Blog – Page 23 – Karyn Easton

Feb 14

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

Zoom Session 16

Professional vs Unprofessional – This week we looked at a short article that was discussing what it was a to be professional/unprofessional as an artist. We went into our breakout rooms to discuss this. The consensus was that the article could be perceived as somewhat offensive. The comments were also very interesting. Somehow our conversation moved to positive discrimination and whether or not this was a force for good in society. Again the consensus towards it was negative. Time really did seem to fly this week!. As well as Zoom day it’s also Valentine’s Day today and as a gift I received a really interesting book called ‘Machines Behaving Badly – The Morality of Ai’ by Tony Walsh. I’m really looking forward to reading it. I really do welcome any insight into this fascinating area. I will blog about this as soon as I have read it. In the meantime I have updated my Zentangle gallery as usual. Updated Zentangle Gallery

Feb 11

Boring, Boring, Boring

Nothing is Ever New – I often tell my students about a great piece of advice that I received as a photography student over 30 years ago. The advice was simple, but it has had a profound effect on my work through the decades. It goes like this…… “When you have your finalised brief or theme – go away and brainstorm 5 ideas and write them down on a piece of paper. Once you have your list, screw it up, or better still tear it up and throw it in the bin. Why???…Because those 5 ideas will probably be the exact same 5 ideas that everyone else will come up with.” I now always pass on this little piece of advice to all my students. They usually give me a look of abject horror, having just spent the last two hours working on the first idea that came into their heads. Yesterday Noah, one of my fellow students, kindly alerted me to an artist who is working very much along the same lines as me. Here is an Instagram link to his work. I am not really surprised by someone else working in my area of trying to marry up […]

Feb 07

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

Zoom Session 15

Open Ended Questioning – This week was a very interesting week because we broke off into small groups of around 3 people per group. Our challenge was to have one of our group members explain what they were finding challenging in their practice at the moment. Once they had explained their most pressing issues, everyone had to take turns in asking them open ended questions. I really enjoyed this exercise. I felt it was very useful being able to have people listen to my work problems and then respond to me with open ended questions. I also liked the people in my group and I found their ideas and work very interesting. Jonathan also gave us some insight into the Quakers. This was revealing to me because I’d always thought of them as fervently religious and very frugal in their approach to life. At the end of the conversation I can quite honestly say that their approach to life sounded so much nicer than ours. The notion that everyone must agree on something before proceeding with any plan also seemed like a good idea. At this point it very much reminded me of Brexit – how is it […]

Feb 05

by Karyn in Context, Study Statement 0 comments tags: Context, Study Statement

Study Statement 1.0

Study Statement LO1 LO2 LO3 1). Working Title: ‘Know Thy Enemy’ – Further Context on this document and its title can be found here. 2). Aims and Objectives. There has recently been an explosion of online programs and apps that will allow a user to input text and output visuals based on that text. Examples of these include: online programs such as Craiyon, Dalle-2 and Midjourney. Some of the apps include: Wonder Ai and Dream. In only a few short months this new way of creating art has opened ways of bringing art creation to the masses. Whereas, undoubtedly these programs and apps have many positives, there is no possibility that the creative arts industry and many others will remain unchanged. Software engineers have already begun to lament the birth of ChatGpt, a language model which will not only answer questions but also write code. As a photographer I personally became quite despondent when I realised that I no longer needed to visit a misty forest at dawn in order to obtain misty forest at dawn photographs. This led me to question my whole existence as a […]

Feb 01

by Karyn in Tutorials 0 comments tags: Tutorials

Tutorial #2

My Second Tutorial – Today was my second tutorial with Jonathan. It was great to catch up because I have been working really hard behind the scenes and feedback is always welcome. I had been working on some new ideas and it was great to hear that I am hopefully on the right lines. Jonathan suggested that maybe I had set myself a few too many aims for my study statement, but on reflection, because of the way I work, he felt that actually I may be able to manage after all. We talked about what I was finding hard at the moment. I explained that probably the thing I found the hardest was trying to understand the logic of Touch Designer. This is my generative art software of choice. It is very powerful software that is best suited to programmers who can program in C and Python. Sadly, although I am progressing with the Processing programming language I am still struggling with Touch Designer. I will however persevere and there is a wonderful supportive community around this particular software package ready and willing to answer questions if I get stuck. Jonathan then asked me what I had found the […]

Feb 01

by Karyn in Animation, Books, Drawings, Videos, Zoom Meetings 0 comments tags: Animation, Books, Drawings, Videos, Zoom Meetings

