My Learning – Karyn Easton

Apr 21

Film Mark 2

Exploring Alternatives – In my Film Production blog, I talked about how unhappy I was with my first film. Things haven’t got any easier. I still feel very poorly, but the perfectionist in me is not prepared to let this go. I absolutely ‘hate’ the first version of my film now! Unfortunately, I just seem to have such a severe creative block at the moment. One of the greatest challenges I faced was trying to come up with yet another script! At one point I thought ‘oh stuff it’ I’ll just stick with what I’ve done. However I just couldn’t do that. I went to bed feeling pretty ill and pretty down. They say that sometimes when you are facing a problem, your brain will help you to work things out while you are asleep. Last week in my state of feeling so down ‘my brain, my subconscious the universe, god’ or call it what you like came to the rescue overnight while asleep! This morning I remembered something that I’d long been aware of yet forgotten. This was the old concept of ‘The Eighth Day’. In some theological interpretations, the “Eighth Day” symbolises the day of resurrection or the […]

Apr 20

by Karyn in Film Production, My Learning, Photography, Problem Solving, Unit 3 Blogs, Videos 0 comments tags: Film Production, My Learning, Photography, Problem Solving, Unit 3 Blogs, Videos

Film Production

Assembly of Ideas – After exploring a few possibilities and ideas for the film I set about trying to assemble something. After all of my previous experimentation with many ideas I finally settled on a concept. I decided to produce a film that not only covered what I have been working on over the last two years of my MA but also gives a glimpse of what I’m doing now. The video was to form a timeline. Unfortunately, I really do struggle when it comes to sound and voice-overs. By the end of this long process I had actually attempted to narrate my film around five times. I spent literally hours trying to perfect both my narrative, voice-over and audio levels. Multiple Attempts at Audio and Voice-overs Below is a screenshot of the files as they began to stack up on my desktop, so far I’ve had 5 attempts. Even after hours of trying I’m still not happy with the end result! In fact I’m deeply unhappy with it. On the plus side though I’ve learned a ‘ton of stuff’ about audio production. Learning How to Use Audio in Premier Pro The first thing I had […]

Jan 29

by Karyn in Final Major Project, Ideas, My Learning, My Work, Problem Solving, Risk Taking, Unit 3 Blogs, Videos 0 comments tags: Final Major Project, Ideas, My Learning, my work, Problem Solving, Risk Taking, Unit 3 Blogs, Videos

The Concept

Hidden Depths – I have decided to call my mobile ‘The Balance of Power – Unity in Bits’. My mobile represents a ‘balance’ of power play between the major players in the AI art generation industries, versus the millions of voiceless, hidden artists who had their images used (often without permission) to feed machine learning algorithms. The mobile is based on binary code and the lines of code spell out the words ‘Unity in Bits’. Why ‘Unity in Bits’? This is an ambiguous play on words. The rise of the digital age coupled with social media and AI has led to a fragmentation of our society – namely, our ‘unity in bits’. For example we have divided communities, surveillance capitalism and lack of free speech. However, I hope that through interaction with my mobile ‘unity can be found in bits’ only this time ‘bits’ refers to the ‘bits’ and ‘bytes’ of binary code. My mobile project poses the question can that which has sought to divide us, actually bring us closer together?

Research Paper Thoughts and Background

Research Paper 3 – Thoughts, Background and Final Version That’s it – no more! Yesterday and today became the ‘final straw’ with my research paper! Why? Because yesterday my ‘dying’ on its ‘last legs’ MacBook Pro decided that it was going to literally lose all of my research papers and drafts. I know it’s somewhat unbelievable but this actually happened! Months of hard work seemed to have disappeared in front of my eyes. The files were no longer there! I tried opening programs that I had used to construct the last version of my paper, but it was always the same message ‘File cannot be found’. I even convinced my self that there was some evil hacker trying to sabotage my work, that’s how upset I was. At one point I even thought I must be having a nightmare and that I would wake up soon. As I had been editing the document in Adobe’s PDF editing program I thought to myself, ‘Ha’ there will be a copy stored in Adobe’s creative cloud. So, feeling somewhat smug, I looked at my recent documents there, only to discover that on opening my research paper it gave an error message saying ‘bad […]

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 […]

Aug 03

by Karyn in 21 Day Challenge, Augmented Reality, Evaluations, My Learning, My Work, Problem Solving, Unit 2 Blogs 0 comments tags: 21 Day Challenge, Augmented Reality, Evaluations, My Learning, my work, Problem Solving, Unit 2 Blogs

21 Day Challenge – Outcomes

Wednesday 9th August – “Darkness falls Walking empty corridors Dusty roads Seeing things never shown You and I we know” – Soldier by Particle House The MACBA Metamorphosis book is available to buy and if anyone would like a copy then please see the barcode at the bottom of this post. However, so that no purchase is necessary, I am including images from the book along with their corresponding augmented reality experiences. This means anyone reading this blog can experiment for themselves and no-one is excluded. Background Information & A Few Pages from MACBA Metamorphosis The MACBA Metamorphosis book forms part two of a planned 3 part series that begins with the exploration of Graffiti in the heart of Barcelona. The project enlists the help of Ai to re-imagine this graffiti and digital tools are used to place it on the pristine walls of the MACBA museum. Book one in this series is called ‘Beautiful Light – MACBA – Barcelona’ and more details can be found about it here. This book has already been augmented using a simple iPhone App except with limited functionality. However the results can be seen in the video below. […]

