My Work – Page 5 – Karyn Easton

Mar 29

Zoom Session 20 (Low Residency)

Low Residency Part 2 – This is part 2 of the Low Residency. This blog covers the second week of activities. To see what happened in the preceding week please see Zoom Session 19. Low Tech Photography (Monday 10.00am with Felix Loftus) I was very torn about taking this workshop as opposed to the printing workshop. Printing is something that I’ve always been very interested in, but I’ve never really had the opportunity to explore it to any great degree. However the pull of photography coupled with tech had way too much of a ‘pull factor’ for me. Indeed, having taken the workshop I knew I had absolutely made the right choice for me! It was nice to see both Trisha and Ester at the workshop too. When we entered the classroom there were a variety of Rasberry Pi processors on the table. these were hooked up to a variety of lenses. Some were native to Rasberry Pi and some were off the shelf smartphone camera lenses. I hate to admit it but I was in tech heaven! Although I was sad to miss printing I don’t think anything could ‘top’ me messing around with programming and kit. The […]

Mar 12

by Karyn in Abstract Art, Ai, Artists, Collaborations, Exhibitions, Galleries, Low Residency, My Work, Videos, Zoom Meetings 0 comments tags: Abstract Art, ai, Artists, Collaborations, Exhibitions, Galleries, Low Residency, my work, Videos, Zoom Meetings

Zoom Session 19 (Low Residency)

Low Residency Part 1 – This week there wasn’t a formal zoom meeting due to preparations for both the Interim show and the Low Residency. There won’t be a formal zoom session next week either as this will be right in the middle of the Low Residency. For this reason I have decided to dedicate both zoom session slots to documenting both the Interim Show and the Low Residency. Part 1 will cover the Interim show Private View and Low Residency activities covering Thursday 9th March until Sunday 12th March. I will cover Part 2 next week from Monday 13th March until Thursday 16th of March. The Interim Show (Thursday 9th March – 6.00pm-9.00pm) I was really excited to be travelling to the Low Residency in London. I’m not the most confident of travellers, so I was lucky to have my husband accompany me. We left my car at Paignton boarded the train and headed off to our change at Newton Abbot railway station. Once we arrived at Paddington, we bought some lunch and then set off on the new Elizabeth Line heading East towards Abbey Wood. Our actual stop was Farringdon. We departed the train […]

Mar 05

by Karyn in 3d, Abstract Art, Experimentation, My Work, Sculpture, Zentangles 0 comments tags: 3d, Abstract Art, Experimentation, my work, Sculpture, Zentangles

A Mental Derive

Taking a Mindful Wander – In our ‘Zoom Session 18’ Last week we talked about the concept of ‘Derive’ or ‘taking a derive’. I hadn’t heard of this concept before and therefore I really wanted to explore it further. I decided that I wanted to experience both a mental and physical derive, so I have produced 2 blogs on the work resulting from my wanderings. The results from my physical wanderings, or should I say physical derive can be found here. Each week usually on a Tuesday evening and after the weekly zoom session I produce little drawings which reflect my mood. I used to draw them during my the zoom session but I became increasingly anxious about missing important information so it’s now solely an evening pursuit. However, although I hadn’t realised it at the time, my little drawings were actually a form of mental derive. Therefore I decided to use these little ‘derive drawings’ as part of a larger mental derive. For many weeks now I have wanted to move my work into a more physical 3d realm but I wasn’t too sure how to achieve this. Last week I had a failed attempt to produce some […]

Feb 25

by Karyn in Abstract Art, Collaborations, Drawings, Experimentation, My Work, Patterns, Photography 0 comments tags: Abstract Art, Collaborations, Drawings, Experimentation, my work, Patterns, Photography

Let’s Get Physical

Exploring the Physical – I have spoken a few times now about my desire to move my work into a more physical form. Starting this process has actually been quite difficult for me. However a few weeks ago I was given a wonderful opportunity to change all of this. One of my fellow students Shirin Majid was embarking on a really exciting project and asked our WhatsApp group if they would like to participate. She explained briefly about her idea and I felt that I would love to join in. Shirin had made some postcards for us all to complete. Her design would be on one half of a side and we were to finish the card by adding ours to the other half of the side. I am a massive fan of abstract art and Shirin’s work is certainly no exception. She produces strong bold colourful geometric shapes that really resonate with me. When my little postcard finally arrived (delayed due to postal strike), I was super excited! Just like everything life soon got in the way and it took me a while from receiving my card to completing it. One of the biggest problems I faced was […]

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 30

by Karyn in Abstract Art, Ai, Animation, Context, Evaluations, Experimentation, Food for Thought, Ideas, My Work, Videos 0 comments tags: Abstract Art, Animation, Evaluations, Food for Thought, Ideas, Videos

Morphing

Upping the Ante – ‘Time and time wait for no man’ Even within a short space of time the developments in ‘Ai’ assisted creative tools has been astounding! As soon as I realised that text to image was available I remembered my comments that it was only a matter of time before we had text to video. Indeed I wasn’t wrong. Apparently Google is already in a race with a number of other companies to achieve text to video. I have already seen for myself some of the early examples of this which are pretty impressive even at the beta stage. If you would like a pink and blue hippo skateboarding down the street with a banana on its head then you probably won’t have that long to wait. I generated the following text to video imagery. Looking at the videos, I particularly like the morphing effect generated by the software. However, what fascinated me more were the stills that I managed to pull from the Luminogram text to video ‘Ai’ driven generator. Hidden people and buildings seemed to pop in and out of nowhere. I like this idea of ‘hidden’ mysterious images. I have been researching around hidden things […]

Jan 29

by Karyn in Ai, Context, My Work, Opportunities, Videos 0 comments tags: Context

Know Thy Enemy

And Know Yourself – Planning my study statement has really made me start to think about where my project is headed. I have collected so many ideas, I now need to examine exactly what I am trying to say. I want to try to narrow my focus, especially in light of the rapidly approaching study statement deadline. Today, the news, wherever anyone consumes it, seems so depressing at the moment. It feels as if Government and authority have decided that their soul raison d’être is to suck out any last remaining joy from society. I say this because recently I had a conversation with a friend of mine who is a counsellor (mental health practitioner). She has many clients and as such has a unique insight into how generally people in her sphere are feeling. We sat down over coffee and the conversation turned, as it normally does to life, the universe and anything in between. I told her about my car tax debacle. I was in London a few months ago, I left my car parked overnight near the train station for a couple of nights so I could drive home on my return. While away my husband called […]

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 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 […]