Final Major Project – Karyn Easton

May 12

by Karyn in Final Major Project, Final Outcomes, Unit 3 Blogs 0 comments tags: Final Major Project, Final Outcomes, Videos

Blog Curation

Pulling Together Two Years of Work – I’m getting very close now to having completed 300 blogs. When I add in my research paper and study statement and unit pages, then I will have surpassed this figure for writing in general. I may still hit my target of 300 blogs. However, I only want to do this if the work I’m blogging about is relevant to my MA, like the material that’s gone before. Over the last two years, I have read so many books, visited so many galleries, listened to so many artists talks and documented so many of my experiments and creations, that it has resulted in the following: 162 image galleries containing information about books I’ve read, artist talks, gallery visits, and project images etc. 5224 images that I shot over the course of the two years. 87 Before and After sliders (here is an example of these). I have shot approximately 2,500 video clips and animations, that have gone into the making of 230 films dispersed throughout my blogposts. I created around 43 hand drawn and digitised Zentangle drawings, that now form textural patterns on my final piece (The Balance of Power Mobile). I’ve self […]

May 09

by Karyn in Books, Conclusion, Experimentation, Final Major Project, Final Outcomes, My Work, Photography, Unit 3 Blogs 0 comments tags: Books, Conclusion, Experimentation, Final Major Project, Final Outcomes, my work, Photography, Unit 3 Blogs

Book Photography

Product Photography for the Balance of Power Book – My book is now fully augmented and the whole of its contents can be viewed in the augmented reality video that I made to accompany the ‘Balance of Power Mobile. A full digital copy of the book can be found here. The next step in my process was to create an image that would represent my book – something that I could use for social media posts and head up any literature that I might like to send out. It might even form the cover of a brochure about the project as a whole. Contact Sheets from Experimental Shoots Refining the Concepts There are many references to nature in my ‘Balance of Power’ Final 5 Minute Video. Therefore, in the first instance I decided to shoot my books outdoors. One of my chosen concepts to explore was having my books with foliage or vines wrapped around it. Below are some of the concepts that I decided to refine further. The original ‘Balance of Power’ Book was a large scale book (30 x 30cm), but sadly when I came to scale the book down, the title wasn’t as prominent. […]

Augmenting the Book

Augmenting the Balance of Power Book – As part of my body of work I felt that it was really useful to produce an explanatory book all about the ‘Balance of Power – Unity in Bits’ mobile. When I began the journey into the augmentation of the book I hadn’t really planned to shoot many clips, just enough to fill any gaps in my final film (Film Mark 2) and to give a flavour of the fully augmented book. However, as I began creating each clip I decided to go ahead and augment the full book. This needed to be done anyway as it will form part of my body of work. Once each of the pages had been augmented with video I decided to run all of the clips together to see how it looked. What I hadn’t necessarily expected was that the total length of the resulting film was just over 7 minutes. I wondered therefore, would it be possible to trim and tweak these clips to make the resulting film exactly 5 minutes? My thinking was that this would afford me yet another possibility in terms of films to choose from. I was also keen to experiment […]

Apr 30

by Karyn in Experimentation, Film Production, Final Major Project, Final Outcomes, My Learning, Unit 3 Blogs, Videos 0 comments tags: Experimentation, Film Production, Final Major Project, Final Outcomes, My Learning, Unit 3 Blogs, Videos

Audio Revamp

Missing Film Clips and More Audio – Today after work, I thought that I would afford myself a little break. Unfortunately, I just couldn’t take my mind off my film, so here I am at nearly midnight working on it again. I’ve got to be up for work in a few hours, but at least I wan’t feeling quite so ill today. The more I learn about sound and audio, the more I realise how little I actually know and how much there is to learn! I really can fully appreciate why film companies employ sound engineers. It is a whole art form in itself! Looking back I really wish that I’d paid more attention at college to film and sound. Thirty years ago I was much more interested in just pure photography and photographic techniques, but fast forward to the present and now I am somewhat regretful. There’s just so much that I still want to learn and so much that I want to achieve, I think this latest bout of feeling poorly has really made me reflect. However, enough of the self pity this will not help me finish my film. Tonight as I’m just about to go […]

Apr 23

by Karyn in Artists, Augmented Reality, Film Production, Final Major Project, My Work, Unit 3 Blogs 0 comments tags: Artists, Augmented Reality, Film Production, Final Major Project, my work, Unit 3 Blogs

Balance of Power Book

Concept, Rationale and Reasoning As part of my overall body of work, I decided to fully augment a large square art book. This book contains images of the ‘Balance of Power’ mobile along with examples of some of the surface patterns used in its creation. However, most importantly it helps to explain both the rationale and concept behind the piece itself. At the start of the project I wanted to gather many views from across the arts, about AI generated art. Over the last few years it has become increasingly evident that people involved in the arts industry have both wittingly and unwittingly been exploited by the big tech giants. This is not only true for the artists who have had their work taken often without knowledge and consent, but also for the image/data ‘taggers’ at the ‘bottom of the food chain’ who facilitated all of this. I figured that in the first instance enlisting the help of more well known artists might help encourage voices of others, thus creating a snowball effect. Therefore, in the initial stages I approached some of my favourite more famous artists and invited them to comment on their feelings regarding AI generated art. I […]

