Blog
‘Interactive Berlin’ programme at the School Of Machines, 2024.
AI In The Context of the Human Cognition and Technology: A Global Journey
Brief overview of the interconnected nature of cognitive development and technological innovation:
When using AI, the role of the artist becomes the organizer of these images.
Artists role in using new technologies and how they could potentially change the world!
AI is an infinitely complex mirror being held up to society.
Book r ecommendations:
- Florence & Baghdad, Renaissance Art and Arab Science by Hans Belting.
- Artificial Intelligence Began With An Ancient Wish to Forge The Gods by Pamela McCorduck.
- Godel, Escher, Bach, An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter.
- Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence by Hans Moravec
Paper: Attention Is All You Need
13.07.24 - 3D Printing Preperation
10.07.25 - Using Eden Art to create AI generated monologue
Exploring initial ways to animate my digital character without recording motion capture data.
Using Eden, I created a personality for my Digital Ais character and give gave her some paragraphs from my thesis to form the basis of her thinking/responses, this allows me to ask her questions and have conversations with her. This video and text below were generated by me prompting her to “talk about how our digital selves can help us understand our personal selves”.
I think where this could become really interesting in an exhibtion context is if I could get the API and take this chatbot off Eden and run in live so the audience could converse with Digital Ais.
07.07.24 - Quinn Tincher Artist Talk
Follow the north stars as they pop up throughout your practice. Don't need to know what the end point is going to be but can know your process and materials and allow yourself be surprised by the outcome.
Miniatures as a way of getting an idea moving. Low cost, low use of materials.
Interesting to think what environments / objects you can house your technology in! AR piece in a telescope? Or what objects you could projection map onto! Inspiring to think about ways in which to bring a physical practice back into my very digital-centic practice.
Conversation -> concept -> creation!
Moulds as a great way to speak about concepts of multiple selves and multiple identities! Things are hardly ever ruined, you can make a copy and do whatever you like with it. Beauty in salvaging!
05.07.24 - Redesigning a Public Space using AI for Idea Generation and Proof Of Concept
Sandbox approach - when we're precious with our materials and time, we don't allow ourselves to mess up and push the boundaries of our ideas and its capabilities. Creating things on small scale allows you to be messy and try things out before going big!
So what space do we want to redesign? Went on a walk with Renee and came across a playground. We started thinking about why there is so much stigma around adults using playgrounds? And how we have very little spaces to really let go and immerse ourselves in a playful and fun environment. Brought up question of how we spend less time on social media, and what it could be replaced with?
How does a personal act / action generate an experience for the collective??
A maze with a central dome shape emerged with several dwelling points to activate colour changes from the dome. The idea behind this is to give an incentive to join the playground, knowing that others are there to help with with stigma. This is when we started using AI to imagine how this could look:
Making the box and dome:
Testing out interactivity of LEDs & swing with Arduino, potentiometer & servo:
When designing our swing structure we also looked to AI to generate some ideas:
Between the two of us, we don't have advanced knowledge of how to get those two points of interaction to communicate this, but we programmed the movement and program the LED light rotation separately. We simplified to a swing and a see-saw and once that came together we saw opportunities to add the climbing structure and the zipline/slide!
Documentation of our final sandbox:
05.07.24 - Nora Hase Artist Talk
Identity, what is shaping us, what influences who we are and we we navigate the world? We take on these new identities in different elements of our lives.
Using AI as a tool to allow you to just start creating imagery straight off the bat, not focusing on planning everything! Allows you to find things that you didn't know you wanted. Learn to use it, and learn to break it! Mindlessly smash images together!
Where does the AI start and you begin? Where do you end and the AI begins?
Like clay, you can learn to use it and mold it and alter/change it in your own way. Play with the unpredictability. Keep playing and looking back to see what it is that you're drawn to! Use it as your research, visual research!
A tool to understand how AI / computers understand and see the world. Play with the biases that are built in. It's very literal, and very figurative too, can be difficult to keep it abstract.
Interesting to think about what's missing from the world and how AI can help us represent that? Playing with gender and body politics, and representation.
It's easy to create something from the past, we should think about what new futures we want to create! How can you create something complex? And meaningful?
04.07.24 - Electronics Workshop 2 with Astrid Bin
Think of the Arduino as a dumb employee who will only do exactly what you tell them!
