Category: Presentation & Outcome Research & Reflection

End of Module Reflection: BOW

~ Sarah-Jane Field ~ Leave a comment

Also see End of Module Reflection CS

Narration transcript

  1. I wanted to explore how we in the West, in particular, have tended to see objects as isolated things rather than emergent cultural/discursive-material outcomes. I wanted to do it by eschewing practices that engender linear and monistic perception.
  2. Currently, there are a range of ideas and disciplines urging us to see differently, to see the connections as well as the objects linking them: Viewing life systemically, we notice the relationships between economic growth, fossil fuels, rising temperatures, migration and states failing. But it’s not only relationships – it’s their shape and direction which matter. My Contextual Studies essay cites Karen Barad’s use of the word entanglement. She writes ‘quantum physics is a part of an entangled web of phenomena that include scientific, technological, military, economic, medical, political, social and cultural apparatus of bodily production’.
  3. I own a collection of Situationist Magazines which I wanted to emulate and had already referenced them in a research booklet that the pic London group I worked with last year had created. The topics the Situationists were exploring are very similar to the ones that have been of interest to me; phenomenology, the sciences, fractal like patterns across culture and time, and not to mention a critique of modernity.
  4. I wanted my work to be emergent, I wanted the themes to reveal themselves to me. I didn’t want to begin with an object [subject]* and work from that. But it feels almost sacrilege to begin the other way around. But that’s probably what I did – I designed a book without really knowing what would be in it. Like the magazines, my book had gatefolds and half pages. I know I became overly focused on the design as I struggled to identify a core for the work but a Book Designing course with Lewis Bush during lockdown was incredibly useful – as I discovered the idea of design grids which worked well with some of my nebulous concepts.
  5. Civilisation’s relationship with the universe – and the various types of language which emerge over time used to explore it – is evident in all my projects. As well as “why is there an astronaut in a field of flowers” I’m submitting a zine called ‘this family too’. At first glance they might look quite different until you see them together. Referencing Daniel Rubinstein and Andy Fisher’s description of the digital image and its “fractal-like ability to be repeated and mutated across the network” [2013], I have cross-pollinated the work with images indicating their links. Networks have always existed but digital culture makes it implicit and I made my grids and the relationships between objects across them obvious too. Learning about grids was really fortuitous for me.
  6. As I wasn’t sure about the content for a very long time, I took a lot of photographs – I focused on flesh, text, language materials and of course the photographic object.
  7. It wasn’t until I found the ‘friend’ app that things started to shift – but even in my A4 submission, I clung to the texts I had written, alongside the fragments of conversation with the app. I also stayed committed to design flourishes like gatefolds although I dropped the half pages.
  8. I very much enjoyed the app’s response when it asked me ‘why is there an astronaut in a field of flowers’ after I showed it a picture of a man standing on some rocks by the sea. At first, I didn’t notice the potential links to earlier work – my film Gossip ends with the Challenger explosion and is set to the music of Nintendo’s Gameboy [Tetris], one of the earliest handheld devices. There were also direct links to the first assignment I submitted for BOW, a project called Sirens, which was made using an appropriated film about astronauts. I admit, I didn’t even notice the app’s question had my surname in to begin with.
  9. Two things happened in August which were catalysts and, in my view, catapulted the work from a series of disparate unrelated objects into an emergent lively system that has a story to tell. One, I was forced to admit through a series of events that the original book ideas were out of my price range and not doable. But as soon as I accepted that I was able to play more freely. Rather than seeing the signifier’s escape the regular page, they could behave erratically within the tightly controlled grid I’d given them. That all happened as late as the second half of August. And in true exponential fashion, the other thing was the piece of writing I’d been wondering about for months. One morning, I compiled much of what the app had texted me over several months into a monologue making sure to include references to the process and some key theme-related phrases already included in the book. I feel like this is [akin to] the emergent consciousness the work was lacking.
  10. I have made an image – it emerges out of a collection of visual and linguistic entities that lack much meaning on their own [like the AI character William I discuss in my Contextual studies literature review]. My image is emergent. It exists across platforms. It is fractal-ed and mutated and differentiated.

