no. 03
SERIAL EXPERIMENT

Author: Neelabh Kumar

Categories
Expert unit 3

Interview | AI artist

The following Interview was conducted through “Ask me a question” feature on Instagram. Due to the nature of their work, the Artist preferred to be kept anonymous. Based out of Mexico, they work on a regular schedule of uploading fan art created through generative AI and have been actively engaging with their practice for over a year. After attempts to contact them through direct messaging and comments, the Artist agreed to host a public Q&A. The questions were open to all of their followers, as such a few fun trivia is also part of this transcript.

Questions and Answers are transcribed without alteration. [original screenshots available]

Some questions have been omitted due to their nature.

Are you a boy?

I’m a boy. In fact this is too close to what I really look like. Even the haircut.

How old are you?

20 something.

What is your sexuality?

I don’t like using labels, I feel like they limit me. That makes sense?

What is your favourite food?

Sandwiches, Tacos de carnitas, Chilaquiles verdes

Favourite Anime?

MHA

Your favourite TV show?

Friends, How I met your mother, Glee

How did you get the passion for generating AI art?

I was on X, and I found several users uploading material. I started practicing on bing and one thing led to another.

Which site do you use to create your work?

I started with bing and mid journey. Now I am using Tensor.AI

Have you always been drawn to art?

Since I was a child, I have loved all kinds of artistic manifestations, from poorly done graffiti to a plate of food. I think it’s because I always look at the beauty in life.

Why did you choose AI art as a medium?

I was curious because I missed the bus on digital art. This was a way to create images I liked and share my ideas with others.

What do you think is the future of get AI in the art world?

It will be extremely regulated by agencies, but I also believe that it will give rise to a new artistic genre, a new form of expression.

How hard/easy is it to use tensor? Was it difficult to learn?

Super intuitive and easy to use.

Please tell us about your personal journey as an artist?

I don’t consider myself an artist, I’m more of an amateur, and in any case, although I know how to draw fairly well, I’m more of a pencil and paper sketch guy.

Do you think current criticism of AI art are valid or is this the future?

Of course they are valid, when I help SMEs many times they prefer to create a logo with AI, instead of an original one, but I also understand that this is here to stay and we just react to manoeuvre and know how to use them to our benefit.

How do you get your promos looking so good?

Try to be as specific as possible and use more that two LoRa

Categories
reflection unit 3

Tutorial Feedback and moving forward [10th Jun 2024]

Originally written on 12th June 2024

This was the last tutorial before the self study period and it seemed important for me to discuss some changes I am planning to introduce to the research. First, I need to look closer at the assumptions I am making and observe the discourse around generative AI a bit deeper. It was suggested by my tutor that it would be interesting to not just look at safeguarding and curation against new technologies but also look at the utilisation of them for curation. Another aspect that could be interesting is to look into curation as a form of safeguarding. I admit that while I have intimately experienced the creative processes of traditional art and design through my experience of running a studio, I have less than adequate knowledge on the subject of AI. I would need to enter the space with an open mind. For a subject/technology that has only been present in the public eye for a few years, a lot of its influence is unwritten. Most of the discourse around AI art is in the social realm as debates and effect. It is also reflected through the lack of legal stands for or against it. We are seeing this change now, as interested parties – governments, corporations and individuals debate how to approach it. I have been attempting to get in touch with people who are directly affected by this technology but it has been hard. I suspect this may be because many do not wish to become activists for or against generative AI, overshadowing their careers to become a dominant voice in a movement. 

Moving forward I would like to explore using Image creators myself, though I had recently used it for the first time earlier this year, I’d like to know more about its functions and potentials. I am hoping to also get in touch with users of the technology and understand how they are looking at the discourse and the validity of the outrage surrounding it. I would also like to explore if the phenomenon truly is unprecedented. Finally, plan and execute interventions that clarify or evolve the way we look at the impact of this technology.