The power of these little machines is the control over when to turn things on and turn them off. If you just want it to be on you'd just use a battery!
Document everything, you never know when you'll need to go back to when it was working.
Try to make sure that your hardware is as stable as possible so that you can be sure that you're issue is in your software.
03.07.24 - AI Image Generation trained on images of my own digital avatar using Eden Art:
Vanessa Rosa - Artist Talk, ‘Tales from a Future Simulation’:
To be or not to be? To simulate or not to simulate?? What does it mean to recreate these multiple versions of yourself? Does this dilute your physical self?? "The best thing artists can do to protect themselves and thrive is to really pay attention to what these technologies, learn about them, from their scary impacts to their beautiful potentials and possibilities!"
Paintings/sculptures are portals to the consciousness of humans in the past. What will AI imagery mean to future humans? What will it tell them about us and our world? We are all training AI, whether we like it or not, so how can we use it as a way to imagine what kind of society we want to build.
What does it mean to freeze yourself in time through 3D scanning? Where does your identity lie? Is it in the mind or in the body? What keeps you being you??
The rapid growth of these models means that using them is already telling a story!! So, what story do you want to tell knowing that everything is ephemeral??
What you do after generating an AI image is the important part!! Take your time with it, stop and think about how it makes you feel, what does it inspire? The organisation of these images and worlds is where your personal story telling abilities start to emerge and take precedence.
Artists anger is very important for the future of AI. What is it that scares you, frustrates you, annoys you about these developments. Anger is a very powerful emotion and can be harnessed and beneficial to create movement and change!
Experiments of prompting with Vanessa Rosa’s concept design on Eden Art.
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02.07.24 - Artful Electronics with Astrid Bin:
A lot of artists getting into electronics are very daunted by how much they have to learn, don't let it scare you. You only have to do as much as you need to and is interesting to you!
Ask yourself, "how can I make what I want and make it as simply as possible?"
More tech doesn't make the work better, a lot of the time it can actually make it worse. Make sure your concept is strong and the tech is just aiding you in communicating what you want.
Interactive art can be likened to parkour, you have to think of the most creative way of getting from A to B.
Think about what the variable part of your work is! What needs to be stable and what can be interesting to make changeable?
- Examples of ciruits including paper circuits, LED’s, LDR’s, Depth Sensors & Servos:
A lot of artists getting into electronics are very daunted by how much they have to learn, don't let it scare you. You only have to do as much as you need to and is interesting to you!
Ask yourself, "how can I make what I want and make it as simply as possible?"
More tech doesn't make the work better, a lot of the time it can actually make it worse. Make sure your concept is strong and the tech is just aiding you in communicating what you want.
Interactive art can be likened to parkour, you have to think of the most creative way of getting from A to B.
Think about what the variable part of your work is! What needs to be stable and what can be interesting to make changeable?
- Examples of ciruits including paper circuits, LED’s, LDR’s, Depth Sensors & Servos:
01.07.24 - What questions are you concerned with in your practice?
- How can we facilitate more boredom in our lives?
- Is technology freeing us or setting us free?
- How does technology influence the way we navigate and experience the world?
- How linked is our social media presence to the way we show up and act in physical space?
- How much does our online identities influence our offline identities?
- Should we fear the singularity?
- How can we encourage less screen time / social media use? What can we relace it with?
- Does art have to be conceptual? Is it possible for it not to be?
- How can we use art to inspire meaningful change in the world, particularly in relation to our relationships with our devices?
- How can we work collectively to imagine potential speculative futures for humans to co-exist with technology?
- How will humans, nature and technology co-exist in a utopian world?
- Is technology freeing us or setting us free?
- How does technology influence the way we navigate and experience the world?
- How linked is our social media presence to the way we show up and act in physical space?
- How much does our online identities influence our offline identities?
- Should we fear the singularity?
- How can we encourage less screen time / social media use? What can we relace it with?
- Does art have to be conceptual? Is it possible for it not to be?
- How can we use art to inspire meaningful change in the world, particularly in relation to our relationships with our devices?
- How can we work collectively to imagine potential speculative futures for humans to co-exist with technology?
- How will humans, nature and technology co-exist in a utopian world?