Abstract Art – Karyn Easton

Nov 19

Epic Making Session

Yaacov Agam Inspired Work – Over many months now I have been wrestling with a myriad of ideas. In my Study Statement I was keen to develop a new form of hybrid human, digital and AI art. I also wanted to include an element of mystery and discovery whereby elements of the work were hidden. During my search for inspiration I came across two artists that particularly resonated with me, namely: Alexander Calder and Yaacov Agam. I particularly liked the idea of movement and mobile art seen in Calder’s work. Indeed I was so taken with his work that I went to visit the Tate Modern to see some of his pieces there. However, Yaacov Agam’s work really did inspire me. In his Artist’s statement he says: “My aim is to show the visible in a perpetual state of becoming”. I think this is a beautiful way in which he describes his work. However, I personally would liken it to, showing the visible in a perpetual state of change. Given the nature of the subject matter that I’m exploring, his work for me very much aligns with this notion of change as well as ‘becoming’. Below is a short […]

Oct 05

by Karyn in Abstract Art, Ai, Animation, Artists, Experimentation, Ideas, My Work, Patterns, Problem Solving, Risk Taking, Tasks, Unit 2 Blogs, Videos 0 comments tags: Abstract Art, ai, Animation, Artists, Experimentation, Food for Thought, Ideas, my work, Patterns, Problem Solving, Risk Taking, Tasks, Unit 2 Blogs, Videos

Grotto Print Ideas #1

Print Ideas & Adam Bridgland (Jealous London) – Today we had an interesting talk about the ‘Grotto Project’ formerly ‘Merch’. Adam Bridgland from Jealous London came along to share some insights and revealed a lot of useful information – see a selection of his slides at the end from the talk. I’ve just been looking at the deadlines and I’ve realised that I really do need to start moving on this. Some very interesting takeaways from the talk included answers to questions such as: what was a popular poster colour? What kind of images sold well? Adam suggested that blue was a popular colour and skulls, butterflies and cute cats seemed to do quite well. Unfortunately the human form, unless comprising a skull did not seem to fair quite so well. I’ve produced many digital images over the years, but the thought of choosing just one singular image to print has really made me think. I have some interesting macro photographs of oil on water hanging on my walls. One was bought by a large Australian advertising company, one hangs in the local hospital and one appears on an album cover. Even Adobe use some of my work. Therefore I can’t […]

Sep 24

A Mental Derive Part #2

Picking Up Where I Left off – Ever since my first mental derive, it was always my intention to recommence this particular project. now that the second draft of my research paper is nearing completion, I feel I am better able to return more fully to creative activities. Since part one of my mental derive, I didn’t totally abandon this project and I experimented with suspending some of the circles on a sheet of acetate between some thick heavy duty white elastic. Below is a gallery showing the results. This is a project I’d like to return to at some point, but I don’t currently have the correct materials. The acetate was far too thin and buckled under the strain of the elastic. Therefore thicker acrylic is possibly a better choice. The patterned discs/circles also had a habit of ‘pinging off’, so a better method of securing them is required. However, I do think that there is room to develop this project further. Moments in Time and Space Each black and white patterned circle/disc above, is a collage of many little moments in time. For this reason I wanted to trial another form of suspension. I am particularly […]

Sep 20

Deeper Meaning

How to Find Meaning? – Having recently finished 21 days of an augmented reality investigation followed by another 21 days of research paper investigation and compilation, I’m feeling somewhat down. I think that primarily it is due to my investigations into AI generated art. The further I dig into this, the more depressed I become. I’m sure this is just a transient phase. Why am I so sad? It’s because over the years I learnt so much about photography. I collected a wealth of knowledge on this subject especially because each year I tried to present my students with increasingly technically challenging workshops. I was proud that I was able to replicate pretty much any style of photography from slow shutter work to speed shooting, star trails to zoom burst, macro photography to physiograms. I felt I had reached the pinnacle when I managed to work out the technique that Michael Jackson (the photographer not the pop singer), uses to make his ethereal Luminograms. Even today colleagues are badgering me to give up that secret which I flatly refuse. It’s so beautifully simple yet complex at the same time and I nailed it! However, with the advent of AI art […]

Jun 29

Barcelona Graffiti #2

Hidden Away – During my recent trip to Barcelona, I was was mesmerised by the colour and variety of the street art both in and around the city. I briefly touched on this in part one of this post called ‘Barcelona Graffiti’. I still don’t know exactly why I was so drawn to the graffiti (street art), except to say that the colours were amazing! It seemed to relentlessly permeate throughout the whole fabric of the city, weaving a disjointed tapestry of colours. Indeed it could even be described in some places as a riot of colour on an otherwise typical traditional cityscape and its walls. All of this was in stark contrast to the walls of one of Barcelona’s most famous contemporary art museums, namely the MACBA. Here there was no graffiti. Everything inside was pristine with beautiful gleaming white walls. A Short Recap Below is short video recap from Barcelona Graffit part one. It helps to illustrate the scale of graffiti and street art that can be found in and around the city. In stark contrast to the brightly coloured graffiti in the video above, the following image gallery illustrates the crisp, clean, neutral […]

