my work – Page 7 – Karyn Easton

Nov 18

by Karyn in Experimentation, Ideas, My Learning, My Work, Patterns, Timelapse, Videos 0 comments tags: Experimentation, Ideas, My Learning, my work, Patterns, Timelapse, Videos

A Tiny Breakthrough

Is it Slowly Sinking In? – I am trying to learn the software program Touch Designer. The reason is that I believe it will help me change my art in new ways and allow me to produce light reactive light installations. Unfortunately I have never been able to write code which I feel is a massive disadvantage. I was heartened by the book I read about Ai for my presentation. The author stated that the Chinese learned much of their early social media app programming skills by copying from Silicon Valley. This is exactly how I’m attempting to learn. I watch tutorials and I try to understand why I am building my network nodes in the way that I’m shown by the video tutorials. Over the last week I feel that I’m gaining a little more confidence. When things don’t work I’m finding my mistakes easier to correct and I feel much less lost while navigating around the TD (Touch Designer) interface. I’m still somewhat bemused as to why I build the nodes in the way that I’m instructed, but I’m starting to feel that the understanding of this will eventually happen. Last week I was pretty sure that this […]

Nov 17

by Karyn in Books, Drawings, Ideas, My Work, Patterns, Zentangles, Zoom Meetings 0 comments tags: Books, Drawings, Ideas, my work, Patterns, Zentangles, Zoom Meetings

Zoom Session 7

A Little Confession – Before I begin to document our zoom session from this week I have a little confession to make. I heard someone say that this was zoom session six. I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure that this week’s session was zoom session seven. The reason I’m so sure is because each week I take the time to draw myself a little zentangle. I counted up my zentangles and I have seven. Therefore I think this week is week seven, but of course I may be wrong. As we were discussing ‘active listening’ I thought that now was probably a really good time to ‘fess’ up to my little ongoing drawing activity. I thoroughly enjoy our zoom sessions, I feel it’s a time for me to learn as opposed to teaching, which as a lecturer is a nice concept. When I’m listening I enjoy drawing. Since I seem to be mainly locked in a digital world at the moment, it brings just a small dose of the physical into my weekly meeting. I also find it very relaxing and for some strange reason it seems to help me concentrate more. I set myself a few […]

Nov 14

by Karyn in Ai, Experimentation, My Learning, My Work, Patterns, Risk Taking, Timelapse, Videos 0 comments tags: ai, Experimentation, my work, Patterns, Risk Taking, Timelapse, Videos

Liquid Glass

A Touch Designer Tutorial – I know that time is against me if I want to become proficient at ‘Touch Designer’. Therefore, whenever I have an opportunity to experiment with a new tutorial I take it. I also like to give a time-lapsed visual record of the time that I spend on projects like this. I am particularly interested in time and I’m hoping that these time-lapse videos will make an interesting addition to my project work. A 35 Second Time-lapse of a 1.5 Hour Tutorial The Result of the Tutorial Now that the network design has been finalised, I am able to tweak numerous parameters in order to arrive at a result that I’m happy with. Below is the final result once I made all of my adjustments. Variation of a Theme Once I have created a base video, I always like to experiment further. Below is a variation on the video above. However, I do prefer the original above. The liquid glass effect is much more vibrant and there are less distracting elements. I still think that the experiment below was worth a try even though I don’t think it […]

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 11

by Karyn in Ideas, My Work, Opportunities, Patterns, Risk Taking 0 comments tags: Ideas, my work, opportunities, Patterns, Risk Taking

Network Patterns

Surprising Results – I was quite pleased with the results of my Blender computer generated Chladni Patterns. However, just as the title to this blog suggests the end results may not necessarily have been the most interesting part. In order to generate the patterns in Blender I needed to create a network. I found this tentacle-like network (almost like neurones) quite fascinating. I cover the network diagram in my post ‘Blender – Who Knew?’ Following on from this I decided to ‘stylise’ the network and from there I created some patterns. A Stylised Network Patterns Created From The Stylised Network A Collage of These Ideas Below is a collage of these images together with the original stylised image at the top. This is purely an experiment and I will save these designs for later as they may prove useful in future projects.

