Risk Taking – Karyn Easton

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 […]

Oct 27

MACBA Metamorphosis

Barcelona’s Hidden Artists – While visiting Barcelona, I became fascinated with the vast swathes of graffiti covered walls. It felt as if collectively everyone had given up on cleaning the walls. Indeed, it felt as if the walls themselves had become works of art. In stark contrast I also noted the pristine internal walls of the MACBA (One of Barcelona’s contemporary art museums). I was so ‘taken with’ the beautiful light inside of the MACBA that I decided to photograph it. I also photographed many graffiti laden walls across Barcelona. There really was a such a stark contrast between the pristine and the messy that I began to wonder what the MACBA would look like if it was plastered in graffiti? The internal walls of the MACBA were so beautifully clean that I felt an irresistible urge to ‘plaster’ them. The vibrant colours and designs found externally on the Streets of Barcelona seemed a logical choice. Unfortunately, my dream of taking spray paints to the MACBA walls was pretty much out of the question. However, I did have access to Photoshop, Ai and augmented reality. As a direct result of my thinking I managed to self publish 3 small art […]

Oct 11

by Karyn in 3d, Abstract Art, Ai, Experimentation, Food for Thought, Ideas, My Work, Photography, Risk Taking, Unit 2 Blogs 0 comments tags: 3d, Abstract Art, ai, Experimentation, Food for Thought, Ideas, my work, Photography, Risk Taking, Unit 2 Blogs

Grotto Print Ideas #2

Adding Value – I quite like the idea of ‘Killing Time’ and the oil on water re-imagined clocks. However, I do feel that there needs to be some level of interactivity with my Grotto print. I decided that since posting the video short included in the Grotto Print Ideas blog, more of the clocks needed to be shown. This is pure experimentation and the full video can be seen below. A couple of years ago I began to explore Paul’s book. I felt that the nature of the folds created within would lend themselves very well to warping the clock faces and dials even further. Killing Time – Calming Edit As well as the calming edit, I also produced a shorter more rousing video short, showing the clocks animated as they warp and destruct. This is more in keeping with the idea of ‘Killing Time’. I’m debating whether or not to include these either one or both of these digital edits as part of the print sale? At this point in time it is just a thought. I’ve a long long way to go before I make a firm decision. I’ve also had another idea regarding […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Dec 29

Refik Anadol – Production and Destruction

Refik Anadol Inspired Responses At the beginning of this project I began to examine the possibilities created by Ai generated imagery. I likened Ai to something that had tentacle-like structures. I imagined that these tentacles were expanding and steadily weaving their way into all aspects of our lives. After discovering the work of Refik Anadol, It is clear to see that Ai generated imagery and data visualisation are becoming firmly rooted in the art world. The work of Refik Anadol is truly breathtaking. He is clearly a pioneer in the field of digital art. Below is a video containing examples of his work along with an interview with him talking about his art. Refik Anadol – His Work and Thoughts about Ai Generated Imagery Art Piece Responses to Refik Anadol In his interview Refik makes references to the futuristic classic film ‘Blade Runner’. Through his work he imagines what Ai might look like when it is dreaming. He affords human like qualities to the machine learning that he is observing. Following this line of thinking I wanted to imagine what Ai might look like as it grows and then dies. The following pieces are […]

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 […]

Oct 24

by Karyn in Ai, Experimentation, My Work, Risk Taking, Threats, Videos 0 comments tags: ai, Experimentation, my work, Risk Taking, threats, Videos

Ai on the March

Saving Assets for Later – In the process of experimenting with Ai text to image, I generated a number of stills documented in my post Human Coding and Ai Generated Imagery for Animation. Currently I am waiting for some ‘Chladni’ equipment arriving from Ireland. Therefore, instead of wasting time, I decided to experiment with some of the small animations I made in that post. Video 1. A combination of Clips The video below was a composite of all of the short clips I generated from my software tutorial. I like the fluid motion of the clips and the way they spread. I feel this could be a visual metaphor for the relentless spread of Ai into our lives. Video 2. Ai from an Early Age The video below is an experiment moving on from video 1. I added an iPad and a cake and candle. This represents the march of Ai from an increasingly early age. Video 3. Ai on the March This was my preferred video from the series of experiments. It is a simple video short exploring the tentacle like spread of images across a screen. The calming music to each video is there to […]

Oct 21

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

Human Coding and Ai Generated Imagery for Animation

A Steep Learning Curve – Since learning all about text to image Ai technology, I decided to explore it further. Ai seems to be everywhere – if it were a living creature, I would liken it to one with tentacles – perhaps an octopus or a squid? It might also be likened to a tree with branches sprawling everywhere and with increasing speed crawls further into our lives. I suspect it will become ever more pervasive and how it is used, either for good or ill, will be down to us all. Running with the idea that Ai has tentacles and or branches, I decided to try a text prompt to see what Ai made of the request. I used ‘Tentacles, Branches, Network and Fractals’ as my main prompt. All of the images below were created from this text. I was pleased with the images above because I was looking for a good example image for a new visual programming tutorial I wanted to try. The tutorial was about generating a growing image. The tentacle-like images above seemed perfect for this, especially in relation to my thoughts about the tentacle nature of Ai. Below is the image that I chose […]