Monday, 10-28

Today, we will begin by discussing our reading, I was struck by these:

The more we understand about memes and their mutations, their origins, and how quickly these are accepted by other individuals, the more we will understand cultural trends that may have been previously considered bewilderingly anomalous.

At its most basic, an Internet meme is simply the propagation of a digital file or hyperlink from one person to others using methods available through the Internet.

Here is more on the meme study, which says "Similarly, concrete words like house are generally easier to recall than abstract words like proof in short-term memory tasks." And 

The model likewise correctly predicted a lack of success for the meme "Does this look like the face of mercy?" This meme also contains a concrete word, "face," but because the meme is over four words in length, the model treated it as long.

And I'm curious what people think of this

Shubeck envisions a day when his model might be flipped upside down, so that instead of predicting successful memes, it will be creating them, citing the recent case of the neural network that learned how to generate new cards for Magic: The Gathering. "I think people are tickled at the idea of neural networks generating new content," he says.

Finally, we will do an in-class activity:

Start with an image of an animal or person that might lend itself to a meme. Download the image to your computer. Here are some starter images for our exercise:

sailor -- pilot -- kilt guy -- turtle

Also download and image with a background scene. Here are some images to get started:

dean smith center -- New York -- cactus

Next, we will walk through some tasks in Photoshop.

• Open Photoshop on your computer and create a new image that is 1080 pixels wide by 1080 pixels high. Save the image as meme1.
• Next, open an animal or person image in Photoshop. 
• Next, select all of the image using the Select Menu, and then choose Copy.
• Next navigate to your meme1 blank image. From the Layers menu, select New > Layer. From the Edit menu, select Paste.
• Next, open the image with the background scene. Select all of the image, and copy it.
• Next return to the meme1 image, and create a new layer, and then paste the background image into the new layer. 
• Next, rearrange the layers if needed to the proper order by dragging them in the Layers palette. Putting the figure above the background.
• Next, choose the Quick Selection tool, and select relevant parts of the image to create trace lines around the animal or person.
• Next, from the Layer menu, select Layer Mask > Reveal Selection. See what happens.
• Next, choose the text tool from the toolbar, and add some text. Experiment with the fonts, sizes, color etc. Once you have a text layer in your composition, experiment with some of the effects available at the bottom of the Layers pallets 

While working, experiment with the sizes of the items you are working with--Edit > Transform > Scale. When finished File > Export your file in either jpg or png format, and then add a comment to this posting. In the comment, upload the image using the image icon in the toolbar.

For homework, please complete this reading assignment.