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 06

by Karyn in Ai, Experimentation, My Work, Research, Videos 0 comments tags: ai, Experimentation, my work, Research, Videos

Remixed Ai Chladni Patterns

Experimentation – What does Ai Make of My Designs? I tried experimenting further with my Chladni kit, but to no avail. Ideally, I would like to video the patterns forming but even getting them to appear is just too difficult at the moment. After speaking with the kit’s maker I realised that actually creating the patterns is a skill that needs to be learned. Indeed it is just like learning the violin and an art form in itself. I hope that with both patience and practice I can improve as I really like working with my kit. When it does work the results are impressive! I felt that the images created yesterday worked quite well, even though I would have liked to see more patterns. Therefore, as I continue to perfect my bowing technique I wondered what Ai would make of my designs so far? In my previous post I used Ai to generate images from the text prompt: ‘Chladni Patterns’. Today I am moving it a stage further and I am giving the Ai a starting image and asking it to generate variations. I actually found the results to be interesting. Below you can see my starting images and […]

Nov 02

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

Chladni Plate

The Chladni Plate – Sound has always fascinated me. I remember being introduced to an oscillator at school. I was completely mesmerised by the waves generated by sounds. Later in life I discovered Chladni Plates. The Chladni Plate was named after its German inventor Ernst Chladni, who was an early pioneer of experimental acoustics. He discovered that by using a violin bow to vibrate metal plates covered in sand, a number of distinct patterns emerged. The patterns would change with the pitch and the tone of the sound vibrations. The idea of sound creating hidden patterns is something that I want to explore. I am intrigued by anything hidden or unseen. The Chladni plate patterns, in my opinion, falls nicely into this bracket. The patterns of sound are hidden until they are revealed by the vibrating sand covered plates. In order to experiment with this phenomena, I decided to source an authentic Chladni plate kit with a bow. Some Chladni plate kits come with electronic tone generators. However I wanted to remain as authentic as possible and I was really excited to find someone who made these kits as close to the original as possible. Below is my Chladni Plate unboxing […]

Oct 29

by Karyn in Artists, Culture, Galleries, My Work, Timelapse, Videos 0 comments tags: Artists, Culture, Galleries, my work, Timelapse, Videos

Newcastle 2022

Northern Culture and the Laing Art Gallery – Newcastle is one of my favourite cities. I was born in County Durham only around 30 miles from the city. It was a real treat to go to Newcastle with friends. The nightlife as a teenager was fantastic! It is also true what they say about Northern women. They actually do come out and queue for a nightclub in the skimpiest of club wear in sub zero temperatures. They really aren’t bothered by these freezing temperatures either. As a Northern woman myself, I actually know about this phenomenon, having once been part of this weekend ritual myself. Apparently psychologists have tried to analyse this behaviour. However, the simple fact is that if you wear a coat you need to carry it with you throughout the night. It is either that or pay a cloakroom fee. This involves either parting with cash and/or facing long cloakroom queues. Hence lots of women preferring to stand queuing outside in the cold with very little attire. It really is that simple. Yesterday was my birthday and as a treat I decided to stay for a couple of nights at the Gosforth Hotel a couple of miles […]

Oct 28

by Karyn in Artists, Disasters, My Work 0 comments tags: Artists, Disasters, my work

It’s My Birthday

A Quick Photoshoot – It’s my birthday today, so I’ve decided to take a day off. Yesterday I discovered that my camera is pretty poorly! The autofocus on my prime 105mm Sigma macro lens is not great. Every time I part depress the focus button it makes a strange noise. I’m struggling to work out whether it is the lens or the camera itself. This is not great! I was helping my daughter set up a shoot so she could do a response to a Claire Luxton (photographic artist) and I took some test shots for myself. The focus is definitely not as sharp as I would like it, although I was quite pleased with some of the results. It looks as if I’m going to have to get my camera overhauled which in the great radiation of photography is not going to be cheap! Watch this space. In the meantime here is the result from my shoot. Overall I was quite pleased with the composition of the image and the editing, but sadly the focus is not great.