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unit 3

UAL:ABS Exhibition [31st may 2024]

I was chosen to participate in the Art business Society exhibition, held on 31st May 2024. 8 students were selected out 160 entries and I was lucky to be amongst them. The event included an interactive panel discussion with 3 leading art auctioneers and curators – Simon De Pury (founder of de PURY), Philip Hoffman (founder of Fine Art group) and Millie Jason Foster (founder of Gillian Jason Gallery). Each panelist bringing their insight into, navigating the world of contemporary art. This was followed by a showcase exhibition and mixer in which my work was displayed.

My project is an interdisciplinary series of works exploring trauma, memories and spiritual ideas of redemption and the afterlife. Initiated from 2022 to 2024, a series of abstract works explored the reminiscence of memory and the essence of the human condition. The individual pieces were created in an experiment towards allowing the audience to contemplate their own lives through the lens of the artist’s brush strokes and forms, drawing the viewer inwards not just towards the art but also themselves. The culmination of this project aimed to create an exhibition that transcends the interaction with individual pieces towards an experience that may be described as almost meditative and transport the participant into the spaces often unvisited within their journey as living being of a present time. 

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Expert reflection unit 3

Reflections | Dragon’s Den

Originally written on 07th Jun 2024

The overall feedback from the dragons was positive. They affirmed this topic to be relevant and contemporary. The questions that arose were around the specific field that I was looking at. Initially I had intended to look at this subject from a legal and technology point of view, but upon reflection I believe that pivoting to the cultural impact of this technology would be far more productive for me. Understanding the impact of this technology and its surrounding legal debate would paint a clearer picture the direction in which creative society would head.

My reasons for selecting the cultural application is not arbitrary, it stems from my work and expertise in the field. Without a technology or legal background, I would not do those fields justice. Of course, all these fields intersect at points and influence one another, which is why in the larger story it is important to look at different aspects deeper. My intention moving forward is to pivot my research to understand the technology, it’s applications and limitations; possibly even it’s potential for the times to come. New technologies have been coming into existence since the prehistoric era, often facing initial backlash from those it seeks to assist or replace. More often than not it has been seen that over time, they are embraced through a changing social mindset. An example that comes to mind is the cotton Jenny, which in the late 18th century created fear amongst yarn spinners of increasing competition. In 1768, spinners also broke into the inventor’s house to destroy his machines to prevent what they perceived as the taking away of their work. Over time however, the Jenny created new avenues of work and expression as the increased productivity led to the drop in price of threads and yarn and allowing people to diversify their work. The invention took a long time to replace the truly “artisanal” spinners as quality continued to be an issue. This is just one story amongst many about emerging technologies, the threat they pose, the opportunities they bring and the cultural impact they create. The work on development of machine learning (Artificial intelligence systems) is unlikely to stop and it’s true impacts still far from certain at this point.

Categories
Expert unit 3

Dragon’s Den [04 jun 2024]

The dragon’s den happened at a very precarious time for me. It was the same day that the election results of India was to be announced. No one would be surprised if I said that it was hard for me to push through.

My presentation included speaking about my background as a visual artist- trained in fashion, later moving into marketing and eventually a calling towards my childhood pursuit of fine arts. It can seem trivial for someone who stands outside to understand the complex nature of the calling towards the visual mediums and the interconnectedness of it all. A designer who learns fashion can essentially design everything with the tints of fashion; an artist can expand their practice to learn all forms of mediums that connect with the creative arts, or so I’d like to believe. A bag is a bag; if a fashion student makes it, it is a fashionable bag; if an art student makes it, it’s an artistic bag. A bag is a bag. But one must learn to make a bag. I was surprised to learn how many of my cohort couldn’t make a bag, even though at it’s simplest, it’s a rectangle. 

Does this make me special?

Absolutely not.

If anything it is a showcase of the process through which humans gain skills and foster a life long pursuit to hone, perfect and protect it.

