My Learning – Karyn Easton

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 […]

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 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 […]

Nov 26

London

Time & Travel It’s Better to Travel Than to Arrive? – This was a quote I stumbled across earlier this year. Unfortunately I’m not sure who said it, but given I was travelling to London I decided to use it anyway. This was the first of two trips to London this year. As I am a keen photographer I decided to document anything interesting. I couldn’t help but notice that the light was particularly beautiful at Newton Abbot train station. However this was nothing compared to the beauty of the ceiling structures at Paddington train station. Below is a small collection of images including the view from my hotel window. A Few Random Shots with My Smartphone Unfortunately I had decided to leave my DSLR at home. However, should I ever decide to shoot Paddington station again these are the kind of shots I would take with my DSLR. My smartphone is great for this activity, but maybe not so good with its pixel count. The Most Underwhelming Time-Lapse Ever! At the start of this blog I muted – it is better to travel than to arrive? I’m not sure that is strictly true, but just in case, […]

Nov 20

by Karyn in Experimentation, My Learning, My Work, Patterns, Risk Taking, Timelapse, Videos 0 comments tags: Experimentation, My Learning, my work, Patterns, Risk Taking, Timelapse, Videos

Amazing!

The Best Tutorial Yet! – This has to be my most challenging and rewarding tutorial so far. Apart from the complexity of the node network the instructor was speaking in Chinese which sadly I can’t understand. To work my way through such a complex node system I feel that I must be learning something. Just for the record, I wasn’t actually wearing my pyjamas, I was wearing a huge baggy fluffy top with a fluffy blanket. This is because we are currently renovating our property and our central heating is broken. It was a very cold day! I may look strangely dressed, but I was really nice and warm. Below is the usual time-lapse of my journey and also the results from the work. I certainly think that the addition of the clock was a good idea. It really helps to visualise the passage of time. Flying Box and Lights – Tutorial Time-lapse Flying Box with Lights Here is the result of my 3.5 hours work. The video is best viewed with the sound turned on. I particularly liked the fluid motion of the box and lights. The resulting network and nodes are also highly customisable. […]

Nov 19

by Karyn in Experimentation, My Learning, My Work, Patterns, Risk Taking, Timelapse, Videos 0 comments tags: Experimentation, My Learning, my work, Patterns, Risk Taking, Timelapse, Videos

Coloured Waves

Further Investigation into Generative Art – My Touch Designer Journey continues. I am continuing to log the time that I spend on this via time-lapse. I decided that by adding in a clock the passage of time became more noticeable. Below is the time-lapse video and below that, is the resulting video from tutorial. All of these generative art videos work from node networks which I save. These networks can then be tweaked and changed to my liking at a later time. Currently I am just getting together some solid foundational programs. I feel less bothered about following the tutorials now because I know that I can tweak my tutorial programs to such a degree that the resulting work is completely mine. Unfortunately I need to keep going through this process if I am to learn to build networks of my own. Since reading my book about the Ai Superpowers, China, US and the New World Order, I learned that this is not an unusual process in the programming world. People create, share and borrow bit of code from each other and this accelerates the learning process. It is quite a risky strategy that I’m pursuing here, because if I […]

Nov 18

by Karyn in Experimentation, Ideas, My Learning, My Work, Patterns, Timelapse, Videos 0 comments tags: Experimentation, Ideas, My Learning, my work, Patterns, Timelapse, Videos

A Tiny Breakthrough

Is it Slowly Sinking In? – I am trying to learn the software program Touch Designer. The reason is that I believe it will help me change my art in new ways and allow me to produce light reactive light installations. Unfortunately I have never been able to write code which I feel is a massive disadvantage. I was heartened by the book I read about Ai for my presentation. The author stated that the Chinese learned much of their early social media app programming skills by copying from Silicon Valley. This is exactly how I’m attempting to learn. I watch tutorials and I try to understand why I am building my network nodes in the way that I’m shown by the video tutorials. Over the last week I feel that I’m gaining a little more confidence. When things don’t work I’m finding my mistakes easier to correct and I feel much less lost while navigating around the TD (Touch Designer) interface. I’m still somewhat bemused as to why I build the nodes in the way that I’m instructed, but I’m starting to feel that the understanding of this will eventually happen. Last week I was pretty sure that this […]

Nov 14

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

Liquid Glass

A Touch Designer Tutorial – I know that time is against me if I want to become proficient at ‘Touch Designer’. Therefore, whenever I have an opportunity to experiment with a new tutorial I take it. I also like to give a time-lapsed visual record of the time that I spend on projects like this. I am particularly interested in time and I’m hoping that these time-lapse videos will make an interesting addition to my project work. A 35 Second Time-lapse of a 1.5 Hour Tutorial The Result of the Tutorial Now that the network design has been finalised, I am able to tweak numerous parameters in order to arrive at a result that I’m happy with. Below is the final result once I made all of my adjustments. Variation of a Theme Once I have created a base video, I always like to experiment further. Below is a variation on the video above. However, I do prefer the original above. The liquid glass effect is much more vibrant and there are less distracting elements. I still think that the experiment below was worth a try even though I don’t think it […]

Nov 08

Blender – Who Knew?

Using Blender to Simulate Chladni Patterns – In order to make a successful Chladni Pattern, it is important to generate a strong tone. Where fingers are placed on the plate is also crucial. I have discovered that to produce a tone and beautiful pattern is not a quick or easy process. It takes both practice and patience. Jokingly, I feel that at the end of this process, I may not have great Chladni patterns, but I’ll probably manage a grade 8 in the violin! Joking aside, this is a real and fundamental problem that I need to solve in order to move forward. In order to help me work with my bow and plate I looked for a number of YouTube tutorials of which there were a few. The people in the videos made the bowing and Chladni pattern generation look so easy! I spoke to the maker of my kit and he explained that actually it’s not that easy and practice and patience makes perfect. Below are a couple of videos where pattern generation is made to look really simple. Chladni Plate with Violin Bow Chladni Patterns – Aluminium Plate and Violin Bow Time is Not […]

Nov 03

by Karyn in Disasters, My Learning, Problem Solving, Timelapse, Videos 0 comments tags: Disasters, My Learning, Problem Solving, Timelapse, Videos

Complete Disaster!

Trying to Make Progress – Today felt like a completely wasted day in terms of what I was trying to achieve. I wanted to finish off yesterday’s post by adding an assembly video of my ‘Chladni Plate’. Unfortunately my rather dumb ‘smartphone’ had other ideas and wouldn’t give me access to my footage. In fact I still don’t have access to my footage because apparently my phone’s storage is full! Indeed as I’m writing this the problem still exists. I suspect a trip to the Apple Shop for some ‘tech’ support will shortly be the order of the day. However, I hate to waste time, so I took the opportunity to try out another ‘Touch Designer’ tutorial. Below is the result of today’s efforts. I’m hoping that my phone will update overnight so that I can at least pull off the last few Chladni Plate videos that I shot today. In the meantime, here’s a thirty second time-lapse of me working on a tutorial to create some animated, coloured wavy lines. The time-lapse is 30 minutes condensed into 30 seconds. I am becoming increasingly interested in sound, so just like my Chladni plate videos, I have left in the original […]