Research – Karyn Easton

Hanging Around

Choosing a Suitable Stringing Method – Choosing suitable materials and a hanging method for my mobile has to be one of the most challenging aspects so far. I’m way beyond my comfort zone with this! Noah one of my fellow students shared a link by the creative force that once was, namely David Bowie. Im going to put what he said here so that when I struggle I’ve got a point of reference to start things moving again. Today, having produced enough mobile elements to explore hanging and stringing I started running into multiple problems. Some of these included: 1). What kind of stringing method would I like to use 2). How do I arrange the elements neatly enough so that the viewer understands them as binary. 3). What materials should I use to actually string and hang the mobile? 4). Will a smaller prototype actually translate into a much larger one? The problems above were to name only a few. I spent the evening trying to source suitable hanging materials. I managed to source a very good older pdf on the subject of mobile making which helped a lot! How to Make Mobiles How to […]

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 […]

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 […]

Nov 12

by Karyn in Experimentation, Ideas, My Work, Patterns, Problem Solving, Research, Timelapse, Videos 0 comments tags: Experimentation, Ideas, my work, Patterns, Problem Solving, Research, threats, Timelapse, Videos

Chladni Patterns Revisited

Further Experimentation with the Chladni Kit – As I’m interested in hidden phenomena such as sound vibrations I wanted to shoot some footage showing how these could be visualised. I purchased a Chladni kit, but I had missed some fundamental assembly instructions in the manual. This was probably on of the main issues holding me back from making more sound patterns. The creator of the kit on seeing my time-lapse videos kindly pointed this out to me and I made the necessary changes. I believe that as a direct result of these changes I managed to make another pattern. While making the new pattern it was fascinating to watch the grains of sand as they vibrated up and down on the plate. I tried to capture this as best as I could, but unfortunately my light levels were too low. The video piece I created is below. Please note this is a very early experiment and I shall be re-shooting this with greatly increased light levels and a much higher frame rate. The increased light levels will allow me to increase my depth of field so more grains of sand appear sharp and in focus. The higher frame rate […]

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 06

by Karyn in Ai, Experimentation, My Work, Research, Videos 0 comments tags: ai, Experimentation, my work, Research, Videos

Remixed Ai Chladni Patterns

Experimentation – What does Ai Make of My Designs? I tried experimenting further with my Chladni kit, but to no avail. Ideally, I would like to video the patterns forming but even getting them to appear is just too difficult at the moment. After speaking with the kit’s maker I realised that actually creating the patterns is a skill that needs to be learned. Indeed it is just like learning the violin and an art form in itself. I hope that with both patience and practice I can improve as I really like working with my kit. When it does work the results are impressive! I felt that the images created yesterday worked quite well, even though I would have liked to see more patterns. Therefore, as I continue to perfect my bowing technique I wondered what Ai would make of my designs so far? In my previous post I used Ai to generate images from the text prompt: ‘Chladni Patterns’. Today I am moving it a stage further and I am giving the Ai a starting image and asking it to generate variations. I actually found the results to be interesting. Below you can see my starting images and […]

Nov 04

by Karyn in Ai, Experimentation, Research 0 comments tags: ai, Experimentation, Research

Chladni Patterns and Ai

What does Ai think Chladni Patterns Look Like? – Over the course of the two years I would like to see if the Ai algorithm improves. Time and it’s effects, just like sound and light absolutely fascinate me. They are so interconnected, that it seems a shame not to keep a log of how Ai changes over time. At the moment I am looking at sound and vibrations, more specifically Chladni Plates and their resulting sand patterns from sound. As an experiment I fed the text prompt ‘Chladni Patterns’ through the algorithm. The images below are what the system ‘spat out’. I think that it’s fairly clear that in this area Ai hasn’t quite caught up yet. I intend to repeat this experiment towards the end of my course, along with any other relevant prompts that I discover along the way. It will be interesting to see if the software has improved at all. Ai Imagery Generated from the Text Prompt: ‘Chladni Patterns’

Nov 02

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

Chladni Plate

The Chladni Plate – Sound has always fascinated me. I remember being introduced to an oscillator at school. I was completely mesmerised by the waves generated by sounds. Later in life I discovered Chladni Plates. The Chladni Plate was named after its German inventor Ernst Chladni, who was an early pioneer of experimental acoustics. He discovered that by using a violin bow to vibrate metal plates covered in sand, a number of distinct patterns emerged. The patterns would change with the pitch and the tone of the sound vibrations. The idea of sound creating hidden patterns is something that I want to explore. I am intrigued by anything hidden or unseen. The Chladni plate patterns, in my opinion, falls nicely into this bracket. The patterns of sound are hidden until they are revealed by the vibrating sand covered plates. In order to experiment with this phenomena, I decided to source an authentic Chladni plate kit with a bow. Some Chladni plate kits come with electronic tone generators. However I wanted to remain as authentic as possible and I was really excited to find someone who made these kits as close to the original as possible. Below is my Chladni Plate unboxing […]

Hanging Around

Deeper Meaning

Conversations with Ai

Ai Workshop

Chladni Patterns Revisited

Blender – Who Knew?

Remixed Ai Chladni Patterns

Chladni Patterns and Ai

Chladni Plate

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