Problem Solving – Page 5

Feb 11

Boring, Boring, Boring

Nothing is Ever New – I often tell my students about a great piece of advice that I received as a photography student over 30 years ago. The advice was simple, but it has had a profound effect on my work through the decades. It goes like this…… “When you have your finalised brief or theme – go away and brainstorm 5 ideas and write them down on a piece of paper. Once you have your list, screw it up, or better still tear it up and throw it in the bin. Why???…Because those 5 ideas will probably be the exact same 5 ideas that everyone else will come up with.” I now always pass on this little piece of advice to all my students. They usually give me a look of abject horror, having just spent the last two hours working on the first idea that came into their heads. Yesterday Noah, one of my fellow students, kindly alerted me to an artist who is working very much along the same lines as me. Here is an Instagram link to his work. I am not really surprised by someone else working in my area of trying to marry up […]

Jan 17

by Karyn in Abstract Art, Ai, Ai Chat, Disasters, Evaluations, Experimentation, Ideas, My Learning, My Work, Problem Solving, Risk Taking, Videos 0 comments tags: Abstract Art, ai, Ai Chat, Disasters, Evaluations, Ideas, My Learning, my work, Problem Solving, Risk Taking, Videos

Clocks and Carrier Bags

Time as a Fourth Dimension – Before I go any further, I really need to present this video with sound. The sound is incredibly important, because it adequately and eloquently sums up the disaster that is currently all of my technological devices! Every computer or device I own is creaking at the seams! The video I created below actually sums up how it feels! No words needed. Technology Gone Bad I subtitled this blog ‘Time as a Fourth Dimension’ – I’m not actually going to discuss time as a fourth dimension here, but I do think it sounds great as a subtitle. It’s relevance will become apparent further into this blog. In a previous blog I responded to the work of Vilde Rolfeson. I also had a number of conversations with ChatGPT in the making of the digital pieces presented there. These were inspired by her work. I always felt that her work around the plastic bag landscape offered a myriad of experimental possibilities. Therefore I decided that I would continue with more experimentation based on this. During my conversations with ‘Ai’ I asked for programs to gently destruct or disrupt an image. After a number of […]

Jan 10

Vilde Rolfsen – Inspired Work

Beautiful Destruction – For a few weeks now I have been wrestling with ideas for my research statement. Ideally I would like to integrate some form of current affairs or pressing agenda into my work but I wasn’t quite sure how to approach this. I then remembered a shoot I’d done a little while ago. I stumbled across an artist called Vilde Rolfsen. I found her plastic bag landscapes absolutely fascinating. Not only was her idea clever it was also visually very appealing. Her images are certainly creative. There’s just something special about taking such a mundane object like a plastic bag and transforming it into an amazing landscape. Below is a small gallery of her images. Vilde Rolfeson – Plastic Bag Landscape Responses to Vilde Rolfeson I felt that Vilde Rolfeson had produced something truly unique. However, inspired by her idea I wanted to use her imagery as a base to experiment further. I was also keen to incorporate elements of animation and time into my experimentation as this ties in heavily with my theme. Most of Vilde Rolefson’s plastic bag imagery is light and bright, therefore I decided to take a slightly darker approach. I wanted […]

Dec 29

Refik Anadol – Production and Destruction

Refik Anadol Inspired Responses At the beginning of this project I began to examine the possibilities created by Ai generated imagery. I likened Ai to something that had tentacle-like structures. I imagined that these tentacles were expanding and steadily weaving their way into all aspects of our lives. After discovering the work of Refik Anadol, It is clear to see that Ai generated imagery and data visualisation are becoming firmly rooted in the art world. The work of Refik Anadol is truly breathtaking. He is clearly a pioneer in the field of digital art. Below is a video containing examples of his work along with an interview with him talking about his art. Refik Anadol – His Work and Thoughts about Ai Generated Imagery Art Piece Responses to Refik Anadol In his interview Refik makes references to the futuristic classic film ‘Blade Runner’. Through his work he imagines what Ai might look like when it is dreaming. He affords human like qualities to the machine learning that he is observing. Following this line of thinking I wanted to imagine what Ai might look like as it grows and then dies. The following pieces are […]

Dec 29

by Karyn in Abstract Art, Disasters, Evaluations, Experimentation, My Learning, My Work, Problem Solving 0 comments tags: Abstract Art, Disasters, Evaluations, Experimentation, My Learning, my work, Problem Solving

Disasters and Projects

Turning Negatives into Positives – This week has not been a great week at all! Restful and relaxing is certainly not what I could would have called it. I needed to migrate my existing WordPress blog to a new server, so that going forward I can have unlimited file uploads. Over the last couple of months I have been continually filling up my disc space allowance, therefore things had to change. The technical support from my hosting company was initially quite good and on the surface it looked as if my website migration had gone smoothly. Unfortunately this was not the case! I found that I was unable to log in, I could no longer preview my drafts and my search box was no longer working, and if that wasn’t enough my categories were not displaying properly. To add further insult to injury the tech support team also ‘bailed’ out. Essentially on a scale of 1 to 10 things weren’t as bad as they could have been. For example I could have deleted the whole of my website, or messed up my WordPress theme to the point it was unworkable. However I would still place the disruption at […]

Dec 22

Too Cold!

