular people like you and me Sure, some of them were taller than others But the point is they were just human like the rest of us They may have been smarter or more talented But altogether human And we are not standing on them, we are learning from them
Something like that, I’ve already thought up 1 or 2 other versions. Starting a few days ago in the shower. That is where poetry comes from. Not some muse or inspiration, it’s the shower.
So I didn’t start out planning to write that, but there it just happened. What I really wanted to write about is the collage selection process. In the daily cutup I don’t have a way yet of inserting the collages randomly. And honestly it’s just a crap shoot everyday, which is why the 400 are created. Sometimes the options don’t work and a collage is not really created. I’m certainly not saying my process is perfect, it’s just the best I could do in the time that I have. But sometimes the options do work and I’m pleased with the way several images are composited together. It’s quite a time consuming task to go through the images and judge which ones worked best. I’ve spent many hours looking at the images and trying to come up with a scale. The scale I came up w/ is called VOCA, for Vibe, Originality, Composition and Aesthetic.
So if I really had time, I would first quickly go through and select my favourites. Then from my favourites narrow down to a even smaller batch, the short-list, and then judge them on the scale. And that is how I would choose which one I would make into a NFT, my selection for June 6th here.
I’m done with the NFTs for now though. Now I have decided to just focus on my blog here. It’s time to write and just journal things here for now. I am of course interested in what’s going on here:
But not enough to learn how to use Tezos and a new blockchain wallet etc… Oh, I just randomly found an article from one of my new favourite sites looking for that. There is so much interesting stuff going on in the world…
Anyhow Today’s favourite collage on the VOCA scale. Also I cheated and only looked at the last 100 or so collages, but this is what I came up with:
Vibe: You know the vibe of the thing. How does it make it you feel? This image above had the vibe of the collage of the day.
Originality: Does it take the source material and do something new with it? Does it look unique? I think this image scored higher on that:
Where the first image has more recognizable elements from the source material. I mean you can recognise a chair in 313 but there is a still from the upcoming Dune movie which forms the basis of the 319 collage. And if you look closely the other figure superimposed on the man in the hat is Jemain Clement from What We Do In The Shadows. I don’t normally like recognisable people in the collages but it’s unavoidable and the composition on the left side of the image is good. Could use more work on the right side, where it’s interesting but just the set design of the film coming through.
Composition: Do all the elements of the collage work well together? Are they combined in an interesting way that doesn’t look like a random computer program assembled it? Having a hard time finding an example of that today, but this might have a higher score in that area:
Okay it still looks a bit random, but there is some sort of composition there. There are hard edges from the layered images, but they work better than in the first or second images. And finally:
Aesthetic: Basically, does it look nice? Do the colours work?
The above images would also score highly for me in this category. I think the blues and reds work well together and there is some nice patterns in there. In fact I think 299 might be my favourite of the day. There was one more I think deserves honourable mention:
I mean it looks like there is a Apple watch in there, you can’t get much more aesthetic than that right? Since I don’t have time to go through the 400 collages each day, I just randomly upload an assortment which get put into the daily cutup. The last one here, 388 was included in that batch but the other three I have mentioned here, 299, 313 and 319 were not and on most days they would just go ignored and unseen. Since today I have some time I was able to go through all the images and pick some favourites.
So you tell me, what the hell is this? A waste of time. Well be that as it may, it happens. This is how I consume and regurgitate the Internet in 2021 and try to make art.
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