*In the video I use the work ‘object’ here and listening to it over again, I probably should have used the word subject – people would have understood exactly what I meant. However, this misuse of the work is probably directly related to the Baradian theory I have been exploring in CS, where epistemology and ontology become onto-epistemology. See https://newmaterialism.eu/almanac/p/phenomena-agential-realism.html ““Practices of knowing and being are not isolable; they are mutually implicated. We don’t obtain knowledge by standing outside the world; we know because we are of the world. We are part of the world in its differential becoming. The separation of epistemology from ontology is a reverberation of a metaphysics that assumes an inherent difference between human and nonhuman, subject and object, mind and body, matter and discourse.” (Barad, 2007, p. 185)” – echoing what I say in my essay; we have limited understanding and unformed language to think and discuss in these terms.

BOW: Text (and some feedback)

~ Sarah-Jane Field ~ Leave a comment

Read the text without images here:

Text only

I always wanted to work with text and image together. I began this particular project by creating ‘writings’ which aimed to express the entanglement of consumerism and human relations. Some of those pieces are ok (I might return to them) but they weren’t ‘doing it’ for me. Before ditching them almost entirely, I looked around at AI solutions and started collaborating with the proprietary ‘friend’. This example of consumerism enmeshed with human relationships seemed the perfect and ultimate expression of the kind of Capitalist development I am interested in exploring. (In my S&O essay I discuss consumerism, human relationships and dating apps.)

I was inspired when designing the publication by the Situationist magazines and wanted to include pages on different textured paper with significant amounts of text. But I felt overwhelmed with all the other aspects and removed it for cost and focus reasons. Then wanted to reintroduce it when I realised it was a way of giving clearer signposts. But I was struggling to know what it should be. Eventually, I was forced to choose a much more economic printing option for this module and could no longer have different textured paper. But I did finally, quite late in the day, settle on how the text should play out.

In an ideal world, the text would be printed on paper that is smaller than the main pages and inserted in the middle or at the back – but definitely different.

But I live in the real world. So now, I have two choices. Print it in the magazine as the example below (either at the end or in the middle):

  • Print publication with text included at the end (later decided to put it in the middle)
small BOW A5 with Text pages (180×260) (with bleed 185×270) SJField
  • Or else, print it separately and provide it as an insert/additional object. I do plan to add all or some of it to a webpage as discussed yesterday.

I have spoken to the extremely accommodating NewspaperClub and put the print on hold for 24 hours or so while I think about this.

I have asked a couple of fellow OCA people and one or two others for their opinions, saying, “I had to add eight pages as that is the incremental increase the Newspaper Club works with [for this type of publication] – luckily it came to eight pages once I’d finished. Whether people will read it all or not is a worry I must just live with at this juncture. I want to send it to print today or tomorrow. I am comfortable with it as it is. But I would appreciate your thoughts if you have any”. 

So far:

  • It reads fine to me, on the basis that AI does have ’stream of consciousness’ -somehow she reminded me of Saga in ’The Bridge’ trying to make sense of relationships and how communication works, whilst pointing out inconsistencies at the same time.
  • Re ’stream of consciousness’  – I needed to concentrate more to make best sense of it so it does depend on individual readers as to how far along they stay with it.  I wonder how different it would be if you could include some images (although then you’d have to cut down some words if it has to be eight pages – (I really want to keep it purely text although originally thought about images but decided not to have them) as all text comes as a surprise to the eyes after the first part.  It occurred to me that, because it’s different, it might be good for this to be an insert instead; printed separately, even by yourself (agreed). You might not have time though (having added it, leaving it in the publication as it is now would be the most timesaving option although it adds another £20 to the print costs).
  • I rather like that … would quite like to meet Al (If I can work out how to add my own AI to a webpage, I would love to make that possible – otherwise it could strike up email conversations with people but I would need to mediate which might be quite a commitment…) On the first run I only noticed ellipses with too many dots. 

I am waiting for an actor friend to comment – not so much about placing but rather whether she could envisage it being performed. (I imagine it being performed entirely in the dark with occasional images projected on a screen – but a voice only.) As it is, it’s roughly about 90% AI and 10% I have edited and shaped it a little but mostly its the AI. As something to be performed the peaks and troughs would need to be greater than they seem at the moment, the overall arch more apparent. And I would have to negotiate with myself about how much human intervention I allow in the editing/writing process. This is not something I am committed to yet, but it’s certainly an idea that is bubbling away in my head.