Lissajous Curves and Cold Weather – I mentioned in an earlier blog that due to lack of disk space on my hosting package I would need to upgrade my hosting. This is always a tense time when moving files from one server to another. For this reason I needed to come up with a foolproof method of backing up my blog. In the past numerous backups have failed for me (files lost, media libraries lost, databases lost etc.), therefore I knew I couldn’t solely rely on this. However under my reflective planning it was on my todo list to think of an easy but effective way of getting around data loss. I came up with the idea of taking screenshots of my blog. This means that in the event of any data loss all I have to do is insert the screen shot and add any live links (genius!) and it works. Unfortunately when my blog was moved this particular post completely disappeared. However the process of taking a screen shot meant I can quickly post up images of the original post and add in the relevant link. Below is my original post added from screen shots. I’d […]

Nov 26

London

Time & Travel It’s Better to Travel Than to Arrive? – This was a quote I stumbled across earlier this year. Unfortunately I’m not sure who said it, but given I was travelling to London I decided to use it anyway. This was the first of two trips to London this year. As I am a keen photographer I decided to document anything interesting. I couldn’t help but notice that the light was particularly beautiful at Newton Abbot train station. However this was nothing compared to the beauty of the ceiling structures at Paddington train station. Below is a small collection of images including the view from my hotel window. A Few Random Shots with My Smartphone Unfortunately I had decided to leave my DSLR at home. However, should I ever decide to shoot Paddington station again these are the kind of shots I would take with my DSLR. My smartphone is great for this activity, but maybe not so good with its pixel count. The Most Underwhelming Time-Lapse Ever! At the start of this blog I muted – it is better to travel than to arrive? I’m not sure that is strictly true, but just in case, […]

Nov 12

by Karyn in Experimentation, Ideas, My Work, Patterns, Problem Solving, Research, Timelapse, Videos 0 comments tags: Experimentation, Ideas, my work, Patterns, Problem Solving, Research, threats, Timelapse, Videos

Chladni Patterns Revisited

Further Experimentation with the Chladni Kit – As I’m interested in hidden phenomena such as sound vibrations I wanted to shoot some footage showing how these could be visualised. I purchased a Chladni kit, but I had missed some fundamental assembly instructions in the manual. This was probably on of the main issues holding me back from making more sound patterns. The creator of the kit on seeing my time-lapse videos kindly pointed this out to me and I made the necessary changes. I believe that as a direct result of these changes I managed to make another pattern. While making the new pattern it was fascinating to watch the grains of sand as they vibrated up and down on the plate. I tried to capture this as best as I could, but unfortunately my light levels were too low. The video piece I created is below. Please note this is a very early experiment and I shall be re-shooting this with greatly increased light levels and a much higher frame rate. The increased light levels will allow me to increase my depth of field so more grains of sand appear sharp and in focus. The higher frame rate […]

Nov 08

Blender – Who Knew?

Using Blender to Simulate Chladni Patterns – In order to make a successful Chladni Pattern, it is important to generate a strong tone. Where fingers are placed on the plate is also crucial. I have discovered that to produce a tone and beautiful pattern is not a quick or easy process. It takes both practice and patience. Jokingly, I feel that at the end of this process, I may not have great Chladni patterns, but I’ll probably manage a grade 8 in the violin! Joking aside, this is a real and fundamental problem that I need to solve in order to move forward. In order to help me work with my bow and plate I looked for a number of YouTube tutorials of which there were a few. The people in the videos made the bowing and Chladni pattern generation look so easy! I spoke to the maker of my kit and he explained that actually it’s not that easy and practice and patience makes perfect. Below are a couple of videos where pattern generation is made to look really simple. Chladni Plate with Violin Bow Chladni Patterns – Aluminium Plate and Violin Bow Time is Not […]

Nov 03

by Karyn in Disasters, My Learning, Problem Solving, Timelapse, Videos 0 comments tags: Disasters, My Learning, Problem Solving, Timelapse, Videos

Complete Disaster!

Trying to Make Progress – Today felt like a completely wasted day in terms of what I was trying to achieve. I wanted to finish off yesterday’s post by adding an assembly video of my ‘Chladni Plate’. Unfortunately my rather dumb ‘smartphone’ had other ideas and wouldn’t give me access to my footage. In fact I still don’t have access to my footage because apparently my phone’s storage is full! Indeed as I’m writing this the problem still exists. I suspect a trip to the Apple Shop for some ‘tech’ support will shortly be the order of the day. However, I hate to waste time, so I took the opportunity to try out another ‘Touch Designer’ tutorial. Below is the result of today’s efforts. I’m hoping that my phone will update overnight so that I can at least pull off the last few Chladni Plate videos that I shot today. In the meantime, here’s a thirty second time-lapse of me working on a tutorial to create some animated, coloured wavy lines. The time-lapse is 30 minutes condensed into 30 seconds. I am becoming increasingly interested in sound, so just like my Chladni plate videos, I have left in the original […]