The Last Few Weeks –

It’s been a little while since I last sat down and actively engaged in a full reflective process. As the last term has now come to a close I thought that now would be the perfect time to catch up on this before the new term gets into full swing.  It’s an opportunity to look back on the first semester and really start to analyse the direction of travel of my work.

As usual I will answer the following questions to help with the reflective process:

1. What have you done so far?
2. What have you discovered so far?
3. What will you change because of what you have discovered?
4. What will you do next?

What have I done so far?

Since my last reflective blog I have been very busy trying out new ideas and experimenting with them.  I also took the opportunity to catch up at Christmas with all of the online Monday Guest Lectures, I have still to catch up with the Dean Kenning Lectures which I am looking forward to, as soon as time is permitting.  The Monday Guest Lectures were really informative and I detailed the main points from each speaker.  Below is a short summary of everything that I’ve covered since my last reflective session along with links to each blog.

• London Part 2 – This was a great whistle stop tour of a number a art galleries in the city.  It was a college trip and I went with a number of students.  It was a really great cultural experience and we saw some of the most beautiful African art and fashion.  We visited the Tate Modern, Tate Britain and the Saatchi Gallery to name only a few.  A lot of what we saw is detailed in the blog.  I really enjoyed the whole experience and we were there for 3 days.
• Zoom Session 9 – I realised that zoom session 9 is only 3 sessions away from where we are now (session 12 having just passed), but if feels longer since I had the time to reflect.  Luckily it is actually just a couple of weeks or so but I think that because it has spanned the Christmas period it feels like much longer.  Zoom Session 9  – was a very informative talk by one of the CSM librarians.  We were given an excellent tour of some of the resources available to us as students and I need to explore this further.
• The Phoblographer – This was just a little shoutout to myself, the mention made me smile and made my day.  However one thing that this did do, was remind me of where my existing skills actually lie.  I have been doing a lot of computer and ‘Ai’ generated design lately and my camera has sadly taken a ‘back seat’.  When I saw some of my work on their blog it made me realise that actually I do have a skill set that perhaps I should try to use more in my work.
• Zoom Session 10 – This was an introduction to coding with Processing, with guest speaker Matthew Edwards.  I thoroughly enjoyed this session.  It inspired me so much that I continued further with some of the tutorials on the Processing.org website.  I have in fact been working my way steadily through a number of tutorials.  These have been a massive ‘eye opener’ for me.  By learning the fundamentals of programming with a relatively simple programming language, I can now better understand the flow and design of programs such as Adobe After Effects and Blender.  I am finding that these programs are very similar even though their interfaces vary quite a lot.
• Creative Coding – This was my response to the Zoom Session 10 – this particular blog is by no means finished and I am still steadily working my way through a variety of online tutorials.  I try to take at least one per day.  My aim is to produce a beautiful piece of generative art using what I have learned so far.  I am also hoping to put together an art piece using all of the animations generated from the programs that I’m writing.
• Day Job – Is a short blog showcasing some of the work by my students.  I was particularly proud of what they had achieved this term and I produced a series of 3 short videos to show what they had done.
• Amanda Newall, Louise Giovanelli, Rindon Johnson, Trevor Mathison and Henri Kalama, were all speakers for the Monday guest lectures.  I found their work both inspiring and their talks very insightful!  I wanted to be creative in designing the featured images for each of these blogs, so I decided to take screen shots of the speakers. This way I would have a visual reference of who they are.  Unfortunately due to low resolution of the footage the portraits were rather grainy, so I ran my chosen images through a special app which turned each portrait into a ‘Hope Poster’ styled image.  I thought that this was a nice way of documenting each artist in my Monday Guest Lecture blogs.
• Too Cold – This blog is a lighthearted look at how cold my house was at that time without a working boiler and what I was doing while I was so cold.  It is also a good example of how keeping .JPEG backups of my blog are essential as my website migration did not run at all smoothly.  I also cover Lassijous Curves in Touch Designer.
• Disasters and Projects – This blog sees my return to macro photography and how I blend the digital world with the physical world.  I felt that you cannot get more physical than banknotes so I did a short study of these.  I also detail my ongoing struggles with technology.
• Refik Anadol – Production and Destruction, This blog covers my investigation and my digital art responses to the work of Refik Anadol.
• Dean Kenning Lectures, All of the Dean Kenning Lectures and relevant slides will appear here.  At the moment there isn’t anything here but this is on my to do list.
• Onwards, This blog details more work with time-lapse and Touch Designer tutorials and videos from those tutorials.
• Study Statement 1.0, I have finally started to put pen to paper and thrash out a skeleton Study Statement.  I am waiting to learn more about how to compile this document before I go much further. I believe this is going to be covered in our next zoom session.
• Vilde Rolfeson – Inspired Work – I am a massive fan of Vilde Rolfeson’s plastic bag images, so I decided to do a shoot informed by her work.  The resulting images opened up a number of opportunities to experiment further.  I decided to collaborate with ChatGPT and this blog covers the resulting digital art pieces.
• Zoom Session 11 – This was an interesting session that covered the key dates for the forthcoming interim exhibition and low residency. We also had a speaker from CSM who covered the installation of our work and the equipment that we might need.
• Ai Workshop – ‘The Robots are Coming and They are Dressed in Lace’ This was a really interesting workshop and I enjoyed creating images using Midjourney.  I also think that the title of this workshop was very clever.  Yes the robots are coming and yes they are absolutely dressed in lace but what lies beneath the ‘fluffy exterior’? We don’t really know.  I think these are questions that we all need to be asking as we embrace this new technology.
• Conversations with Ai – This blog covers a number of conversations that I had with ChatGPT.  The chat ‘bot’ was able to help me realise my vision with regards to the Vilde Rolfeson inspired shoot mentioned earlier.  With the help of the ‘bot’ I was able to produce a number of creatively coded programs to generate pixel destruction animations.  The chat ‘bot’ was also able to craft two poems to accompany these animations.  The chat ‘bot’ conversations were highly enlightening and I think there is much scope to investigate further.
• Clocks and Carrier Bags – This blog is an experimental expansion on the  Vilde Rolfeson – Inspired Work and the Conversations with Ai blogs.  This blog is a turning point in my thinking.
• Zoom Session 12 – This was a really interesting session that covered a writing exercise.  It also covered the idea that no ideas are ever new and great artists often expand on existing ideas.