Apr 21

Film Mark 2

Exploring Alternatives – In my Film Production blog, I talked about how unhappy I was with my first film. Things haven’t got any easier. I still feel very poorly, but the perfectionist in me is not prepared to let this go. I absolutely ‘hate’ the first version of my film now! Unfortunately, I just seem to have such a severe creative block at the moment. One of the greatest challenges I faced was trying to come up with yet another script! At one point I thought ‘oh stuff it’ I’ll just stick with what I’ve done. However I just couldn’t do that. I went to bed feeling pretty ill and pretty down. They say that sometimes when you are facing a problem, your brain will help you to work things out while you are asleep. Last week in my state of feeling so down ‘my brain, my subconscious the universe, god’ or call it what you like came to the rescue overnight while asleep! This morning I remembered something that I’d long been aware of yet forgotten. This was the old concept of ‘The Eighth Day’. In some theological interpretations, the “Eighth Day” symbolises the day of resurrection or the […]

Apr 15

by Karyn in Augmented Reality, Final Major Project, Final Outcomes, Photography, Unit 3 Blogs 0 comments tags: Augmented Reality, Final Major Project, Final Outcomes, Photography, Unit 3 Blogs

Book Creation

The Balance of Power Book – I decided to produce another augmented reality book to accompany my ‘Balance of Power – Unity in Bits’ mobile. The mobile has multiple layers of meaning. However, unless the viewer is aware of this, then so many of the messages being conveyed by the structure may sadly be lost. Therefore, I thought it was important to produce an accompanying art book. This will help to unpack some of the mystery as to why the mobile came into being. I think that because I’m really not feeling well at the moment (awful food poisoning) I’m finding it so much harder to be creative. I’m frightened that I’m going to fall at the last hurdle. I’ve never ever felt so devoid of creativity in my life. I’m finding that even basic decisions like choosing images to go into my book really challenging at the moment. I really was a struggle when I had to decide on cover designs. This was not easy. Screenshots of the Book Below are a few screenshots of the book. I decided to design a book so that anyone viewing the mobile could understand some of the rationale behind it. I would […]

Apr 14

by Karyn in 3d, Evaluations, Final Major Project, Final Outcomes, Photography, Unit 3 Blogs 0 comments tags: 3d, Evaluations, Final Major Project, Final Outcomes, Photography, Unit 3 Blogs

Balance of Power Mobile

Favourite Images – Experimental Images

Mar 04

by Karyn in 3d, Experimentation, Final Major Project, Photography, Unit 3 Blogs, Videos 0 comments tags: 3d, Experimentation, Final Major Project, Photography, Unit 3 Blogs, Videos

Visual Exploration #2

Video Exploration of the Mobile – In my first visual exploration of the ‘Balance of Power’ mobile I shot a number of stills using a wide aperture. This was to allow for only a narrow band of focus on each of the images. The goal was to add an air of mystery to the mobile and hopefully leave the viewer wanting to know more? In part #2 of this ongoing visual exploration I shot some videos using my DSLR camera. My aim again was to add an air of mystery to the finished video clips. Below are the experimental results from this endeavour. The Balance of Power – Unity in Bits Mobile This is a complex piece that has many hidden layers to it. Below are some of the key points: The mobile comprises 11 lines of individually hand drawn elements that represent the ones and zeros of binary code. The binary code represented in the mobile spells the words ‘Unity in Bits’. It is a visual metaphor representing how our society is ultimately fractured by computers and their code. For example the harms of social media and the taking of artist work without permission. At least 10 […]

Mar 04

by Karyn in 3d, Experimentation, Final Major Project, Photography, Unit 3 Blogs, Videos 0 comments tags: 3d, Experimentation, Final Major Project, Photography, Unit 3 Blogs, Videos

Visual Exploration #1

Photographic Exploration of the Mobile – Now that my ‘Balance of Power’ mobile is fully installed I can start to experiment photographically. Over the weekend I took a number of stills and I also shot some videos. Editing the videos will take a while longer. In the meantime I thought I’d share some of the stills. I decided to shoot my stills using very specific camera settings. The mobile hides many things, therefore it was important to me to try and capture an air of mystery about it. For this reason I deliberately chose to use a very shallow ‘depth of field’. Indeed I was actually working with an f-stop of 1.8 (A very large aperture). What this means essentially, is that only a very narrow band of my image will actually be in focus. These narrow bands of focus can be seen in the images below. I certainly had enough light streaming in through the windows to enable me to shoot at f-16 (the minimum aperture for my 50mm lens), however, I genuinely feel that the selective blurring adds something a little more mysterious to the images below. I feel that the images are much more atmospheric. I also […]

Blog Curation

Book Photography

Augmenting the Book

Audio Revamp

Balance of Power Book

Film Mark 2

Book Creation

Balance of Power Mobile

Visual Exploration #2

Visual Exploration #1

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