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 to produce something that looked like a dark cave with a warm welcoming light ahead. I also wanted to give the impression of a long lost primeval cave, lit by a warning fire. In order to trial contrasting images I have also included some lighter versions in my gallery. Below are some of my initial responses to the work of Vilde Rolfeson. Plastic and plastic bag pollution are a serious issue for our planet. Using art to highlight this issue can only be a positive.
Ai Generated Responses
In the past I have had some interesting results generated by Ai when I’ve run my images through Dalle-2. Unfortunately this time I was a little disappointed by the results. Below are some of the images that were generated by Ai in response to my gallery of images above.
Further Experimentation
As I wasn’t completely happy with the Ai generated responses to my work, I decided to experiment further. Ultimately I was looking for plastic bag inspired digital images to slowly destruct. The distorted image of the plastic bag was a visual metaphor for plastic generally. I had the idea of deconstructing or dissolving the image over time to represent the slow breakdown of plastic in the environment. Below are some examples of further experimentation with the Ai generated responses to my work. The images below have been regenerated from my original images by Dalle-2. I then changed these images further using digital techniques. The best images from the shoot will be digitally dissolved via a Processing generative art program which I worked on with the ChatGPT bot. The conversations that I had with the ChatGPT will be posted here.
I knew exactly what I wanted to achieve from a Processing program to make a slow degrading, dissolving and/or disintegration of my plastic bag inspired imagery. I am currently trying to teach myself Processing but my programming knowledge is currently very limited. Therefore I decided to enlist the help of the ‘Chat Bot’ ChatGPT. I believe that the outcome of our conversation was very successful. It took a little bit of time until ChatGPT managed to get its programming syntax correct but the exchanges were very cordial and polite. It was almost as if I was talking to a real person. As mentioned above I have documented our conversations here.
Ai Digitally Manipulated Responses to Ai Regenerated Versions of My Plastic Bag Images
Below are some of my Ai generated images that have been digitally manipulated as well as regenerated. I chose mainly lighter reiterations for this because they seemed more visually appealing. I have also grouped some of the images together in the form of a collage to see how well they work together as a single unit. From the image below it is actually impossible to tell that it began it’s life as an image of the inside of a plastic bag! I like this notion as it fits in well with the idea of things that are unseen, unrecognised or hidden.
Nine Images That Began Life As a Plastic Bag
Plastic bag inspired inspired imagery. It is hard to believe that something that can be digitally manipulated into something quite interesting can be so deadly for our planet.
Further Exploration of Plastic Bags
The Full Gallery of Ai Regenerated And Digitally Manipulated Imagery Derived from Images of The Inside of a Plastic Bag
The Disintegration
I mentioned earlier that my intention was to slowly degrade, disintegrate or dissolve some of the plastic bag images I produced. The process of arriving at the disintegrating video below was actually quite a long one. It involved a number of conversations with ChatGPT coupled with a lot of trial and error with the computer programming. For this reason I have put together a much more detailed blog which outlines the whole process including the ChatGPT conversations. This blog covers the whole making of the project and discusses where it may lead. Below is one of the first set of disintegrations that I ran through my Processing program as a test. The starting images of this video were all original images of plastic bags that were shot with a very slow shutter speed to accurately record the light. This helped to produce the ambient cave like landscape ready for slow destruction. The music for this piece was chosen specifically because of its soulful and mournful sounds. The music seems to mourn in time to the destruction just as we might mourn the loss of our throwaway society. I believe many changes are on the horizon. I wanted this short piece to represent the slow death of an ephemeral era.
Death of An Ephemeral Era
The following piece was a collaboration between myself, a computer and ChatGPT. The original images were shot by me and edited on computer. ChatGPT provided the code for the gentle pixel destruction. The behind the scenes conversations can be found here.
Stills From The Video
I found the way in which the pixels gradually disintegrated quite beautiful, so I decided to take some stills from the video above. Below are some of the images that I captured. I’m many ways I think that the stills are just as interesting as the moving images. What I find more fascinating is where these images originate. Each image comes from a photograph of the inside of a plastic bag! I like the idea that this is actually hidden from the viewer unless they are informed. I wonder how many people if asked would guess correctly at what was being digitally dissolved on screen? Indeed I think that this might make for an interesting piece of primary research.
Evaluation and Conclusion
I felt that my initial responses to the work of Vilde Rolfeson were reasonable. I deliberately tried to shoot a plastic bag in my own style so that the resulting work became a development and not a copy. I wanted to use warm colours and I chose both the lighting set up and bag colour to reflect this. I was not really satisfied with the image regenerations from Dalle-2 so I decided to edit some of the images digitally. I was relatively pleased with the results. I am still quite limited by my lack of programming knowledge, but by using programs such as ChatGPT I am managing to get closer to my vision. I feel that the digital art piece above evokes a feeling of sadness, especially coupled with the music I chose specifically for the piece. This was my intention, because I believe as humans wake up to the fact that we really cannot carry on with plastic pollution they will initially mourn the loss of this ephemeral and convenience driven era.
I think that theses pieces can be developed further and I would like to look at how a time based element can be added to them. The process of moving away from plastic and mindset change of the public is probably too slow. Therefore, I would like to develop some digital art pieces to reflect that. My conclusion is that further experimentation is required. I also think that there is a lot of scope for some primary research whereby people are asked if they can guess the origin of the art piece.