May 06

A Temporary Distraction

The Annual College End of Year Film – Each year for the last few years I have been invited to produce our college end of year film. It’s a long and quite complex task because it has to really showcase our department. It needs to appeal to parents, staff and students alike. Unfortunately because it is such a massive undertaking, my research has had to go on hold for a little while. However in a couple of weeks I am due to fly out to Barcelona, so hopefully I‘ll have plenty of travelling time to catch up on my studies. In the meantime, I thought it would be interesting to document my film making process. Each year I write all of the script, edit all of the video and use character animation software to enable animated characters to read the story’s narrative. Often I also need to shoot my own video in order to help with the story and to fill in any gaps. In fact I’m responsible for it all! Over the last two years I’ve used a character I named ‘Horace ‘Boris’ Hedgehog’ (trust me, by watching the previous 2 films, his name becomes clear), this year it […]

Feb 28

by Karyn in Abstract Art, Epic Fails, Evaluations, Experimentation, Photography, Problem Solving, Videos 0 comments tags: Abstract Art, Epic Fails, Evaluations, Experimentation, Photography, Problem Solving, Videos

Failure

Reaching a Plateau – Up to know I feel quite lucky because I’ve generally quite like most of my experiments, but for some reason this one made me really recoil! I hate everything about it – even a dabble with Ai couldn’t convince me otherwise. I don’t think I can remember a time that I’ve been so disappointed in anything that I’ve done before. I also need to stay away from Pinterest – the more beautiful artwork I see the more self critical I become and it’s not helpful. I feel now is the time I need to take a step back. I need to reflect on what I have done so far and consider what my next steps might be. As per my outline plan ideally I should be doing more research right now and I tend to agree. Over the weekend I decided to try my hand at paper sculpture. It’s something that I’m incredibly interested in, but I’ve never really had time to explore it in any meaningful way. Below is my journey into this medium and some of the results from it. I just can’t get excited about it at all. However, I always like […]

Feb 17

Jason Schulman – Inspired Work

Hidden Light and Colours – I particularly admire the work by Jason Schulman. I discovered him last week and ever since I stumbled across his work I have been absolutely ‘sold’ on it. Schulman records light with his camera across the entirety of a film. His work has been incorrectly likened to that of Hiroshi Sugimoto’s ‘Cinema Halls’. Schulman explains more about this in his interview with Dominic Jaeckle. Although the process of recording the entirety of the film is quite straightforward, it appears that Schulman is somewhat a pioneer in the area of recording films. I am a huge fan of slow shutter techniques, which I believe were used in the creation of both Sugimoto and Schulman’s images. Therefore I could not resist experimenting further using the work of Schulman and Sugimoto as a starting point. I find the notion of light being recorded and compounded into one image very appealing. Generally we never see light compounded in such a way so as to reveal a multitude of hidden colours and tones. Throughout my project I have been searching for the ‘hidden’ in whatever shape or form that may take. Schulman’s work reveals the beauty hidden in compounded […]

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 […]

Jan 17

by Karyn in Abstract Art, Ai, Ai Chat, Disasters, Evaluations, Experimentation, Ideas, My Learning, My Work, Problem Solving, Risk Taking, Videos 0 comments tags: Abstract Art, ai, Ai Chat, Disasters, Evaluations, Ideas, My Learning, my work, Problem Solving, Risk Taking, Videos

Clocks and Carrier Bags

Time as a Fourth Dimension – Before I go any further, I really need to present this video with sound. The sound is incredibly important, because it adequately and eloquently sums up the disaster that is currently all of my technological devices! Every computer or device I own is creaking at the seams! The video I created below actually sums up how it feels! No words needed. Technology Gone Bad I subtitled this blog ‘Time as a Fourth Dimension’ – I’m not actually going to discuss time as a fourth dimension here, but I do think it sounds great as a subtitle. It’s relevance will become apparent further into this blog. In a previous blog I responded to the work of Vilde Rolfeson. I also had a number of conversations with ChatGPT in the making of the digital pieces presented there. These were inspired by her work. I always felt that her work around the plastic bag landscape offered a myriad of experimental possibilities. Therefore I decided that I would continue with more experimentation based on this. During my conversations with ‘Ai’ I asked for programs to gently destruct or disrupt an image. After a number of […]