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 […]
The Annual College End of Year Film – Each year for the last few years I have been invited to produce our college end of year film. It’s a long and quite complex task because it has to really showcase our department. It needs to appeal to parents, staff and students alike. Unfortunately because it is such a massive undertaking, my research has had to go on hold for a little while. However in a couple of weeks I am due to fly out to Barcelona, so hopefully I‘ll have plenty of travelling time to catch up on my studies. In the meantime, I thought it would be interesting to document my film making process. Each year I write all of the script, edit all of the video and use character animation software to enable animated characters to read the story’s narrative. Often I also need to shoot my own video in order to help with the story and to fill in any gaps. In fact I’m responsible for it all! Over the last two years I’ve used a character I named ‘Horace ‘Boris’ Hedgehog’ (trust me, by watching the previous 2 films, his name becomes clear), this year it […]