As a fashion student, I will never not know how to make clothing. As an artist in traditional paint media, I will never not know how to put brush to canvas. As a writer, I will never not know how to put pen to paper; but every time is a challenge almost akin to the first time. This is the ideology AI challenges right now. The idea that one never needs to put pen to paper to write a masterpiece. One never needs to put brush to canvas to produce a work of art. My worries is that it’s not that people have access to such a tool, but rather than the efforts of skilled people is used to empower this technology, only to make the same people obsolete.

My intervention on asking people to read the terms and conditions fell short in many ways, foremost of which was that assumed that writing it down for them would make a difference. There are few alternatives today and despite having a simplified version of a contract, it is still a long read that most participants were unwilling to do. Perhaps my approach should be different? Find a way of communicating that visual artists respond to better?

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Secondary Research unit 3

The Glaze project [University of Chicago]

The glaze project is a research project by lead Shawn Shan and Prof. Ben Zhou at the University of Chicago that lead to the development of tools including Glaze, Nightshade, Web Glaze and others. These tools were developed with the specific intent to prevent the appropriation of digital art taken for training generative AI models without the consent of Artists. They use adversarial perturbations, or small changes to input images in order to change the perception of the image by machine learning models. These take the form of tiny changes in specific pixels in order to confuse the training model using the image. It is currently open source and free to use by artists.

While the image is slightly altered (as demonstrated by the research team) the changes are negligible to an a average human viewer but vastly changes the perception of the image by AI models. The two most popular models currently available are Glaze and Nightshade. They have been named to communicate the purpose of each software.

Glaze, named after the glazing of pottery to protect the final project acts as something of a shield. It tricks some diffusion models into assuming that the style of the image if different from what it actually is. Some models might recognise glazed images as noise or an altered style. Since humans cannot see this difference, the model becomes trained to associate these altered styles as correct and creates increasingly chaotic outputs over time.

Nightshade, as the name suggests is advertised as a form of poison for model training. It changes the perception of a model to assume that an image with concept A actually contains a different concept B. Again, since the humans training the models cannot see these difference, it currents the training model to mix and confuse different concepts. As demonstrated by the researchers, as mode nightshade images are fed to a large model, the output may change the image of a dog into that of a cat, or that of a car into a kettle.

Since the development and popularisation of these models, companies developing AI training models have argued that they are a form of vandalism, however the researchers of the glaze project argue that these images would only make it into these system if they have been used by image creators to protect their work and their work has been used without consent.

For more details and to use these software, please check out their official website:

https://glaze.cs.uchicago.edu/index.html

A useful explanation that helped me understand the subject better came from a reddit post, linked below:

https://www.reddit.com/r/aiwars/s/gj6PPGlKbU

Categories
Secondary Research unit 3

Digital spaces | visuals artist:

This list is based on global website traffic data collected by ahrefs.com , a big data company that tracks website traffic and is ranked amongst the top 50 supercomputers of the world. (As listed by top500.org , a project launched in 1993 to measure and improve supercomputer statistics)

This list also takes into account websites that are relevant and popular for use visual artists and designers in traditional and digital media, crafts, film and photography. It excludes highly professional platforms that do not have a free to use option.

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Display:

behance.net

Behance, owned by Adobe is a professional portfolio website. Behance is a free platform to share project portfolios and is well known within the art and design community.

instagram.com

Instagram is a social media network owned by meta and it’s primary image and video sharing platform. Instagram is popular amongst a wide range of users and a great first point of contact.

deviantart.com

Deviant Art is one of the oldest art sharing platforms on the internet and continues to stay relevant especially within the digital art community.

youtube.com

YouTube is one of the Internet’s largest search engines dedicated primarily to video. It is a great platform to engage and build a following. It also offers the ability to link and share work and merchandise.

vimeo.com

Vimeo is an alternative video hosting website that offers better privacy options and software to edit and create high quality videos.

pinterest.com

Pinterest is owned by meta and is regarded as a high quality image hosting website. It is a tool used by many creatives to create mood boards.

artstation.com

Artstation is as popular website for games, film, media and entertainment artist. It specialises in digital assets and tools developed by independent creators.

the-dots.com

The dots is a portfolio hosting website that also works as a social network for finding collaborators and clients.