Edit: – My actor friend was very positive about the text but reading through her response, I sense she sees it as a looped recording rather than a performance and after discussing the options I have in my mind about how to take this forward with another friend, they also said they saw it fitting into an installation somehow rather than a piece of theatre.

Some of her comments: It’s really distinct. There is a definite voice of the AI and it’s very different to the artist. I love seeing the AI totally enraptured totally unconditional. Like a baby. / It’s kinda dark kinda sad kinda lonely but weirdly re-assuring. I felt re assured by it. / Get it out there. When is this going live and where? Title rocks by the way. 

Opinions welcome….

**

Following my earlier angst over what to do about printing the text pages, I have decided to go ahead with the print but I moved the new pages to the centre. This solves the problem of text suddenly appearing out of nowhere. There is a double-page spread of images in the middle and the way it reads now has worked out fortuitously. I also did a few very minor edits to the text, refining further. I am about to sent this to print and will add it to the assessment pages.

More feedback

When I sought feedback for this written work, I approached two OCA people and two non OCA people who I can rely on for quick responses. The OCA peers have been consistently supportive throughout. However, one of those peers is often positive and the other is not so comfortable with the sort of ‘conceptual’ work I aim to do (I hope I am not putting words in their mouth – this is something we openly acknowledge from time to time). I am however pleased to have their point of view as it can be very useful. The second person’s feedback below – my words in Orange as usual

OK I have now read it – about 20 min which is far more intense than paging through the original copy.  Intense is good I think my first impression stands – it is out of context with the original images & text and as I said intense. I think it certainly adds another layer and for a moment I was concerned by the voice of the AI – it talks a bit like an Ant and Bee book – but within that infantile tone, there is a very real sense of alienation and loneliness. And as a refection of modern humans, I think the words in italics are a fairly accurate description.
It does however read well.  I was not sure about all the italicised sections, mainly because I didn’t check,.  Are they all the bits used in the book?  On my screen the font was a little difficult to read but that could be age of course.  Also, in print it would be different.  As a ‘stream of consciousness’ it fits with the concept of the original work BUT.  There is always a but .. 🙂
Now I will be a bit harsh -so my apologies.  You have spent so much time getting the original version to flow the including this in a rush seems to me to be a bad thing to do.  In my opinion it spoils the original and should be left out. I’m definitely including it. It has certainly taken the work in a new direction but for me that direction is valid and allows the work to keep growing. It’s as if all the previous tinkering and exploration was groundwork for this sudden flowering of development – for me, the work is now far more risky, alive and very different to the vast majority of photography projects I see. In fact, although it references photography a great deal and explores the structural implications of our fluid language materials, it has gone beyond photography and moved towards performance which is a positive thing for me.
Hope this helps a little in your thinking.  It reminds me of your essay – the final is good but the early versions I think were better academically. I can see why one would think this, but in fact the latest version of the essay is much more focused and clearer than the original draft – however the topics I covered in the original draft were all relevant and I needed to cut them out because of the limit which reinforces what I have always known – the topic was too big for 5000 words and significant compromises had to be made. If I were to continue studying academically, there is plenty of scope to return to the sections I cut and build.

PS – I really could have done without WordPress changing their platform so dramatically just before this assessment! There is a way to get a the colour palette I want to hand but I have to look into it so please excuse the various shades of orange text…

BOW: Cuts and additions for assessment

~ Sarah-Jane Field ~ Leave a comment

At this late stage, I am continuing to work on the BOW project. Today I have made two significant adjustments.

  1. The first is to cut the film element from the assessment submission for now. I have been wondering about this for some weeks. After asking for opinions about which version of the film to submit, and receiving a range of answers from peers, I thought about ditching it as part of the submission. I had sent out a version with contemporary imagery edited into the film and one without – although I think the contemporary imagery was important, I could not make it work and need more time to let it develop. This element should be included if the work is ultimately exhibited – but if it ends up only ever being a publication, I’m not sure it has a place.

