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KARYN EASTON
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Mar 19
by Karyn in Collaborations, Experimentation, Food for Thought, Lectures, Materials, My Learning, Unit 3 Blogs, Workshops 0 comments tags: Collaborations, Experimentation, Food for Thought, Lectures, Materials, My Learning, Unit 3 Blogs, Workshops

Mattering Life – Workshops Day #2

Samples Collection & Experimentation – As we arrived back at CSM most of us were feeling pretty tired.  It had been an intense but very enjoyable morning in the science labs at UCL (University College London).  However, we were all pretty excited to start collecting our samples. We felt it would be a great idea to collect some canal water, some moss, and some leaves.  I was really keen to examine the dregs of my Chai Latte so I popped some in a little sample bottle.  I wasn’t so keen to grab the canal water but luckily Charlotte a fellow member of the group was on hand to do this.   Charlotte Collecting Samples   Below is a mix of clips from Days #1 and #2 – they range from crystal garden crystals, to sample collecting, to fruit fly equipment and oxygen free cabinets.       Sample Analysis and Experimentation After Lunch we had a quick de-brief then we headed off into the grow lab for some sample analysis and experimentation.  Shem and Barbera were our technicians.     Shem produced the first four of the following time-lapse sequences. The rest were produced by our group and shot by […]
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Mar 19
by Karyn in Collaborations, Food for Thought, Lectures, Materials, My Learning, Unit 3 Blogs, Workshops 0 comments tags: Collaborations, Food for Thought, Lectures, Materials, My Learning, Unit 3 Blogs, Workshops

Mattering Life Day #2

UCL Lab talks and Tour – Below are the speakers and the order in which we met them all.  I was absolutely ‘blown away’ by their enthusiasm and knowledge of their subject areas.  It was clear that every single one of them was really excited by their respective research. They are all on a mission to understand the origins of life.  I thoroughly enjoyed my once in a lifetime visit to what I call the ‘origins of life lab’ at UCL.   Talk Images Talk Images Enrique was working with fruit flies to look for chemical signals. Below are some of the images from his talk.   Talk Images Feixue was doing work using a special chamber that allowed for the omission of oxygen. Each of us tried putting our hands into the chamber.  This was so that the early conditions of earth could be replicated.  We all commented on how difficult it must be to work under those circumstances. This is because your hands are encased in on only white gloves but also a layer of relatively thick rubber.   Oxygen Free Chamber Below is a video short showing how the the oxygen free chamber is accessed.   Talk […]
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Mar 17
by Karyn in Experimentation, Food for Thought, Risk Taking, Unit 3 Blogs 0 comments tags: Experimentation, Food for Thought, Risk Taking, Unit 3 Blogs

Off to London Again

Best Laid Plans… Today I’m heading back down to London for the ‘Mattering Life’ Programme.  So thinking I had everything planned, guess what?? Yes, the coach broke down!! I’m nervous enough about travelling but this really threw me.  Judging by the reaction of the other passengers, perhaps I wasn’t the only one with travel anxiety.  There were some pretty cross people aboard the coach.  I really didn’t envy the driver having to make peace with everyone. When I got on the coach I was happy because my case was nicely stacked.  I am bringing my camera kit with some of my best lenses for the workshops so I was concerned that heavy cases on top of mine could be problematic.  On the first coach I was pleased as this didn’t seem like it was going to be an issue.  I was also really pleased to be giving my new camera strap an outing.  My daughter bought me a new strap with my Instagram handle ‘Secret Shutter’ written on it. However, now sitting on the replacement coach I’m just hoping that my case hasn’t been squashed!  It is a hard case so here’s hoping everything will be okay.   Killing Time […]
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Mar 10
by Karyn in Food for Thought, Lectures, Low Residency, Materials, Unit 3 Blogs, Workshops 0 comments tags: Food for Thought, Lectures, Low Residency, Materials, Unit 3 Blogs, Workshops

Low Residency Day #3

Materials Workshop with Julia Flood – Today we had a gallery visit to the New Contemporaries Gallery.  Unfortunately I needed to travel to Victoria coach station (long story), so sadly I couldn’t make it.   Outside Victoria Coach Station   However, I was able to attend the workshop by Julia Flood.  This was all about the range of materials and materials info accessible at the college. To start the session Julia gave us each a pencil and explained how even something as mundane as a pencil has a story.  For example what about the lead in the pencil, the wood that it’s made from, what it is coated in etc. Although some of the background to the pencil could be quite easily researched other parts such as the metal binding of the eraser were not. I found her words particularly thought provoking in relation to my own project work.  I have been working a lot with recycled card and recycled card tubes. Hopefully, these items will have a relatively easy background to discover. However, the key-rings that I have used quite extensively throughout my work, possibly less so. In order to help with the process Julia gave us some sheets […]
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Feb 21
by Karyn in Food for Thought, My Learning, Uncategorized, Unit 3 Blogs 0 comments tags: Food for Thought, My Learning, Unit 3 Blogs

Art and Propaganda

The Use of Visual language as a Propaganda Tool – I stumbled across this video today and I found it absolutely fascinating!  The narrator explains the difference between advertising and propaganda as follows:   ”Advertising is meant to influence what you buy – propaganda is meant to influence what you think.  A lot of effective propaganda is subtle.”   I feel that my own work to some degree is designed to influence how people think.  Although I would never describe myself as a propagandist.  However, the following video gave me an interesting insight into how art has been effectively used as a tool for propaganda over the years. It is important to me that my mobile carries a message, and is so much more than a bunch of cardboard in flux.    
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Jan 31
by Karyn in Food for Thought, Tutorials, Unit 3 Blogs 0 comments tags: Food for Thought, Tutorials, Unit 3 Blogs

