Food for Thought – Karyn Easton

Love Letters From AI

Hidden Art – When I first began my MA, I wasn’t entirely sure what I wanted to do. Ultimately I knew it would be something to do with the hidden or the unseen. Initially I began looking at invisible phenomena such as sound waves and the passage of time. However, nothing captured my interest quite as much as augmented reality. It was this whole concept of a hidden unseen world (only accessible to those ‘in the know’), that intrigued me. While conducting research for my Research Paper I discovered that there is a distinct negative bias towards AI generated art. I looked at a number of strategies to help mitigate this bias. Finally, after a number of image polls, used to inform my project, I created a fictitious robot called Athena. Her name was inspired by the old Athena posters from the past. My research was suggesting that humanoid robots with a sad ‘backstory’ could help to reduce bias and win over an audience when presenting AI art. At this point I began to develop a narrative for my robot. During a visit to Barcelona, I was completely amazed by the sheer weight of graffiti adorning the city walls. I […]

Oct 11

by Karyn in 3d, Abstract Art, Ai, Experimentation, Food for Thought, Ideas, My Work, Photography, Risk Taking, Unit 2 Blogs 0 comments tags: 3d, Abstract Art, ai, Experimentation, Food for Thought, Ideas, my work, Photography, Risk Taking, Unit 2 Blogs

Grotto Print Ideas #2

Adding Value – I quite like the idea of ‘Killing Time’ and the oil on water re-imagined clocks. However, I do feel that there needs to be some level of interactivity with my Grotto print. I decided that since posting the video short included in the Grotto Print Ideas blog, more of the clocks needed to be shown. This is pure experimentation and the full video can be seen below. A couple of years ago I began to explore Paul’s book. I felt that the nature of the folds created within would lend themselves very well to warping the clock faces and dials even further. Killing Time – Calming Edit As well as the calming edit, I also produced a shorter more rousing video short, showing the clocks animated as they warp and destruct. This is more in keeping with the idea of ‘Killing Time’. I’m debating whether or not to include these either one or both of these digital edits as part of the print sale? At this point in time it is just a thought. I’ve a long long way to go before I make a firm decision. I’ve also had another idea regarding […]

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 […]

Apr 04

by Karyn in Abstract Art, Ai, Ai Chat, Animation, Artists, Experimentation, Food for Thought, Ideas, My Work, Photography, Unit 2 Blogs, Videos 0 comments tags: Abstract Art, ai, Ai Chat, Animation, Artists, Experimentation, Food for Thought, Ideas, my work, Photography, Unit 2 Blogs, Videos

Time of the Signs

A Physical Derive – Shortly after we had our Zoom Session 18 I decided to try out the concept of a physical derive. My DSLR camera was at work, so I headed out armed with only my smartphone. I had no preconceived ideas about where my walking or my thoughts would take me, I just decided to physically wander. On reaching the end of my street I was greeted by the huge sign for our local Funeral Director plus a plethora of road traffic cones and more signs around it. I began to wonder about signs? At first I thought about taking photographs of purely negative signs, but then I thought, what about information overload? Even in a short walk to the end of my street I had already encountered many signs packed with information. I began to wonder what the ratio would be between negative and prohibitive signs and more positive and informative signs? Brixham is a small town and in my opinion ‘rammed to the rafters’ with signs, would a busy city centre be better or worse as a comparison in terms of signage? Then I began to wonder if there was a correlation between the variety and […]

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 16

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

Conversations with Ai

Write Me a Program, A Poem and Then Some – Over the last few weeks I have spent a considerable amount of time researching generative art. I have looked at what it is, how to create it and the best tools to generate it. I have worked with a number of Touch Designer tools which are great for this and I’ve also looked at Processing which is a very popular creative coding tool. I’ve also created a Git Hub account and I’m currently learning all of the associated jargon so that I can look for potential collaborations. Although I have learned an incredible amount about programming, I am still not very conversant with it. I find that it does not make logical sense to me. However, that said, I am at the stage where I can more or less understand what a program is doing and I can amend variables accordingly. This is a massive step forward from only a few weeks ago. Unfortunately I might struggle to actually write a full program. This is where I wanted to test the limits of ChatGPT. This natural language simulator can produce code and I was curious to find out if […]

Jan 13

by Karyn in Ai, Ai Chat, Experimentation, Food for Thought, Ideas, Research, Workshops 0 comments tags: ai, Ai Chat, Experimentation, Food for Thought, Ideas, Research, Workshops

Ai Workshop

The Robots are Coming and They Are Dressed in Lace – I really enjoyed the workshop today called the ‘Robots are coming and They are Dressed in Lace’. I have discovered that I’m actually quite interested in ‘Ai’ text to image generators like Dalle-2 and Stable Diffusion and Midjourney. So any information, workshops, scholarly papers etc. are always most welcome. What I particularly liked about the session was the thinking behind it. Firstly, we were all introduced to Midjourney and how to use it. Luckily I was already used to using the software, so it was pretty easy to get started. However, producing images was only part of the exercise. Jonathan explained that once we had produced our images they needed to be added to a Google Docs page along with our names, the text prompts that we used to generate our images and how we felt about the results. At the end of the exercise all of the images along with their text prompts and creator information was printed out and put into a black archival quality box. We all know that because these tools are free it is probably fair to say, that we, as users are […]

Dec 29

Refik Anadol – Production and Destruction

Refik Anadol Inspired Responses At the beginning of this project I began to examine the possibilities created by Ai generated imagery. I likened Ai to something that had tentacle-like structures. I imagined that these tentacles were expanding and steadily weaving their way into all aspects of our lives. After discovering the work of Refik Anadol, It is clear to see that Ai generated imagery and data visualisation are becoming firmly rooted in the art world. The work of Refik Anadol is truly breathtaking. He is clearly a pioneer in the field of digital art. Below is a video containing examples of his work along with an interview with him talking about his art. Refik Anadol – His Work and Thoughts about Ai Generated Imagery Art Piece Responses to Refik Anadol In his interview Refik makes references to the futuristic classic film ‘Blade Runner’. Through his work he imagines what Ai might look like when it is dreaming. He affords human like qualities to the machine learning that he is observing. Following this line of thinking I wanted to imagine what Ai might look like as it grows and then dies. The following pieces are […]

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 […]

Dec 21

Zoom Session 10

Programming with Processing 😊 – This has to be one of my favourite sessions so far. I love all of my zoom sessions, but the chance to learn a little programming is always a positive for me. Until today I hadn’t come across the programming environment called ‘Processing’. I downloaded the software onto my computer and I attempted to play around with it a little. This was to familiarise myself with it a before the start of our session. I found the tutorials really informative and I very quickly got the ‘gist’ of it. We also had a guest speaker Matthew Edwards, who came in to give us a demonstration and work with us through some example code. It was a very good pace and pitched perfectly for a total beginner like myself. I thoroughly enjoyed seeing the results of my little programs. I also thoroughly enjoyed the group conversation afterwards. Jonathan introduced us to GPT chat. This is an advanced algorithmic program that can write highly intuitive essays from user text prompts. It can also write code. This week I’ve had lots to think about and explore. I have updated my ‘Zentangle’ gallery to reflect all of my little […]