threats – Karyn Easton

Mar 03

by Karyn in Ai, Opportunities, Threats, Unit 3 Blogs 0 comments tags: ai, opportunities, threats, Unit 3 Blogs

In Other News

Ameca Voice Cloning – There doesn’t seem to be a day going by that doesn’t involve a new announcement about advances in AI. I wholeheartedly believe that all artists should make themselves fully aware of both the opportunities and threats presented by this. Ameca is a highly advanced robot that I mentioned in my research paper. Even since writing that paper things have substantially moved on. Below is a short clip of Ameca speaking using the voices of famous people. In my opinion to say that we are rapidly approaching a ‘post truth society’ is an understatement. I think it’s already here.

Feb 27

First Looks

First Footage from the ‘Balance of Power’ Mobile It feels like it has been a long journey to get to this point, but at last the mobile is up and running. It stands around 3m tall and is by far one of the largest structures that I have ever made all by myself. Although, I haven’t kept an hourly diary of how long the mobile has taken to complete, I know that it has taken many weeks. At the moment the balance of the mobile is quite precarious and this is quite a threat to the project so I need to ensure that it is really secure going forward. I already had one mishap this morning while trying to hang it up. All of the pieces ended up on the floor, so this is far from ideal if it is to be transported then hung. My intention is to ensure that all of the mobile elements are secured so that if the balance does tip then everything will be relatively contained. In many ways hanging the mobile is just the very start of the journey as there is so much more hidden in the whole structure. However, I will begin […]

Research Paper Thoughts and Background

Research Paper 3 – Thoughts, Background and Final Version That’s it – no more! Yesterday and today became the ‘final straw’ with my research paper! Why? Because yesterday my ‘dying’ on its ‘last legs’ MacBook Pro decided that it was going to literally lose all of my research papers and drafts. I know it’s somewhat unbelievable but this actually happened! Months of hard work seemed to have disappeared in front of my eyes. The files were no longer there! I tried opening programs that I had used to construct the last version of my paper, but it was always the same message ‘File cannot be found’. I even convinced my self that there was some evil hacker trying to sabotage my work, that’s how upset I was. At one point I even thought I must be having a nightmare and that I would wake up soon. As I had been editing the document in Adobe’s PDF editing program I thought to myself, ‘Ha’ there will be a copy stored in Adobe’s creative cloud. So, feeling somewhat smug, I looked at my recent documents there, only to discover that on opening my research paper it gave an error message saying ‘bad […]

Sep 20

by Karyn in Ai, My Work, Opportunities, Patterns, Threats, Unit 2 Blogs 0 comments tags: ai, my work, opportunities, threats, Unit 2 Blogs

The Robots Are Here

Doom and Gloom or Hybrid Art Opportunity? – Love it or hate it – the robots are here! Below is a selection of robots generated as a visual experiment. No two robots are the same. Each one has its own unique character. They are all bringing balloons as a gift. There are seventy of them in total, although more were generated. They are all a by product of my research paper. They were fun to generate and I’ll just leave them here.

Sep 20

Deeper Meaning

How to Find Meaning? – Having recently finished 21 days of an augmented reality investigation followed by another 21 days of research paper investigation and compilation, I’m feeling somewhat down. I think that primarily it is due to my investigations into AI generated art. The further I dig into this, the more depressed I become. I’m sure this is just a transient phase. Why am I so sad? It’s because over the years I learnt so much about photography. I collected a wealth of knowledge on this subject especially because each year I tried to present my students with increasingly technically challenging workshops. I was proud that I was able to replicate pretty much any style of photography from slow shutter work to speed shooting, star trails to zoom burst, macro photography to physiograms. I felt I had reached the pinnacle when I managed to work out the technique that Michael Jackson (the photographer not the pop singer), uses to make his ethereal Luminograms. Even today colleagues are badgering me to give up that secret which I flatly refuse. It’s so beautifully simple yet complex at the same time and I nailed it! However, with the advent of AI art […]

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 […]

