Problem Solving – 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 […]

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?

Nov 19

Epic Making Session

Yaacov Agam Inspired Work – Over many months now I have been wrestling with a myriad of ideas. In my Study Statement I was keen to develop a new form of hybrid human, digital and AI art. I also wanted to include an element of mystery and discovery whereby elements of the work were hidden. During my search for inspiration I came across two artists that particularly resonated with me, namely: Alexander Calder and Yaacov Agam. I particularly liked the idea of movement and mobile art seen in Calder’s work. Indeed I was so taken with his work that I went to visit the Tate Modern to see some of his pieces there. However, Yaacov Agam’s work really did inspire me. In his Artist’s statement he says: “My aim is to show the visible in a perpetual state of becoming”. I think this is a beautiful way in which he describes his work. However, I personally would liken it to, showing the visible in a perpetual state of change. Given the nature of the subject matter that I’m exploring, his work for me very much aligns with this notion of change as well as ‘becoming’. Below is a short […]

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 […]

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 […]

Oct 05

by Karyn in Abstract Art, Ai, Animation, Artists, Experimentation, Ideas, My Work, Patterns, Problem Solving, Risk Taking, Tasks, Unit 2 Blogs, Videos 0 comments tags: Abstract Art, ai, Animation, Artists, Experimentation, Food for Thought, Ideas, my work, Patterns, Problem Solving, Risk Taking, Tasks, Unit 2 Blogs, Videos

Grotto Print Ideas #1

Print Ideas & Adam Bridgland (Jealous London) – Today we had an interesting talk about the ‘Grotto Project’ formerly ‘Merch’. Adam Bridgland from Jealous London came along to share some insights and revealed a lot of useful information – see a selection of his slides at the end from the talk. I’ve just been looking at the deadlines and I’ve realised that I really do need to start moving on this. Some very interesting takeaways from the talk included answers to questions such as: what was a popular poster colour? What kind of images sold well? Adam suggested that blue was a popular colour and skulls, butterflies and cute cats seemed to do quite well. Unfortunately the human form, unless comprising a skull did not seem to fair quite so well. I’ve produced many digital images over the years, but the thought of choosing just one singular image to print has really made me think. I have some interesting macro photographs of oil on water hanging on my walls. One was bought by a large Australian advertising company, one hangs in the local hospital and one appears on an album cover. Even Adobe use some of my work. Therefore I can’t […]

Sep 24

A Mental Derive Part #2

Picking Up Where I Left off – Ever since my first mental derive, it was always my intention to recommence this particular project. now that the second draft of my research paper is nearing completion, I feel I am better able to return more fully to creative activities. Since part one of my mental derive, I didn’t totally abandon this project and I experimented with suspending some of the circles on a sheet of acetate between some thick heavy duty white elastic. Below is a gallery showing the results. This is a project I’d like to return to at some point, but I don’t currently have the correct materials. The acetate was far too thin and buckled under the strain of the elastic. Therefore thicker acrylic is possibly a better choice. The patterned discs/circles also had a habit of ‘pinging off’, so a better method of securing them is required. However, I do think that there is room to develop this project further. Moments in Time and Space Each black and white patterned circle/disc above, is a collage of many little moments in time. For this reason I wanted to trial another form of suspension. I am particularly […]

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 […]

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 28

by Karyn in Ideas, Problem Solving, Research Paper Journey, Unit 2 Blogs 0 comments tags: Ideas, Problem Solving, Research Paper Journey, Unit 2 Blogs

Research Paper Journey #3

Back to the Drawing Board – Unfortunately, after spending some time brainstorming, then querying ChatGPT3, I was still no further forward in developing a research question. At this point I felt that I needed to take a step away from it for a while and maybe create something instead. I had wanted to develop my Zentangle paper sculptures further so I felt this was the perfect opportunity to set aside my research paper and move back to experimentation. It was during this period of time that I started to reflect on my study statement and exactly what it was that really interested me. Since starting my MA in Fine Art Digital I have always had an interest in how artists can harness the power of Ai instead of being replaced by it. Therefore, I decided to revisit my original study statement where I had initially proposed research into a new form of human, digital and Ai hybrid art. Reflecting on my study statement quite quickly led on to a number of questions about what I had previously proposed. For example: Do people actually like Ai art? Do people like Digital Art? Do people like Digital Art more than Ai art? […]