Experimentation – Karyn Easton

Apr 30

by Karyn in Experimentation, Film Production, Final Major Project, Final Outcomes, My Learning, Unit 3 Blogs, Videos 0 comments tags: Experimentation, Film Production, Final Major Project, Final Outcomes, My Learning, Unit 3 Blogs, Videos

Audio Revamp

Missing Film Clips and More Audio – Today after work, I thought that I would afford myself a little break. Unfortunately, I just couldn’t take my mind off my film, so here I am at nearly midnight working on it again. I’ve got to be up for work in a few hours, but at least I wan’t feeling quite so ill today. The more I learn about sound and audio, the more I realise how little I actually know and how much there is to learn! I really can fully appreciate why film companies employ sound engineers. It is a whole art form in itself! Looking back I really wish that I’d paid more attention at college to film and sound. Thirty years ago I was much more interested in just pure photography and photographic techniques, but fast forward to the present and now I am somewhat regretful. There’s just so much that I still want to learn and so much that I want to achieve, I think this latest bout of feeling poorly has really made me reflect. However, enough of the self pity this will not help me finish my film. Tonight as I’m just about to go […]

Mar 19

by Karyn in Collaborations, Experimentation, Food for Thought, Lectures, Materials, My Learning, Unit 3 Blogs, Workshops 0 comments tags: Collaborations, Experimentation, Food for Thought, Lectures, Materials, My Learning, Unit 3 Blogs, Workshops

Mattering Life – Workshops Day #2

Samples Collection & Experimentation – As we arrived back at CSM most of us were feeling pretty tired. It had been an intense but very enjoyable morning in the science labs at UCL (University College London). However, we were all pretty excited to start collecting our samples. We felt it would be a great idea to collect some canal water, some moss, and some leaves. I was really keen to examine the dregs of my Chai Latte so I popped some in a little sample bottle. I wasn’t so keen to grab the canal water but luckily Charlotte a fellow member of the group was on hand to do this. Charlotte Collecting Samples Below is a mix of clips from Days #1 and #2 – they range from crystal garden crystals, to sample collecting, to fruit fly equipment and oxygen free cabinets. Sample Analysis and Experimentation After Lunch we had a quick de-brief then we headed off into the grow lab for some sample analysis and experimentation. Shem and Barbera were our technicians. Shem produced the first four of the following time-lapse sequences. The rest were produced by our group and shot by […]

Jan 22

by Karyn in Experimentation, Final Major Project, My Learning, My Work, Timelapse, Unit 3 Blogs, Videos 0 comments tags: Experimentation, Final Major Project, My Learning, my work, Timelapse, Unit 3 Blogs, Videos

Blogpost 200

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly – After working solidly for two days over the weekend, I finally finished the first prototype for the mobile. I felt on the whole it was pretty good. However, the sheer weight of the project even at this scale was pretty bad. Balancing the elements was also an absolute ‘nightmare’. This meant that some of the spacing between the mobile elements was pretty ugly. The short time-lapse video below shows roughly how many elements went into making three quarters of the mobile (some elements were already strung). I always imagined cardboard to be quite light but after this project I’ve come to revise my view. On the whole I do think that the prototype was a success – not because it was perfect or anything like that, but because of what I had learned during the whole process. First Looks Below is a very short video of the mobile. As I was concentrating on the movement of the video there is nothing to show scale. The mobile turned out to be around 6ft tall in the end! I had envisioned something much smaller and lighter. Alternative Music […]

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 […]

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 […]

Jan 10

Vilde Rolfsen – Inspired Work

Beautiful Destruction – For a few weeks now I have been wrestling with ideas for my research statement. Ideally I would like to integrate some form of current affairs or pressing agenda into my work but I wasn’t quite sure how to approach this. I then remembered a shoot I’d done a little while ago. I stumbled across an artist called Vilde Rolfsen. I found her plastic bag landscapes absolutely fascinating. Not only was her idea clever it was also visually very appealing. Her images are certainly creative. There’s just something special about taking such a mundane object like a plastic bag and transforming it into an amazing landscape. Below is a small gallery of her images. Vilde Rolfeson – Plastic Bag Landscape Responses to Vilde Rolfeson I felt that Vilde Rolfeson had produced something truly unique. However, inspired by her idea I wanted to use her imagery as a base to experiment further. I was also keen to incorporate elements of animation and time into my experimentation as this ties in heavily with my theme. Most of Vilde Rolefson’s plastic bag imagery is light and bright, therefore I decided to take a slightly darker approach. I wanted […]