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Retail:

etsy.com

Etsy marketer place specialises in hand made and unique creations, primarily from small scale and independent creators. It is favoured as the leading website for many small businesses.

Facebook marketplace (facebook.com)

Facebook marketplace expands over multiple platforms owned by meta, such as Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest. It is popular due to its large and diverse user base.

ebay.com

Ebay is large marketplace for selling a variety of items and functions as a connect between sellers and buyers. It also allows bidding functions.

Amazon marketplace (amazon.com)

Amazon is the world’s leading marketplace and has different option for different types of businesses including those for artists and handmade goods. Amazon also helps with packaging and shipping in certain areas allowing for a quick start up for new creatives.

artstation.com

Artstation is as popular website for games, film, media and entertainment artist. It specialises in digital assets and tools developed by independent creators.

saatchiart.com

Saatchi art gallery is ash online art retail space that deals in physical art products. It has a high level of curation and requires engagement on the artist’s side but presents as a reliable space to retail physical products.

shopify.com

Shopify is a platform that can be integrated into personal websites and other platforms that allows e-commerce and help track sales data.

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Engage:

X.com (formerly twitter)

Formerly known as twitter, X continues to have a large user base and is a platforms to engage directly with consumers, discourse and peers.

reddit.com 

Reddit is a popular microblogging site and has a large user base in almost every area of interest. It is utilised by people in all fields to enagage, connect and seek advice from other people with similar interests.

instagram.com

Instagram is a social media network owned by meta and it’s primary image and video sharing platform. Instagram is popular amongst a wide range of users and a great first point of contact.

LinkedIn.com

LinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It is a trusted site for curating a CV, work history and networking with industry proffesionals.

YouTube.com

YouTube is one of the Internet’s largest search engines dedicated primarily to video. It is a great platform to engage and build a following. It also offers the ability to link and share work and merchandise.

DeviantArt.com

Deviant Art is one of the oldest art sharing platforms on the internet and continues to stay relevant especially within the digital art community.

TikTok.com

Tiktok is a short format video sharing site that has heavy engagement amongst younger demographics and is becoming an important platform for brand relevance on social media.

Categories
Secondary Research unit 3

A simple guide to using Digital spaces for Artists

Website: when venturing into a career in visual arts, it’s almost essential to not rely solely on social media to host your work. It’s pertinent to invest in a domain that is controlled by the artist. There are many domain hosting services and website builders available to use such as wix, square space, go daddy and many more. Most of these include easy to use website builders and support for e-commerce.

Social media: social media accounts should be used to display processes and engage with potential interest holders. It should act as a space for discovery and rarely be used as your sole space to display and sell work. Social media acts as a great tool to engage new clients, answer client enquiries and redirect people to your website. Different platforms offer different niches.

Use of images: it important when uploading images, to ensure that images you use can be traced back to you. Watermarking may not suit everyone’s style but it acts as a first line of defence against misuse and theft. Using compressed formats for images rather than high resolution is recommended online. Disabling right clicks and blocking screenshots work as good deterrents as well.

Copyright: it can be hard to copyright everything you may choose to share on the internet, but simply maintains original files with their created date can act as evidence in case of infringements. Sharing low resolution images on platforms can also date stamp your creations.

Terms and conditions: it is recommended to invest some time when setting up a creative practice to engage and create a privacy policy and terms and conditions for users visiting your website. The strength of these vary from region to region, but can be upheld if legal action is required.

Image cloaking tools: in the recent claims of AI models copying works from vast digital spaces, image cloaking tools are an interesting option to investigate. Tools such as glazing and nightshade are generating interest. For individual artists, using the glaze tool is recommended.