Zoom Session 14

The Art of Seeing – This week we ran a really interesting exercise. We were asked to look at a photograph and then look again more closely and then keep repeating this. It is amazing how much can be missed with a cursory glance at something. Our group discovered so much by analysing the image over and over again. The little details gave away lots of information. For example the police officer in our image was wearing a red poppy. Instantly we knew that the photo must have been taken somewhere in the UK in November. The poppy is synonymous with Remembrance Day which happens around that time. This week we also did another 5 minute free writing exercise. Our task was to look around our immediate surroundings and then say what it all meant. I talked about all of the disruption in my front room because of having the room below it plastered. We are extending the house and everything seems quite chaotic at the moment. One thing which I found absolutely fascinating was the idea that my salary will actually be the same as my salary averaged across the salaries of my friends. Even more interesting was the […]

Jan 30

by Karyn in Abstract Art, Ai, Animation, Context, Evaluations, Experimentation, Food for Thought, Ideas, My Work, Videos 0 comments tags: Abstract Art, Animation, Evaluations, Food for Thought, Ideas, Videos

Morphing

Upping the Ante – ‘Time and time wait for no man’ Even within a short space of time the developments in ‘Ai’ assisted creative tools has been astounding! As soon as I realised that text to image was available I remembered my comments that it was only a matter of time before we had text to video. Indeed I wasn’t wrong. Apparently Google is already in a race with a number of other companies to achieve text to video. I have already seen for myself some of the early examples of this which are pretty impressive even at the beta stage. If you would like a pink and blue hippo skateboarding down the street with a banana on its head then you probably won’t have that long to wait. I generated the following text to video imagery. Looking at the videos, I particularly like the morphing effect generated by the software. However, what fascinated me more were the stills that I managed to pull from the Luminogram text to video ‘Ai’ driven generator. Hidden people and buildings seemed to pop in and out of nowhere. I like this idea of ‘hidden’ mysterious images. I have been researching around hidden things […]

Jan 29

by Karyn in Ai, Context, My Work, Opportunities, Videos 0 comments tags: Context

Know Thy Enemy

And Know Yourself – Planning my study statement has really made me start to think about where my project is headed. I have collected so many ideas, I now need to examine exactly what I am trying to say. I want to try to narrow my focus, especially in light of the rapidly approaching study statement deadline. Today, the news, wherever anyone consumes it, seems so depressing at the moment. It feels as if Government and authority have decided that their soul raison d’être is to suck out any last remaining joy from society. I say this because recently I had a conversation with a friend of mine who is a counsellor (mental health practitioner). She has many clients and as such has a unique insight into how generally people in her sphere are feeling. We sat down over coffee and the conversation turned, as it normally does to life, the universe and anything in between. I told her about my car tax debacle. I was in London a few months ago, I left my car parked overnight near the train station for a couple of nights so I could drive home on my return. While away my husband called […]

Jan 27

by Karyn in Drawings, Zoom Meetings 0 comments tags: Drawings, Zoom Meetings

Zoom Session 13

Ducks in a Row – This week’s session was a really nice blend of both finalising the requirements for Unit 1 and another free writing exercise. I find the free writing exercises very relaxing – it’s almost hypnotic when it is done continuously for around 5 minutes. This week we joined Zoom breakout rooms which allowed us to discuss exactly what was being asked of us regarding the Unit 1 learning objectives. We were tasked with adding our thoughts to a Miro board which I found very useful. Having reassessed the 3 learning objectives for the Unit 1 project, I feel that I still have quite a few gaps to fill so that the criteria is fully met. I would like to experiment further and I would also like to conduct more contextual and primary research in response to what we learned today. As usual my latest Zentangle heads up this blog post along with the updated gallery. I have kept this blogpost brief so that I can work on my study statement which has the looming deadline of February 6th 2023. Updated Zentangle Gallery – Luckily I still have time to post my updated Zentangle gallery with all […]

Jan 27

by Karyn in Bibliography 0 comments tags: Bibliography

Bibliography 1.0

Study Statement LO1 LO2 LO3 An Evolving List – Below is my bibliography. This is a working document. I am constantly finding new material and I am listing it below in categories relevant to the project. Over the last few months I have looked at many pieces of work and I have listed these as ‘Random Links’ as they are currently too numerous to catalogue at this stage. However I feel it is important to the project that they are shown and time permitting I will aim to properly catalogue these as well. Books Bostrom, N. (2016) Superintelligence: paths, dangers, strategies. Oxford, United Kingdom ; New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Byrne, O. (2022) Oliver Byrne’s Elements of Euclid: the first six books with coloured diagrams and symbols. Arts meets science edition. Great Britain: Read & Co. Colton, S. (2018). Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Art. Springer, Curran, J. (2021) Art and Artificial Intelligence. Oxford University Press Ferrari, C. (2018). Artificially Intelligent: The Future of Art in the Age of AI. London: Thames & Hudson Hageback, N. and Hedblom, D. (2022) AI for arts. First edition. […]