Category: Intervention

During this past week I had a chance to collect verbal feedback from my participants. The following are the developments each participant is making.

Teya: Teya came into this workshop with no experience of AI. While initially facing trouble with learning to use gen AI, she explored different platforms till she found one that she liked. She is now working with here Dungeons and dragons team to develop character art to use for their D&D sessions.

Iris: Iris did not believe that gen AI worked well with her practice. She found the second part of the workshop useful in thinking about applications in a new way. She has found a way to marry her own project with the workshop and is developing a conceptual food menu based of people’s personality type with the use of gen AI.

David: David has had prior experience with gen AI at his workplace. He struggled with the “AI style” but has shown interest in exploring this style for new applications. His work currently is still exploring themes that work best for him.

Nagma: Nagma also came in with prior experience of using gen AI for her work. She found the workshop useful in expanding her understanding of the technology. She is interested in finding inspiration for her art through exploration of human bodies through gen AI.

Yunni: Yunni had previously played with gen AI for personal use. She has been thinking about spaces and houses she’s lived in after graduating school and is working on recreating these spaces through her memory and utilisation of gen AI. She also is exploring 3D image generation.

These projects will be displayed by me at the MA applied imagination festival along with the stories of these 5 artists. This workshop shows that with the right communication and encouragement, Visual artists can indeed find good use of AI tools. Language that is easy to understand and peer to peer sharing of experience play a critical role in this development.

I decided to take an extra week to prepare the document to present my participants. I wanted to address some of the concerns and feedback I received, after giving myself time to reflect. I also wanted my participants to marinate in their experience and indulge in a hybrid period between discovery and creation. It was not something I had planned but found it to be useful. During this week, I received some extra feedback that showed an increase in interest by my participants. The session involving peer to peer learning seems to have gotten every one excited to progress further in this intervention.

Below is the second document sent out.

Following are some key ethical considerations I have followed during this intervention:

1. Accounting for a diverse population in participation.
2. A respect for participants time, agency and backgrounds.
3. Creating an environment of inclusion and acceptance.
4. Freedom to explore without facilitator’s bias.
5. Space for sharing feedback and concerns.
6. Providing enough basic knowledge for those unfamiliar with the technology.
7. Providing ample free resources to suit diverse needs.
8. Ensuring that all participants can share openly and to the extent possible, equally.
9. Encouraging participants to concentrate more on the process.
10. Ensuring participants feel validated in their contributions.
11. Following up at key moments to ensure participants are up to date.
12. Allow the expression of ideas to flow freely and not engage in moral policing.
13. Addressing concerns around privacy and security.
14. Confirming consent at every stage of the intervention.
15. Encouraging collaboration and peer to peer learning.

How was the experience for participants remembering a fond memory?

All the participants of my intervention respond with a sense of nostalgia. The process of remembering a “fond” memory seemed challenging for them. The responses show that it was a challenging task that took time for them to complete. This shows that perhaps the real challenge for visual artists curating their personal identities is digging deep and finding pivotal points that shaped their lives and practice. This is a new aspect I had not considered completely. I hope to find a way to prompt a better way of finding what defines each individual and if there can be a process that can help better develop this “recall”.

How did participants feel seeing their individual memories as images?

The participants seemed divided on the enhancing effects I had expected this process to have. Which each of them rightly pointed out that the image was not a perfect replica of their memories, there was some understanding that when working with generative AI, it is more about providing physical descriptions rather than the mood a memory may evoke. While this was something I had explained to the participants, it is a learning that emotions cannot be infused in an AI image.

The image wall had me using LoRas that matched the participants as I tried to enhance their original memories as prompts. The wall included two images – an initial image and a final image. While two participant responses show their disappointment with the final images, i.e. not close enough or below expectations, there were others that stated that aspects of their memories became more vivid in their mind as they saw the generated image. There is evidence from these interactions that some people can build up an old memory using iterated images over time. In some sense, this also lets me think that there may be a possibility to bring forth the past and look at it again.

How did participants feel about their memories being one amongst many?

From the feedback, it appears that seeing other people’s memories along side their own, the participants were drawn into a community mindset. One participant attests to going back and reading other people’s notes. Despite a variety of emotions reported- overwhelming, joy, nostalgia, connection, surprise, etc. the common theme is can gather is that doing such an exercise with more people has a positive impact on the participants. This may be because they are on in the centre of the stage, but sharing it with others. Connection between all these different age groups and media users is also an unexpected outcome. Participants aged 39 and 24 feeling connected over a wall of AI generated images is a unique outcome and demonstrates a unique ability of this technology to bring together different generations.

Did AI images change the way any of the participants remembered their life?

All participants reported no change in the way they remembered their individual memories. These are clearly important parts of their lives and so are remembered strongly. I would like to be able to do justice and help a few of the participants develop more on the possibility of truly bringing the image closer to what is being seen in the eye of their minds.

Did any participants change the way they view AI application?

Participants did not find the outcome convincing enough to instigate a change in their already held views on generative AI. This is due to many factors, some of which include the participants already being supportive of generative AI technology, and other participants viewing it as a tool. For those who had negative associations of generative AI, the outcome may have reinforced their views.

Reflections from participants and possible changes moving forward.

The feedback strongly indicates that the participants were engaged with the idea of generative AI recreating memory. The feedback evidenced there to exist genuine curiosity and thinking on the part of different participants on the defining of themselves and the future role of this technology. I was certain that this would be far from a perfect intervention when working with such a difficult topic. I was however, hoping to gauge the interest and curiosity artists would feel when interacting with my intervention. In this case, while much was lacking in terms of presenting the “perfect” replica of the participant’s memories or identity, there was success in garnering genuine curiosity and expectation from a technology that until a few months ago, I thought was the enemy of visual artists.

Moving forward, I would like to expand this into a process rather than a simple installation. The back and forth on feedback and recollection, I find, is an important part of curating one’s personal identity. The task is not as simple as putting in text prompts into a magic machine, but is learning how to utilise a new tool for reflecting the personal. Understanding, what is the personal and how memories, artefacts and other aspects play into shaping it. Through the last few months, I have unlearnt many biases, uncovered many questions and reflected on many possibilities for my project. I feel the answers lie beyond the horizon, and may never be truly absolute, but a framework is beginning to appear close.