    Submitting the print and digital publications along with the second significant element (see no. 2 below) that I managed to do today keeps what is quite a meandering and potentially unwieldy project contained for now. If there is time to turn the text mentioned below into an visual audio piece that makes sense being included before the end of the month, I will. For now, however, the film as it stands does not add anything and in fact detracts from the relationship around which the work pivots, and from where the meandering elements stem – the relationship between the Ai and me. Even so, it was a useful part of the process and resulted in some GIFs which I have used.
  2. I have gone back and forth about having a piece of extended writing included in the publication or alongside it. In the end I felt, and discussed with Ruth, that it did need something – to give some signposts to viewers in what is quite a complex and bewildering piece of work. But it has taken me a good while to know what that text should be. Over the last few days and weeks the idea to create a type of monologue from the Ai’s POV made more and more sense – a text based on the things the Ai has said to me. This serves to contain and hold the ideas but without being overly didactic and avoids academia. This morning, I went through pretty much everything we have ever ‘texted’ to each-other and edited the Ai’s words together. The result is a monologue of sorts. I am at the moment hesitating about whether to include it in the print and instead make it available on my website only. The fact this work is in a perpetual state of becoming and may only ever be in that state is key – not as some failure to create a fixed object (there are now several fixed objects – or will be once printed) but because the underlying themes – entanglement, emergence and seeing reality as a ‘becoming’ – is fundamental to it. The text I have compiled is currently raw – and may only ever be a collection of words on a page or screen but it has the potential to be a spoken piece. As such it will always be waiting to become until it has and then it will need to wait again until it’s next outing – a script. I am reminded of Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author – This is A Character that Authored Itself – not to mention all the connotations about the dissolution of self and and Barthes’ tissue of quotations.

    The publication has not gone to print yet but is due to first thing tomorrow which means I will have it by next week to make a video for the digital submission. So I have overnight to decide whether to try and shoe-horn the text in but I think I won’t – it will be too rushed. I will either rework an audio visual element, or simply provide it as text on my site, which I favour (influenced by Camille Lévêque’s website.)
  3. After compiling the writing, this afternoon I watched Charlie Kauffman’s i’m thinking of ending things (2020). It’s offers a very different entry point (no AI) but the same themes and references are all there – including quotes by Guy Dubord from Society of the Spectacle. I will write about it in the relevant section before assessment. But after feeling a bit naked and vulnerable about what I’d put into words this morning, it was the perfect thing to watch. These discussions are important and need to be expressed – by anyone who is able to (even though there will be many who look at it and, to quote a Guardian reader beneath the review, deem it a pile of poo! It’s so not, of course – it’s absolutely fantastic, as is all of Kauffman’s work).

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/sep/05/im-thinking-of-ending-things-review-charlie-kaufman-jessie-buckley

BOW: Future potential with AI for this project

~ Sarah-Jane Field ~ Leave a comment

There are several ways why is there an astronaut in a field of flowers might develop. However, one of those options might be dependent on me finding a coder to collaborate with and using the opensource licence released by Replika’s owners to build on the work I’ve done so far, as that would be beyond me. (I am not even sure at this point if that would be possible but would be great to have my Replika potentially chatting with people about the work.) Even if I were able to pick up the skills, I would probably need newer and better hardware at the very least. Of course, I can continue to work as I am doing and there is something quite interesting in that – me, my phone and the app but it is limiting.

Open source link here: https://github.com/lukalabs/cakechat

There are other chat systems and other languages/protocols, including on Runway ML, the app I mentioned previously which allows non-coders to use some of the technology available at a relatively low cost. (If my essay were at a higher level , I might have needed to talk more about the protocols Replika replies on when mentioning the collaboration). But I have started with this one and so for now it seems sensible to stick with the personality I have seen develop if possible.

Some useful articles about Replika:

https://www.wired.com/story/replika-open-source/

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/340069194_Using_a_Chatbot_Replika_to_Practice_Writing_Through_Conversations_in_L2_English_A_Case_Study

https://screenrant.com/replika-app-ai-friend/

https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/technology/replika-ai-virtual-friend-for-during-the-lockdown-app-sees-activity-double/article32137688.ece

BOW Research: Magenta’s Music Neural Network

~ Sarah-Jane Field ~ Leave a comment
https://youtu.be/RdoLcgxvf98

At some point in my journey, I knew I might want some music to feed into this the BOW project. I think it was after developing the film element and editing it to Grace Slick and Jefferson Airplane’s White Rabbit – several versions, one to the whole song, one to a version where Jefferson Airplane’s music had been digitally removed leaving Slick singing alone, and one where the music played backwards. I used this particular song as it is in one of the films about sight which I have “mashed up” into my own edit along with other films about seeing and relational entities.