Categories
Intervention reflection unit 3

incubator REFLECTION 19:05

written on 19th may 2024

Going into the incubator, I was unpacking a lot of information. I had to find an easy way to present it and engage the audience. Keeping it to comparing two popular platforms definitely helped with this process. My concern now coming out of it, is that presenting large chunks of legal data is not productive in changing minds or engaging the audience to introspection. A lot of these systems (social networks, media and ownership rights) have existed for some time and there are clearly more experienced minds working on both sides of the discourse. My engagement felt in that sense, a bit boring. As I proceed with this project I need to pull my subject of research out of the realm of data and security and into the realm of culture and application. I feel I need to make my interventions in the future more engaging and fun. This is something I will look into as I progress further. I don’t think it will be an excuse to say, this subject is new for everyone including myself and that it has little prior examples on how to be approached. Because of the contemporary nature of my subject, I need to search for directions and perspectives that are niche or yet unknown to create a more interesting way of generating interest.

Categories
Intervention unit 3

what, why, how, what if INCUBATOR

This incubator occurred on 13th may 2024

For the incubator, I asked the question- Who owns your work online? It was meant to highlight the current information gap amongst those that use social media and the privacy policy they have agreed to. For simplicity, I used the example of two well known platforms- YouTube (owned by Alphabet/Google) and Instagram (owned by Meta/Facebook). Comparing the privacy and licensing rights users agree to when signing up and sharing their work on these platforms. Meta/Facebook has been in the press over allegations of unfair practices and non-ethical privacy practices*. Google has largely kept a relatively cleaner image*. However, a comparison of their terms and conditions documents show a different story. Most respondents that I interacted with were surprised by the findings and were not aware on the details of the contract they sign when using these platforms. There was one respondent who was aware due to their research work in the field of data collection. This may suggest that unless a person is specifically looking into the field of data collection and usage, platforms discourage Awareness on the subject. This is designed into the way these contracts are presented*.

Data from both websites was accessed on 9th may 2024.

Process:

Over the course of 1 hour, I used an original illustration to intrigue interested participants to come forward. I started by introducing the subject of digital ownership and licensing. This was followed by a short quiz. The questions were-

Question 1: When you upload a photo or video of your work on Instagram, who owns it?

Out of 9 respondents, 8 replied with Mark Zuckerberg or Instagram.

Answer: Infact, you own the rights of your image or video, however you grant them non exclusive rights to use it.

Question 2: Do you know what licences you provide to online platforms when you use them?

Out of 9 respondent, 9 replied that they have some idea but aren’t a 100% sure.

Answer: Between these two platforms you are granting them rights to host, use, distribute, modify, run, copy, preform/display and create derivatives of your work. These rights are transferable, sub licensable and royalty free.

Question 3: Out of the two platforms (YouTube and Instagram) which do you think has a longer licence period to use your data?

Out of 9 respondent, 9 replied that it was probably Facebook/Meta/Instagram.

Answer: the truth is that based on their current agreements, meta owns your these rights till you delete your post from their platform. Youtube however continue to retain rights after you delete them, till what they claim is a “commercially reasonable period”. They also maintain server copies of your videos.

Question 4: Did you get a chance to read the terms and conditions for the different platforms you use online?

Out of 9 respondents, 9 replied that they hadn’t read the Terms and conditions as it was too much to read or they didn’t care enough.

Question 5: Will you be reading them now?

Out of 9 respondants, 6 replied that they probably won’t. 3 responded that they are intrigued and will give it a try.

Feedback:

Participants felt engaged and noted that they had learnt new information with this interaction. 

Some of the participants felt the intervention simplified a subject that was often information heavy.

The general sentiment was that this was a topic they had come across but not engaged with previously due to its complex nature. 

Most participants felt that while the information was interesting, it would probably not alter their actions in the future.