Jan 03

by Karyn in Abstract Art, Ai, Experimentation, My Learning, My Work, Patterns, Timelapse, Videos 0 comments tags: Abstract Art, ai, Experimentation, My Learning, my work, Patterns, Timelapse, Videos

Onwards…

Holiday Touch Designer Projects Over the Christmas period I felt it was important for me to keep up the momentum with Touch Designer. I am constantly aware that if I want to go down the more generative art route I need to be much more programming literate. Normally when I sit down to an online tutorial I set my camera recording, so that I can produce a time-lapse. I like to produce a time-lapse because it gives a visual snapshot of the passage of time. This is something that is hidden from the viewer when observing final pieces. The tutorials are vastly time consuming so I think that it is interesting to have this time represented in some way. I have numerous time-lapse footage of me working away at the Touch Designer tutorials. Therefore, I think now may be a good time to think of more creative ways of expressing this passage of time. However, for this blog I have included my last tutorial time-lapse as I worked on the video below it. The Touch Designer Time-lapse Results From The Touch Designer Time-lapse Single Images Generated from The Video Above Building in Mouse Interactivity […]

Dec 29

by Karyn in Abstract Art, Disasters, Evaluations, Experimentation, My Learning, My Work, Problem Solving 0 comments tags: Abstract Art, Disasters, Evaluations, Experimentation, My Learning, my work, Problem Solving

Disasters and Projects

Turning Negatives into Positives – This week has not been a great week at all! Restful and relaxing is certainly not what I could would have called it. I needed to migrate my existing WordPress blog to a new server, so that going forward I can have unlimited file uploads. Over the last couple of months I have been continually filling up my disc space allowance, therefore things had to change. The technical support from my hosting company was initially quite good and on the surface it looked as if my website migration had gone smoothly. Unfortunately this was not the case! I found that I was unable to log in, I could no longer preview my drafts and my search box was no longer working, and if that wasn’t enough my categories were not displaying properly. To add further insult to injury the tech support team also ‘bailed’ out. Essentially on a scale of 1 to 10 things weren’t as bad as they could have been. For example I could have deleted the whole of my website, or messed up my WordPress theme to the point it was unworkable. However I would still place the disruption at […]

Dec 22

Too Cold!

Lissajous Curves and Cold Weather – I mentioned in an earlier blog that due to lack of disk space on my hosting package I would need to upgrade my hosting. This is always a tense time when moving files from one server to another. For this reason I needed to come up with a foolproof method of backing up my blog. In the past numerous backups have failed for me (files lost, media libraries lost, databases lost etc.), therefore I knew I couldn’t solely rely on this. However under my reflective planning it was on my todo list to think of an easy but effective way of getting around data loss. I came up with the idea of taking screenshots of my blog. This means that in the event of any data loss all I have to do is insert the screen shot and add any live links (genius!) and it works. Unfortunately when my blog was moved this particular post completely disappeared. However the process of taking a screen shot meant I can quickly post up images of the original post and add in the relevant link. Below is my original post added from screen shots. I’d […]

Dec 21

by Karyn in Abstract Art, Ai, Evaluations, Experimentation, Food for Thought, Ideas, My Learning, My Work, Patterns, Videos 0 comments tags: Abstract Art, ai, Evaluations, Experimentation, Food for Thought, My Learning, my work, Patterns, Videos

Creative Coding

Discovering Creative Coding with Processing – I thoroughly enjoyed our Zoom Session 10 where we were introduced to ‘Processing’. We had a small workshop that was run by Matthew Edwards. Processing is a simple but effective programming language ideal for anyone looking to undertake creative coding. I was absolutely ‘sold’, indeed I decided to explore further. Processing.org is a really well designed and thought out educational website teaching creative coding for beginners. It allows students to copy and edit code within an interactive browser while working through the online tutorial videos. I was delighted to receive a little certificate once I had completed my first hour of programming tuition. Certificate of Completion Below is my certificate of completion. I can thoroughly recommend the Precessing.org website for anyone who would like to begin a creative coding journey. Recently I have been working with Touch Designer and my last project involved some coding work. Processing has really helped with my understanding of the Touch designer workflow. This week I was able to tackle quite a difficult Touch Designer tutorial about ‘Lissajous Curves’. I believe the success of this project was largely due to understanding what code I was adding and why. This […]