A Leap from Practice to Research –
After working so hard producing digital artworks I am becoming increasingly aware that my research paper is being neglected. This imbalance needs to be corrected. In order to do this I am going to engage in a form of research each day. This is so that hopefully I will have a substantive body of work prior to my return to work at the end of this month. Starting with the most recent activity and working downwards this post is a working document of my research activity over the next few weeks. For a more formal list of my activities please see my
Research Timeline and my Research Resource List
Day #21 – Saturday 2nd September – Further refining the second draft of the research paper and integrating research sources and compiling coherent appendices.
Day #20 – Friday 1st September – Compiling the second draft to incorporate all of the polls and revising it to meet the target word count.
Day #19 – Thursday 31st August – Refining headings and layout of the second draft of the research paper.
Day #18 – Wednesday 30th August – Commencing the second draft of the research paper.
Day #17 – Tuesday 29th August – Spent the day at work but watched videos about Ai throughout the evening.
Day #16 – Monday 28th August – Writing out the results and analysis of my polls.
Day #15 – Sunday 27th August – Watching Mo Gawdat videos about the dangers of AI.
Day #14 – Saturday 26th August – Analysing the results from my last Facebook poll.
Day #13 – Friday 25th August – Collating initial responses from my latest Facebook Poll and developing, producing and running my final Facebook poll.
Day #12 – Thursday 24th August – catching up on writing up notes and adding findings to the research paper.
Day #11 – Wednesday 23rd August – reading additional research papers. Had to break off to do a photoshoot. However, the latest Facebook poll was up and running.
Day #10 – Tuesday 22nd August – Designing another research experiment for Facebook.
Day #9 – Monday 21st August – Identifying similar studies or research papers that either support or challenge my findings and proceeding to work on the research paper 2nd draft.
Day #8 – Sunday 20th August – Analysing and writing up results. Facebook poll is now closed and today I am analysing the results and writing up the findings.
Day #7 – Saturday 19th August – More responses are trickling in from the Facebook poll.
Day #6 – Friday 18th August. I ran a Facebook poll among my friends and the results were somewhat surprising. What the research showed was that it was a close run competition between Adolf Hitler’s work and that of Olive Wharry. When people were asked if they would like to change their preferences when they discovered who each artist was, only one respondent at this point who had chosen Hitler moved to Olive Wharry.
Day #5 – Thursday 17th August. The initial results of the Facebook poll showed that actually anonymity could play more of a central role in choice of imagery. I have already started thinking of a second experiment to run. Even at this early experimental stage the results have started to reveal that when works are anonymous people make a choice purely on the aesthetics of an image. They even tend to stick with that choice even when the artists are revealed. In the case of this experiment namely a pig, a computer, a humanoid robot and a human artist did not matter at all. Today I want to discover what might be enough to sway them from their original choices. Therefore I have decided to use works of art created by criminals. Will this be enough to sway respondents – Images include works by Adolf Hitler, The Kray Twins, Wayne Lo and Olive Wharry. There crimes cover a whole spectrum ranging from heinous, terrible and in the case of Olive Wharry perhaps more noble depending on viewpoint. I want to find out if this will encourage people to switch their choices when Artist is revealed.
Day #4 – Wednesday 16th August. Analysing results. Today I spent time analysing the results from my online poll. Unfortunately as I didn’t receive enough respondents I had to take to Facebook to run it there as well. The results of of the Facebook poll were interesting and I have documented the results in my Research Resource List.
Day #3 – Tuesday 15th August. Compiling Polls. More primary research around ai art and robotically generated art. I asked fellow students to complete this poll so that I could see if there was a clear winner. The respondents were not told anything about the images other than they were produced by relatively famous artists. Unfortunately the makers of Ai-Da have not yet responded to my email so I have now sent an email to Hanson Robotics. I am currently hoping for responses.
Day #2 – Monday 14th August. Trying to establish contact with the humanoid robotic manufacturer behind Ai-Da to see if we can collaborate on my research paper. The letter was compiled by ChatGPT and sent to the makers of Ai-Da requesting a collaboration.
Day #1 – Sunday 13th August. Getting back into my research. Today I read a number of Craft Research Journals in order to establish exactly what an art/craft paper might look like. Please see the image below for details of the journals.