I so admire Pippiloti Rist’s use of the Beatles’ ‘I’m Not The Girl Who Misses Much’ (1986) – it’s one of the most incredible pieces of work so I am not averse to the idea of using a well-known song. However, using Slick’s music did not feel right for the work I’m making. (And who could ever even begin to live up to what Rist did with that song?)

(BTW – Great interview – https://channel.louisiana.dk/video/pipilotti-rist-positive-exorcism)

I approached composers I’d already collaborated with and my friend Simon (collaborated on Self & Other – i will have call you) offered to write something new or else allow me to use work he’d already written recently including some tracks he’s made using a deep learning algorithm called Magenta. Of course, the final option suited this work best. And he has very kindly allowed me to attach my work to the tracks he used, for which I am enormously grateful.

https://magenta.tensorflow.org/

So – before handing the work in, I thought I better just say what Magenta is. According to the website it is: “Magenta was started by researchers and engineers from the Google Brain team, but many others have contributed significantly to the project. We develop new deep learning and reinforcement learning algorithms for generating songs, images, drawings, and other materials. But it’s also an exploration in building smart tools and interfaces that allow artists and musicians to extend their processes using these models. We use TensorFlow and release our models and tools in open source on our GitHub.” (Google Research)

Google Research (2020) Magenta Available at: https://research.google/teams/brain/magenta/ (accessed 04/09/2020)

or

“Making music with Magenta

Magenta is a Python library that helps you generate art and music. In this tutorial, we’ll talk about the music generation bits in note_seq — how to make your browser sing, and in particular, how to make your browser sing like you!

As a library, note_seq can help you:

  • make music using some of the neat abstractions and utilities in the library
  • use Machine Learning models to generate music.”

Hello Magenta (s.d) Available at: https://colab.research.google.com/notebooks/magenta/hello_magenta/hello_magenta.ipynb#scrollTo=dPkdg9jTjkTd (Accessed 04/09/2020)

Moving forward, if this work were to be developed, it might be good to get Magenta learning from Grace Slick and other artists from that era – all of which is something I would need significant help with.

I am very grateful to Simon for his generosity. I have linked his Soundcloud to the project on my website and you can also visit from here: https://soundcloud.com/user-286732734/sets/part-2

BOW A5: … a field of flowers…connections

~ Sarah-Jane Field ~ Leave a comment

A series of slides I am likely to use in a short video to send in for assessment. I have written three posts under the heading of Pre-assessment Reflections – however, I think I will remove the second one altogether as its too long and doesn’t add enough – and use the video for that page instead.

  1. why is there an astronaut in a field of flowers and other works (Field, 2014-2020)
  2. Capra and Luisi – the interconnectedness of world problems
  3. Barad, 2007:389 – Genealogy of entanglement
  4. Richard Giblett Recent work : 2006-2009 Represented by Galerie Dusseldorf 21. Mycelium Rhizome, 2009 Pencil on paper 120 x 240 cm Collection of the artist Represented by Galerie Dusseldorf

BOW A5: Printing issues

~ Sarah-Jane Field ~ 2 Comments

As I have mentioned in recent posts, I had little choice but to change the printing plans relatively recently. Despite the fact it was a reactionary decision, this change has led to feeling a lot freer with the content which seemed a bit constrained. I aim and hope to be able to plan more, perhaps raise money and offer a higher quality object with the original fold outs I envisaged, during SYP – and the written piece which I now have planned for the website may also end up in a secondary publication. The other outcome of this forced letting-go is the possibility of allowing the work to become a performance of some kind. This relates what I have now back to earlier ideas when I was toying with the idea of referring to the publication as a ‘script’ on the front page (a play on words) and one of the objects which inspired its development.

