Blog – Page 11 – Karyn Easton

Jan 03

by Karyn in Experimentation, Food for Thought, Ideas, Timelapse, Unit 3 Blogs 0 comments tags: Experimentation, Food for Thought, Ideas, Timelapse, Unit 3 Blogs

Mobile Designs

Getting the Timings Right – Having reversed the concept of how humans perceive AI art, to how computers perceive images, I decided to consider potential designs. At this stage I am still thinking in terms of a large mobile. However, I would like to base the mobile’s design on binary code. The binary code will conceal a hidden message relevant to my overall project. Using binary code might at first appear to be a superficial idea, but actually the concept goes much much deeper. Early Experimentation In my early experimentation I used a circle to represent the zeros and I cut out holes in the ones. I am not convinced that this works particularly well and it is extremely time consuming! Below is an image of some of the prototypes I made. Further Experimentation I felt the above prototypes were quite bland, probably wouldn’t move very well and didn’t leave a much surface area for designs. I decided that an oval shape was much better than a circle for representing the zeros. I used layers of recycled cardboard and recycled printer paper along with some of my own black and white designs. I think that the second […]

Jan 02

by Karyn in Experimentation, Final Major Project, Food for Thought, Unit 3 Blogs 0 comments tags: Experimentation, Final Major Project, Food for Thought, Unit 3 Blogs

Still Thinking

How Do Computers See Art? – Throughout my research journey, I focussed a lot on how humans perceive AI generated art. On the whole there was quite an amount of negative bias towards it. Further research revealed that some of this negativity could be mitigated by carefully crafting a narrative to accompany the AI art. However, this led me to question how do computers actually see and understand the art that they are fed? I did some further research and I stumbled upon something called ‘pixel data’. This is the raw data the computer uses to display both the colour and brightness of any given pixel on a screen. I wanted to learn more about pixel data. While doing some research I stumbled across a really interesting website called ‘Think Maths’. On this website was an interesting piece of software to enable the extraction of pixel data called the ‘Spreadsheet Pixel Converter. After watching one of Matt Parker’s videos on the website, I became completely ‘sold’ on the idea of pixel data and how a computer might at some level actually view or ‘see’ the imagery that is input into a machine learning system. In his video, Matt demonstrated how […]

Dec 27

by Karyn in Unit 3 Blogs 0 comments tags: Unit 3 Blogs

Mobile Making

Starting the Process – After much thought and mind mapping I feel a concept beginning to materialise. I enjoy making and often, as with my Zentangle drawing, it helps with the creative process. Today I finally made a start. I wanted to just do something – anything – just make something. I had already flattened all of my cardboard in readiness for this. Therefore, there were no more excuses for procrastination. I cut some circles of card. In doing so I noticed that the textures on the recycled card were actually quite interesting. I managed to cut the first circle for my mobile but I thought it would be interesting to make some textural designs from them. There was no particular rhyme or reason behind this other that to help with my thought processes and creative thinking. I also liked some of the patterns that were created when the images were collaged together. Below are some of the images that I shot and manipulated. Images

Dec 24

by Karyn in Experimentation, Food for Thought, Ideas, My Work, Unit 3 Blogs, Videos 0 comments tags: Experimentation, Food for Thought, Ideas, my work, Unit 3 Blogs, Videos

Stacking Cardboard

Ducks in a Row – It’s Christmas Eve and surprisingly this year I am ahead of schedule with wrapping presents etc. Therefore, I decided to start getting my ducks in a row so that I have everything ready to begin Unit 3. One of my goals is to create a huge mobile. Initially I would like to make it from cardboard boxes recycled from items bought for our house. So, today I finally began flattening it all out and storing it upright to keep it in good shape. I’m hoping that this is the start of something interesting. New Videos Following my feedback I also decided to catch up on my Zentangle drawings. I wanted to do this because I think hand drawing is something I’d like to incorporate into my work. I also decided that any AI that I would use would be for animation purposes only. Therefore, I took three of my most recent black and white hand drawn then digitised creations and animated them using AI. The results seem to have a very organic feel. I was fairly happy with the results. I introduced a digitised Polaroid frame around the videos to both add interest […]

Dec 18

by Karyn in Conclusion, Experimentation, Food for Thought, Reflection, Unit 2 Blogs, Unit 3 Blogs 0 comments tags: Conclusion, Experimentation, Food for Thought, Reflection, Unit 2 Blogs, Unit 3 Blogs

Feedback

Thoughts Firing Actions – I’ll not lie, I was feeling so happy with my grade from Unit 2. Ahead of receiving my grade, I was so worried that I had completely messed up with regards to my thinking. I knew that there was a depth to my work still lacking, but I just couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Then I received my feedback! This put beautifully into words exactly what I was feeling. There had to be something deeper to what I was trying to achieve. It’s really not enough to simply use AI and it’s crucial that investigations go much further. I decided that I would try to dig a little deeper and ‘go under the bonnet’ of AI. What exactly is AI and machine learning? How easy is it to master? Can a non programmer access it? Could there be a creative use for it beyond simply using it and tapping into the vast wealth of humanity that created it without being asked? I decided that in order to move forward I needed to train one of my own models. I wasn’t sure where to start so I asked my old friend ChatGPT. The bot suggested […]