What have I discovered so far?

I discovered that ChatGPT actually can and does write workable programs – it does take some time to iron out any errors but it does actually work.  ChatGPT will also try to covert a program in one language into another language, although I wasn’t able to extract a working program from this process. There were just too many errors.

I discovered that it is possible to program a working and time keeping clock in Adobe After Affects by using expressions. This was an interesting discovery because I can now add a time reference to any digital animations that I produce.

The unexpected discovery from my last batch of blogs was the beauty and tiny details that can be found on UK banknotes.  Shooting these rekindled my love of macro photography.

I discovered the work of Refik Anadol and the most important ‘take away’ from this was that ‘no man is an island’ and collaborations are a really good thing.

Technology is frustrating! I need to upgrade my systems particularly as I’ve discovered a real love of generative art.

Another great discovery is that a carrier bag can be a great muse!  Indeed, inspiration can be found in some of the least likely places for example the bank notes that I mentioned earlier.

In Zoom session 12, I rediscovered my love of handwriting.

What will I change because of what I have discovered?

The discovery of hidden landscapes in carrier bags and beautiful details in UK bank notes has motivated me to find more hidden worlds in a wider variety of seemingly mundane objects.  I would like to expand on the idea of a working clock. If I can I would now like to record a full 12 hour video of the animated clock face.  This will mean that I can produce my own working version of a digital clock and insert it into any forthcoming digital art pieces.

I would like to incorporate more of my own photography into my digital work.  I also want to explore further the opportunities afforded by the program writing capabilities of ChatGPT.

I also rediscovered my love of handwriting so I will try to incorporate more of this into my blogs.

What will I do next?

My plan for the next couple of weeks is to identify other ‘hidden landscapes’ within everyday objects.   I would like to find and or create more programs to beautifully dissolve what I find. I will try to incorporate more photography into my work. I will continue with my journey into creative coding. I will also try to get a 12 hour recording of my clock so that I can produce a working digital art piece.

Extra Questions

1). What was the best thing I did? Why was this the best thing I did? How do I know that this was the best thing I did? – There were actually two things that I was really excited about over this last period. Firstly the discovery that I can program a digital working clock and also that I can work with ChatGPT to construct programs to work with my images.

2). What worked least well for me? Why did this not work well for me? What have I learned about the topic concerned from this not having worked well for me? What have I learned about myself from this not having worked well for me? What do I plan to do differently in future as a result of my answers to the above questions?  – My understanding of Touch Designer is not working well. I am struggling to understand the logic of this. That said, I have still  come a long way on this journey. Therefore, I plan to retake the initial tutorials so that I can cement my understanding.  I am now also not sure about continuing on with my Touch Designer tutorial time-lapses.  I want to explore time-lapses further but perhaps with slightly different subject material.

3). With hindsight, how would I go about this activity differently if doing it again from scratch? To what extent will this activity influence the way I tackle anything similar in future? – As I’m on a learning journey, I’m not sure what I could have done differently but had I known about Processing coding earlier I would have put more energy here before trying to understand Touch Designer.

4). What did I find the greatest challenge in doing this work? Why was this a challenge to me? To what extent do I feel I have met this challenge? What can I do to improve my performance when next meeting this particular sort of challenge? – My greatest challenge when doing my work has undoubtedly been my technological lack of resources. Everything was crashing or giving me error messages.  However even though I had all of these challenges I still managed to produce a 2.5 minute working version of my clock.  This was a massive step forward as it was at least proving that my concept worked.

5). What was the most boring or tedious part of doing this particular task for me? Can I see the point of doing these things? If not, how could the activity be changed to be more stimulating and interesting for me? – This is carried over from last time and has not changed.  The most tedious part of doing any tasks is optimising images before upload. This is such a necessary task but it really is tedious and boring. Sadly I can’t see any way round this at the moment – suggestions on a post card please 😊

Did I meet my challenges from last time?

Here’s what I said I would do – the green tick ✅ indicates what I actually achieved.

• Research, Research Research! – This is ongoing ✅
• Continue the Touch Designer Tutorials and time-lapses. – This is ongoing ✅
• Document my forthcoming London trip including gallery visits and Saatchi Gallery activities. – All completed ✅
• Sort out a reliable backup. – All completed and actually tested when one of my blogs disappeared in a server transfer ✅

Conclusion

I have pretty much done everything I set out to do from last time. However, other than that I have achieved everything I set out to do.

My coming task list for the next couple of weeks is simple:

1. Research, Research Research!
2. Continue the Touch Designer Tutorials and time-lapses.
3. Continue my creative coding journey with Processing.
4. Compile and present my Processing animations to date
5. Try to record a 12 hour working clock animation
6. Add the working 12 hour clock to a variety of animations and footage and upload to YouTube for use as a clock.
7. Work with both ChatGPT and Touch Designer to make more generative digital art works.
8. Find a variety of mundane objects that can be used to produce interesting and unexpected landscapes.
9. Explore refractography.
10. Finish my study statement.