Aug 02

by Karyn in 21 Day Challenge, Augmented Reality, My Learning, Problem Solving, Unit 2 Blogs 0 comments tags: 21 Day Challenge, Augmented Reality, My Learning, Problem Solving, Unit 2 Blogs

21 Day Challenge – Day #21

Wednesday 2nd August – Well this is it! The end of my challenge – although I suspect it’s really just the beginning of my venture into augmented reality. I got off to a slow start. For some reason I couldn’t quite think what I wanted to do this morning. However, I know I’ve still got quite a long way to go so I need to find some motivation from somewhere. As I suspected I didn’t finish everything that I wanted to do. My back got progressively worse and I had to ‘give in’ – I’m now writing retrospectively. My back continued to decline over the next two days to the point that I could not move from the floor! Friday 4th August was particularly severe. Having laid on the floor for around 2 hours I could not stand the pain any longer. I managed to speak to a GP who said I was suffering with a severe bout of sciatica. He prescribed me morphine! This did at least help me to get off the floor! For this reason I reluctantly decided to write off the final day of my challenge. My plan is to try to recover over the weekend […]

Aug 01

by Karyn in 21 Day Challenge, Augmented Reality, My Learning, Problem Solving, Unit 2 Blogs 0 comments tags: 21 Day Challenge, Augmented Reality, My Learning, Problem Solving, Unit 2 Blogs

21 Day Challenge – Day #20

Tuesday 1st August – Well I sat for hours at the computer today trying to augment the whole of my Barcelona Graffiti book. It was a long slow painful process. My lack of computer resources coupled with beta augmented reality software was not a great combination. For all my hours of work I seem to have so little to show for it, which is very disappointing. I’ve acquired a great deal of knowledge though. I’ve also got a few interesting ideas moving forwards. Above everything else though I now know how augmented reality software works. I can now hide a multitude of different realities, where only those in the know can find them. Hidden things have always intrigued me, and being able to hide something in plain absolutely fascinates me. I’ve also enjoyed working with ChatGPT to produce generative art based on re-imagined Barcelona Graffiti. What Did I Learn? Beta software doesn’t always work that well! If you think you did something wrong, it probably wasn’t even you, but actually a software bug. Wherever possible try not to use beta test software. What Did I Actually Achieve? I managed to produce a number of augmented reality videos using […]

Jul 31

by Karyn in 21 Day Challenge, Augmented Reality, My Learning, Problem Solving, Unit 2 Blogs 0 comments tags: 21 Day Challenge, Augmented Reality, My Learning, Problem Solving, Unit 2 Blogs

21 Day Challenge – Day #19

Monday 31st July – Today I decided to work digitally on more images for my 3rd Barcelona Graffiti book. I am confident now in how to use my augmented reality app. I’m also confident that because my experiments worked I should be able to progress my concept. Tomorrow I plan to begin augmenting the remaining pages of my Barcelona Graffiti book. I can’t believe that there are now only 2 days left of the challenge. I would very much like to produce something that showcases what I have learned, so the next two days will focus on that. What Did I Learn? Sticking at something for 21 days solid can yield results, it’s possible to refine skills and learn a lot during this time. What Did I Actually Achieve? I generated a number of AI variations for my third and final Barcelona Graffiti book. I feel as if everything is slowly beginning to come together and I hope to bring more of my knowledge together tomorrow. I strongly suspect that I will run out of time to achieve everything I want to achieve but I will try my best to draw the challenge to a reasonable conclusion.

Jul 30

by Karyn in 21 Day Challenge, Augmented Reality, My Learning, Problem Solving, Unit 2 Blogs 0 comments tags: 21 Day Challenge, Augmented Reality, My Learning, Problem Solving, Unit 2 Blogs

21 Day Challenge – Day #18

Sunday 30th July – Today was a productive day, I experimented with a new augmented reality technique that I want to perfect. It’s taking a while and both my sore back and computer resources are becoming problematic again. However, I managed to film 2 experimental videos. This time the viewer could visually understand what it was I was trying to achieve. I also managed to work some magic with ChatGPT and ed created some beautiful Processing programs together. I acted as the visionary so to speak and ‘Chat’ sorted the technicals side of the programming. I feel it’s start of a beautiful relationship. Well maybe? Or maybe not, because the amount of code and patience needed just to create one viable program is actually astounding! I have managed to find a workable solution to this now, and the results are actually quite beautiful. I am putting in all of this work now as the digital output from these programs will be used to finish augmenting my Barcelona Graffiti book. What Did I Learn? I learned an interesting technique that helps me better describe to ChatGPT what I want from a Processing program. I discovered a much less computer resource intensive […]

Film Mark 2

Film Production

The Concept

Research Paper Thoughts and Background

Deeper Meaning

21 Day Challenge – Outcomes

21 Day Challenge – Day #21

21 Day Challenge – Day #20

21 Day Challenge – Day #19

21 Day Challenge – Day #18

Recent Posts

Categories

Tags

Recent Comments