Dec 12

by Karyn in Final Outcomes, Unit 3 Blogs 0 comments tags: Final Outcomes, Unit 3 Blogs

A Busy Day

And So It Begins… I know I’d planned to take a little break, but I also know that large projects need a lot of time and planning. Therefore, I decided to set up a meeting with one of my old photography students. This lady belongs to a hospital radio station called ‘Life Care Radio.’ She also happens to work at my college too. I have so many ideas for my final exhibition that I feel the need to explore multiple avenues. I have already started making enquiries about the installation of a large mobile at the college where I work. However, I feel that I also need a backup plan. My main aim is to create a kinetic mobile structure with lots of hidden meaning and depth to it. A study in human curiosity is actually the driving force behind what I’m trying to achieve (I will explain more about that at a later stage). At the same time, just in case this fails, I also want to explore the placement of some of my digital work. I would like it to appear in both my work setting and in a hospital setting. This is where my college friend from […]

Dec 09

by Karyn in Crits, Zentangles, Zoom Meetings 0 comments tags: Crits, Zentangles, Zoom Meetings

Zoom Session 40

The Last Session of the Year – I cannot believe how quickly the time has flown over. We are already two thirds off the way through our course, and I can’t believe there’s only 20 weeks left! We had a critique/affirmative feedback session to round off the end of this term’s last Zoom session. I felt this was a really nice way to end the term as I was really excited to see how everyone had got on with their 3 minute videos. My group included: Donald, Ellie, Delphina, Shirin, Jason and Sue. There were quite a few others, but my memory is terrible at the moment, so many apologies to everyone that I missed. We watched presentations from: Shirin, Jason, Ellie and Delphina – all of the videos were totally unique, and it was lovely to see such a diverse range of talent! Sadly, as I am moving through the course I’m now not sure if I will be able to maintain my weekly Zentangle drawings. There’s just so much to do in preparation for my final outcomes, that I want to channel all of my energy into Unit 3. Just in case I do manage a couple of […]

Nov 28

by Karyn in Crits, My Work, Videos, Zentangles, Zoom Meetings 0 comments tags: Crits, my work, Videos, Zentangles, Zoom Meetings

Zoom Session 39

AI and (3 Minute Video) Affirmative Feedback – I cannot believe that this is the penultimate zoom session of this year! I was really excited today because my three minute video was used as a test for the start of the crit sessions. I was really pleased with the comments because I can now use these to help inform my work going forward. I was quite nervous at how my video would be received, but I think on the whole, judging by the comments, it wasn’t so bad 🙂 As an extra form of feedback called ‘Affirmative Feedback’, everyone was asked to respond to the sentence: “What worked for me is…” The other respondents were then invited to agree or disagree with this by giving a thumbs up on the recorded session from today. I am including a link to this week’s video as peoples’ comments and reactions will again be useful in helping to inform my work going forward. Please see below for the comments: A Useful Graphic The following graphic posted by Bea, is useful when considering the critiquing process. Playing with AI text to Image Generation For the rest of the session […]

Nov 28

by Karyn in Ideas, Unit 3 Blogs 0 comments tags: Ideas, Unit 3 Blogs

Mobile Making Ideas

All Things Mobile – Based on all of my research and work from Unit 2, I decided that I would like to investigate the production of a giant mobile. I’m setting up this blog post as a place to record all of my thoughts and initial ideas. I intend to make some mind-mapping notes. However, as an early investigation I’ve already made a tentative start. I asked AI using text prompts to visualise my thoughts and ideas. All of the ideas below are mine but expressed using text to image generation. I quite like some of these early iterations. Paper Sculpted Mobiles The paper sculpted mobiles were generated by the simple prompt: ‘A large mobile made from paper suspended from a ceiling’. I think that if any of these were actually constructed then it would be pretty impressive. Mobiles with a Circular Theme The following set of four mobiles were just continued generations of the original prompt above. The software began to generate circles which is quite interesting. Circles had been my initial shape of choice. Binary Code Inspired Mobiles At this point I changed my prompt to incorporate the words ‘binary code’ because […]

Nov 26

by Karyn in My Work, Unit 2 Blogs 0 comments tags: my work, Unit 2 Blogs

Grotto Print – The Final Outcome

To QR or Not to QR – After much deliberation I finally settled on the final design for my Grotto Print. The background to this project can be found in the following blogs: Grotto Print Ideas #1, Grotto Print Ideas #2 and lastly Grotto Print Ideas #3. Initially, I had wanted to add a layer of augmented reality to this project, which would have been very much in keeping with all of my thoughts and aims from Unit 1 and Unit 2. I designed myself an augmented reality QR code to compliment my final clock print design. Unfortunately, although it worked really well for me on my iPhone, there was a problem for Android users. This problem was a country problem namely the U.K. vs U.S. Apparently there are subtle differences between the U.K. Android operating system and the U.S. Android operating system. So sadly my grand vision of having my print augmented with an animated video could not happen on this occasion. However, I was not to be completely thwarted. I decided that if I could not augment my print with a video, then I would use standard QR code technology to take the user to my art print […]