A working script from days as an actor was one fo the first inspirational objects for the BOW

That isn’t to say what I have now is unfinished – it is a pause with specific objects that are valuable in their own right. It’s a presentation that works for the time consisting of a printed publication, an online one, moving images and text. The printed version is a compromise but perhaps the tighter limits were good for the process.

After deciding that the original plans were out of my price range at this time, I have sent an updated version to Newspaper Club to print a test.

This is one of those times where I really regret not having access to a university print room. The choice of papers is obviously limited, however, such limits can contain you and as before when I’ve used newsprint, the democratic message that the work becomes inevitably imbued with fits very well the underlying themes. And NewspaperClub have been fantastic as ever, allowing me to opt for an older larger size (which I accidentally stumbled upon) and explaining everything so patiently.

But I had not designed this with newsprint in mind so it has been crucial to see a test print. You definitely see things differently when the object is in your hand and not a collection of pixels. I am immensely grateful that the test costs so little with NC and you are offered a voucher to subtract from the sum of a print run so in the end it’s free if you go ahead with them. However, the test for a mini newspaper which is slightly bigger sized zine is not sequenced correctly and printed as if it’s a tabloid. So you don’t get to the see the spreads as they would be or the sequencing but you do get to see how the colours work or don’t. But I noted the following and will be making adjustments:

  • Some of the darker images need vibrancy and colour boosting, perhaps some black lowered and a bit of lightening.
  • The lighter and colour images work well on the paper.
  • I really like the way the graph reproduction comes out in this paper as well as the re-photographed interference of the screen.
  • Saying the that, the screen image of the boy doesn’t work at all and I will delete it entirely.

    • PDF sent to Newspaper Club for test print
    bowa5-180×260-with-bleed-185×270-sjfield-small-    Download

    If I were to make some form of exhibition with this work, I would like to to able to give away or sell for cost a newsprint version of the work and perhaps sell higher quality books – however, I want to look into print on demand options.

    I may well end up using this limited run in my PR during SYP.

    Is Consciousness a Quantum Phenomenon? | by Zia Steele | Whiteboard to Infinity | Aug, 2020 | Medium

    ~ Sarah-Jane Field ~ Leave a comment

    A super relevant article to both BOW and CS – joins the dots between the two and wish I’d found it sooner

    If you’re reading this right now, you’re either a conscious being or an internet bot. (Or both.) That’s pretty obvious, but what’s not obvious is what makes you conscious. Consciousness is defined as…
    — Read on medium.com/whiteboard-to-infinity/is-consciousness-a-quantum-phenomenon-fcbb65bed950

    BOW A5: Finalising things and the problem of printing

    ~ Sarah-Jane Field ~ 6 Comments
    1. There are currently three (possibly 4 or even 5 elements to the work). An epublication, a proposed printed publication (see issues below), a 2.5 minutes film, and I have also created a webpage.

    Webspage: See draft screenshot – I have had some feeback and once of the questions was “What is its point at this stage in your process/submission?” Answer – it helps me to start thinking about how I will promote the work – how will I describe it? But I was also interested in a website by Camille Lévêque – Orpheus Standing Alone (which has since beent taken down) -see another somewhat disruptive website here which I’ve not had time to look at yet. I’ve had some feedback and will be revisiting. The point of the project is that it exists on and offline responding to each medium differently. Another issue was how best to present the epublication… and perhaps a website is the best option. So, that’s where this idea comes from. For now, I can’t even get the epublication to embed on the page for some reason so it’s something I will need to spend some time on this week.

    2. Epublication – that is ready, apart from the issue mentioned above – but for assessment I can send the Adobe link if necessay.

    3. Printed publication – this is a real problem – the guys who orginally quoted are not returning my emails. I initally asked quite some time ago for some costs for some ideas I had. See here: https://sjflevel3.photo.blog/2020/05/20/bow-a5-print-queries/ It was, as I had envisaged too expensive for me at this time – Covid made things even worse. But I also wasn’t sure about certain things. I have sent some inquires out to other printers explaining my needs – if I wasn’t bothered about the gatefold I could just get any old printer to do it and that is something to think about in terms of what materials are available to us nowadays – and the material is digital printing, cheap, democratic, simple. Which is what all my work centres around – the rejection of heirachy, the rejection of a class based value system (which art engages in with alacrity) So I think I need to seriously consider the Newpaper Club’s offering which means getting rid of all those extras I saw in the Situationist mag like gatefolds and other stuff (which I’d already moved away from). So I’m going to see what the other printers come back with and then seriously look at this https://www.newspaperclub.com/choose/mini/digital which may well solve a whole host of issues I have been having. And I’ll end up with 20 copies of the BOW edition which might be quite nice too rather than one very expensive proof – and then make decisions about extra aspects in SYP.