Oct 24

by Karyn in Ai, Experimentation, My Work, Risk Taking, Threats, Videos 0 comments tags: ai, Experimentation, my work, Risk Taking, threats, Videos

Ai on the March

Saving Assets for Later – In the process of experimenting with Ai text to image, I generated a number of stills documented in my post Human Coding and Ai Generated Imagery for Animation. Currently I am waiting for some ‘Chladni’ equipment arriving from Ireland. Therefore, instead of wasting time, I decided to experiment with some of the small animations I made in that post. Video 1. A combination of Clips The video below was a composite of all of the short clips I generated from my software tutorial. I like the fluid motion of the clips and the way they spread. I feel this could be a visual metaphor for the relentless spread of Ai into our lives. Video 2. Ai from an Early Age The video below is an experiment moving on from video 1. I added an iPad and a cake and candle. This represents the march of Ai from an increasingly early age. Video 3. Ai on the March This was my preferred video from the series of experiments. It is a simple video short exploring the tentacle like spread of images across a screen. The calming music to each video is there to […]

Oct 23

by Karyn in Experimentation, My Learning, My Work, Research, Videos 0 comments tags: My Learning, my work, Research, threats, Videos

Generative Art Tutorial

Filling in Time – I was looking forward to putting together a video of of the work I was doing yesterday. Unfortunately the transfer of files from PC to MAC took longer than anticipated. Therefore, I decided to use this time productively to follow another Touch Designer software tutorial. This one only took me around 3 hours to complete. However, the results were quite beautiful. The imagery that is being produced has little or no bearing on my work. The imagery is merely a byproduct of my software learning process. My intention is to eventually use this software to produce my own generative art using my own images. However for now I continue to run up the steep learning curve. the video below is the result of my learning journey from the latest tutorial that I followed. As I have tweaked some of the parameters the imagery generated is all mine but I still need to work on my understanding of networks. I’ve included a short video of my network for illustrative purposes. Particles in Motion – Generative Art Using Touch Designer Software Here is the result from the tutorial. I find the fluid motion of the particles quite […]

Oct 21

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

Human Coding and Ai Generated Imagery for Animation

A Steep Learning Curve – Since learning all about text to image Ai technology, I decided to explore it further. Ai seems to be everywhere – if it were a living creature, I would liken it to one with tentacles – perhaps an octopus or a squid? It might also be likened to a tree with branches sprawling everywhere and with increasing speed crawls further into our lives. I suspect it will become ever more pervasive and how it is used, either for good or ill, will be down to us all. Running with the idea that Ai has tentacles and or branches, I decided to try a text prompt to see what Ai made of the request. I used ‘Tentacles, Branches, Network and Fractals’ as my main prompt. All of the images below were created from this text. I was pleased with the images above because I was looking for a good example image for a new visual programming tutorial I wanted to try. The tutorial was about generating a growing image. The tentacle-like images above seemed perfect for this, especially in relation to my thoughts about the tentacle nature of Ai. Below is the image that I chose […]

Oct 18

by Karyn in Ai, My Work, Videos 0 comments tags: ai, my work, opportunities, threats, Videos

Risk Taking

Where Ai Isn’t? – At the moment it feels as if the tentacles of Ai text to image are reaching further and further into our artistic lives. As artists this poses both opportunities and threats. Opportunities come from the ease of image to text generation. Threats arise from the ‘cheapening’ of images, as anyone can produce beautiful imagery at the touch of a button. The whole Ai text to image debate has certainly changed my approach to working. I am now very mindful that anything I produce can be easily replicated with little or no creative input. In order to combat this I began to think about scenarios where Ai text to image in the art world is not yet fully residing. Some of these areas included: Where human interaction is required to initiate a response. Where photography is used as a historical tool for accurately representing the past The documentation of time as in time lapse photography In art and craft based physical structures In the unseen or the hidden (if Ai can’t see it, how can it replicate it?). The first area on the list was where human interaction was required to initiate a response. I […]