Tutorial #5

My Fifth Tutorial – Today I had my tutorial with Betty.  I felt it was a really good session because Betty asked me a number of searching questions.  I thought that I had everything clear in my head about my project, but actually Betty picked up on a number of issues which has given me a lot of food for thought.   Things we talked about included: The consideration of those people working in AI who are tagging images and doing all of the ‘heavy lifting’. Deciding how much of a platform I would like to give to people (key figures in AI development), who already have a large platform.  Might it be better to look at lesser known people working in the AI industry? Why choose to produce a mobile and not a static art piece? Where to show my work – would the CSM exhibition count as a public viewing? How can I ensure that all elements of the piece are accessible to everyone?   I thoroughly enjoyed my chat with Betty because it was really good to have someone really press me about my work.   There are definitely things I’m going to change as a direct […]
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Jan 03
by Karyn in Experimentation, Food for Thought, Ideas, Timelapse, Unit 3 Blogs 0 comments tags: Experimentation, Food for Thought, Ideas, Timelapse, Unit 3 Blogs

Mobile Designs

Getting the Timings Right – Having reversed the concept of how humans perceive AI art, to how computers perceive images, I decided to consider potential designs. At this stage I am still thinking in terms of a large mobile.  However, I would like to base the mobile’s design on binary code.  The binary code will conceal a hidden message relevant to my overall project. Using binary code might at first appear to be a superficial idea, but actually the concept goes much much deeper.   Early Experimentation In my early experimentation I used a circle to represent the zeros and I cut out holes in the ones.  I am not convinced that this works particularly well and it is extremely time consuming! Below is an image of some of the prototypes I made.     Further Experimentation I felt the above prototypes were quite bland, probably wouldn’t move very well and didn’t leave a much surface area for designs. I decided that an oval shape was much better than a circle for representing the zeros.  I used layers of recycled cardboard and recycled printer paper along with some of my own black and white designs. I think that the second […]
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Jan 02
by Karyn in Experimentation, Final Major Project, Food for Thought, Unit 3 Blogs 0 comments tags: Experimentation, Final Major Project, Food for Thought, Unit 3 Blogs

Still Thinking

How Do Computers See Art? – Throughout my research journey, I focussed a lot on how humans perceive AI generated art. On the whole there was quite an amount of negative bias towards it. Further research revealed that some of this negativity could be mitigated by carefully crafting a narrative to accompany the AI art. However, this led me to question how do computers actually see and understand the art that they are fed? I did some further research and I stumbled upon something called ‘pixel data’.  This is the raw data the computer uses to display both the colour and brightness of any given pixel on a screen.  I wanted to learn more about pixel data. While doing some research I stumbled across a really interesting website called ‘Think Maths’.  On this website was an interesting piece of software to enable the extraction of pixel data called the ‘Spreadsheet Pixel Converter. After watching one of  Matt Parker’s videos on the website, I became  completely ‘sold’ on the idea of pixel data and how a computer might at some level actually view or ‘see’ the imagery that is input into a machine learning system.  In his video, Matt demonstrated how […]
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Dec 24
by Karyn in Experimentation, Food for Thought, Ideas, My Work, Unit 3 Blogs, Videos 0 comments tags: Experimentation, Food for Thought, Ideas, my work, Unit 3 Blogs, Videos

Stacking Cardboard

Ducks in a Row – It’s Christmas Eve and surprisingly this year I am ahead of schedule with wrapping presents etc.  Therefore, I decided to start getting my ducks in a row so that I have everything ready to begin Unit 3. One of my goals is to create a huge mobile. Initially I would like to make it from cardboard boxes recycled from items bought for our house.  So, today I finally began flattening it all out and storing it upright to keep it in good shape.  I’m hoping that this is the start of something interesting.     New Videos Following my feedback I also decided to catch up on my Zentangle drawings.  I wanted to do this because I think hand drawing is something I’d like to incorporate into my work. I also decided that any AI that I would use would be for animation purposes  only. Therefore, I took three of my most recent black and white hand drawn then digitised creations and animated them using AI. The results seem to have a very organic feel. I was fairly happy with the results.  I introduced a digitised Polaroid frame around the videos to both add interest […]
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Dec 18
by Karyn in Conclusion, Experimentation, Food for Thought, Reflection, Unit 2 Blogs, Unit 3 Blogs 0 comments tags: Conclusion, Experimentation, Food for Thought, Reflection, Unit 2 Blogs, Unit 3 Blogs

Feedback

Thoughts Firing Actions – I’ll not lie, I was feeling so happy with my grade from Unit 2.  Ahead of receiving my grade, I was so worried that I had completely messed up with regards to my thinking.  I knew that there was a depth to my work still lacking, but I just couldn’t quite put my finger on it.  Then I received my feedback!  This put beautifully into words exactly what I was feeling.  There had to be something deeper to what I was trying to achieve.  It’s really not enough to simply use AI and it’s crucial that investigations go much further. I decided that I would try to dig a little deeper and ‘go under the bonnet’ of AI.  What exactly is AI and machine learning? How easy is it to master?  Can a non programmer access it? Could there be a creative use for it beyond simply using it and tapping into the vast wealth of humanity that created it without being asked? I decided that in order to move forward I needed to train one of my own models.  I wasn’t sure where to start so I asked my old friend ChatGPT.  The bot suggested […]
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