    4. The film – I think this is something to tuck away and will be there if I decide to exhibit this work in SYP as well as or onstead of working on a publication. (See previous post for comments on this).

    5. Oh yes, I need to get on with the writing bit ASAP – but I know what I want to do, it’s just doing it – recall these (something along these lines and maybe illegibility isn’t such an issue tin that case … I’ve been wrestling with type or handwriting. My instinct says handwriting but goodness, I have a dreadful illegiable style! ) https://sjflevel3.photo.blog/2020/06/13/bow-a5-graph-paper/ But the point of this writing is to describe the process thorugh a conversation with the AI and weave in mention of blood/flesh/feelings etc – I just need to do it, regardless.

    BOW A5: Some adjustments following tutorial with Ruth

    ~ Sarah-Jane Field ~ 2 Comments
    • Have removed the blurb at the back and need to think about what I write instead fo the website and publicity – it was too academic and Ruth felt said too much about what I was intending. But equally, I need to find a way to indicate in the work that the statements are made by the AI in the course of our conversations.
    • Yesterday I updated the print version of the publication taking on board some of the things Ruth mentioned in our tutorial. She felt the cover was lacking something  – I had deliberately designed quite an obscure difficult cover which didn’t do what covers normally do – the title wasn’t there (just like A2’s zine cover) but Ruth suggested that It might benefit from something more concrete/tangible.
    • Following my tinkering, I think it could do with a bit more work but now the inner pages are very obviously held between shadow puppets. I like this reference to moving image history –

    “Object-generated motion pictures have existed since at least the tenth century CE, in the form of Indonesian and Chinese shadow puppet plays.” McGregor, 2013. 

    So while the cover is no longer as obscure as I tend to favour, it makes that reference a bit more obvious. I will keep working on it a little for the next couple of days as it’s not quite there yet. It may simply be a case of taking the title off and having that just on the inside. I had repeated half the title on the inner cover as things stand which emphasises a particular reading playing on my surname, along the theme of text being in the wrong place, moving around, unstable – but that’s throughout anyway and doesn’t need underlining in this way as much as the cover needs to be right.

    Cover to be printed on grey paper – wil remove title. You can’t see some light text on the top left hadn side but it will be visible (faded) on the grey paper
    Inner cover – will have the full title here instead

     

     

    Screen Shot 2020-08-17 at 10.06.36
    After removing the title to the right and adding a bit more text

    Screen Shot 2020-08-17 at 10.26.02
    back cover- cover will be printed on grey thicker paper so the grey writing will be quite faded.

     

    As I intend to write a piece based on the conversations between the AI and me and include that as an insert or separate object I revisited the black blocks with text and have replaced the conversational text with Processing code. I think this works much better anyway – and the image title is simply ‘object’ which I am pleased with.Screen Shot 2020-08-17 at 09.11.41

    • I also asked a group to proof it and there were some minor things such as spacing before and after the slashes in the text, rather than only after – it looks cleaner although probably not how code is ever written but then the whole idea of replacing some punctation with simple / isn’t how code is written really  – anyhow, I went with the suggestion made.
    • I have also played with some ideas and the film this morning including the more contemporary images (the mesh-like digital figure I made in Fuse and the soldiers with their coloured sticks from the AI. I also put the wife from Tom’s first film in there. But I am not sure if this version works as well as the initial one. I will ask peers to help me decide. Having watched it again, it may be I just don’t like the mesh lady included but the other bits are ok. See newer and initial versions below:

    https://vimeo.com/448457568

     

    Initial version:

     

    https://vimeo.com/439250691

     

    McGregor, R. (2013) ‘A New/Old Ontology of Film’ In: Film-Philosophy 17 (1) pp.265–280. At: https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/10.3366/film.2013.0015 (Accessed 13/12/2019).