‘sup guys. ‘tis me, a random art student who apparently needs to keep a blog of her accomplishments or whatever. have some random art i guess. go follow my main @lt-catbolt for more random stuff
okay well so I've been trying to find good examples of like... the vibes im going for with my school project, and I... haven't been able to find anything. so. in a stroke of genius. I remembered this. [tw: uhh eyes and mildly creepy stuff]
yup, Gravity Falls is my source material now. Fight me.
have some random art; my topic was the difference between humans and robots and how in the future the line will become harder and harder to distinguish, but honestly i had the most fun just drawing wires spilling out of someone's back (and also I drew Melatron with hot chocolate)
we had to pitch our idea to a specific target audience, mine was highschoolers. And not actual highschoolers-- no no, my classmates pretending to be first years. Yeah. I think you can imagine about how well that went down. Anyway, here are the notes they left me, for future reference i guess
lets face it, im never going to finish writing my reflection of the excursion week. so here's the short version:
day one: robot museum and boring museum where you could smell stinky stuff and touch fake copies of paintings
day 2: brussels. p dang awesome. bought a CD for my parents. oh and we also went to a comic museum (cool concept but v small and meh) and i went to the museum of European History with a classmate (very cool, big old history stuff, we didn't have time to get through all of it but my classmate translated some Latin there and I was very impressed)
day 3: Playgrounds. Festival-type thing. Was all right, got jumpscared by Sett bc we walked in on an artist talk by a Riot artist. Made a cool Melatron tote bag. yay
day 4: 10/10 amazing. Playgrounds again, but saw much more cool artists and also got James Baxter's autograph. Watched him animate a dog too, and teared up during his showreel because my childhood flashed before my eyes. Also briefly met Tina Nawrocki (if i misspelled her surname im so sorry) and she gave incredible animation advice. Cool stuff.
woot woot have a text post because i need to process in words YAY
I'm still not done writing all the reflections of the excursion week, i hope to do that... soon... i guess. but in the meantime, i've needed to start thinking about topics for this term's ✨ big project ✨. I have a ton of ideas and interesting concepts, but I have three that might actually be worth working with. So without further ado, here goes:
3: different perspectives on the future of society
One of the talks at Evaluon was about how the stereotype of the future is heavily based on those in power, which I interpreted as Western media and majorities. I thought it would be interesting to envision a utopian future from a completely different perspective, such as African or South American culture.
2: mankind's tendency to anthropomorphize (applied specifically to technology)
People love to project feelings onto inanimate objects. They speak soothingly to their laptops, curse at obstinate printers, and fall in love with tiny thoughtless roombas. But what will happen when those machines become more and more human in appearance? Will humanity's tendency to anthropomorphize machines lead them to treat robots as equals, to love androids as much as humans? Will humans be able to build their perfect partner and love them just as much as they would another human? Would robot-human marriages be legalized, or would it be considered a "waste" of love, or unethical?
1. Pseudosentience (do robots have feelings?)
AI is becoming more and more advanced, but what happens when it reaches a stage where a robot can pass fully as human? When androids look, act and feel just like another human being, what will that mean for society? If they can think, reason and interact just like human beings do, can we consider them sentient? Or is the fact that their basis lies in code enough reason to dismiss them as a lesser species, and factually enslave them to our wills?
The excursion week started off great, because it started off with robots. Naturally, that gives any museum the benefit of the doubt, and Evaluon did not disappoint. Even just walking into the lobby made me excited, because they had these huge black and white portraits circling the top of the wall; each of them an individual who had a particular vision of the future, from Leonardo Da Vinci to Greta Thunberg and more. My personal favourite was, of course, Isaac Asimov (author of I, Robot and The Bicentennial Man, among other amazing works) and the fact that he was included filled me with hope. (I'm not much of a museum person, but if my favourite robot author is there, it's gotta be good, right?) Tragically I didn't see much of him in the expositions, but it definitely set the tone for the sort of things that were on display.
The museum was split up into various rings (the building itself was shaped like a UFO, it was... fascinating) that climbed higher and higher around the edges. Each ring had a different theme-- I made the unfortunate mistake of not really taking a picture of the whole, but perhaps there's maps to be found online. I took a lot of pictures overall (they didn't say it wasn't allowed, so uhh... free advertising?) but tragically I can only insert 10 pictures per post, so I tried to make a selection for you guys.
One of the first things we encountered was a small robot that could type the phrase "I work" on an iPad, before rapidly deleting it again and starting over (same little robot, I too have anxiety about everything I write). Then my attention was rapidly absorbed by a literal wall of text arcing around about half of the first ring, each section detailing a dilemma or topic concerning the future, ranging from robot workforces to eternal life and paradise to doomsday. I absolutely loved what they did with the little quote sections at the bottom, the typography felt very in-style with the exposition and I loved recognizing quotes and song lyrics amidst the information. They were also fascinating topics, and when I first saw this I was like "yes. this will be my term 4 project". Foolish little me had no idea how many times I would think that that day, but we all have lapses of judgement /lh.
Anyway, there was a lot more to see: lots of examples of robots in popular media, a good amount of which I recognized (as resident robot nerd, that was kind of a given). There was also a wall with magnets where you could build your own robot, and we built this... monstrosity... yeah...
I also saw this cool screenshot which I believe is from an anime... I'm gonna have to check that one out, it looks interesting (if you see me ranting about an anime on my main sometime soon,,, uh,,, no comment)
floating blocks! idk i just thought they were cool. also i played space invaders (i was so proud i got the console to work, nobody else in my class knew how to work it). Oh, and there was a Back To The Future car. that was pretty neat.
There were also things I didn't remember to take pictures of-- there was a video about a Kitty AI, a supposedly benevolent cat AI that took over the world and tooootally had the best intentions. The cat loves you. Yup. So safe.
Also there were some little interviews with people, i took random notes:
Stine Jensen: stated that the difference between humans and robots are that humans have emotions
Martin Koolhoven: really excited about AI, says it's the "biggest invention": claims it will take control of the world someday, he just hopes we'll be part of that world when it comes
Pupul Bisht: storytelling about the future is often told from the perspective of those in power: if you tell the story of the future from the perspective of a different culture, you might get very different ideas than those of stereotypical European/American utopias
Some other things I noted: the schools from Astroboy (they had a very interesting system that I want to look deeper into). I also wrote down Over The Moon. Uhm. I don't remember why. I just did. yerrrp
i'm currently sitting at my desk, Saturday morning 5:34 AM, unable to sleep because I'm just filled with this intangible enthusiasm, a sort of quiet happy fizzing feeling inside me that makes me want to lock myself in my room an animate a million things at once, but also makes me want to run and jump and dance until I drop exhausted to the floor. Yeah. That kind of crazy.
I really really wish I had had the time (or perhaps taken the time, I suppose) to reflect on this week as it was happening, because it was so incredibly full and so much happened. But the same jam-packed schedule that has me waking up at the inconceivable hours of the dawn (I can hear the first bird singing outside my window, which I can assure you is a novelty considering my usual sleeping schedule) was also the reason I felt too depleted after each day to take the time for some good old journalling. A note for next time, I suppose: find the time. You'll wish you had. But either way, I'm going to try get as much of it down now as possible, while it's still fresh. Buckle up boys, this is going to be a wild ride.
Day 1 || Day 2 || Day 3 || Day 4 || Overall reflection
it was nice to do, although it didn't feel super productive or useful? like idk, it was fun and technically it was a new experiment, so i guess it's good, but i don't particularly see the use in making this. but hey, maybe it doesn't need to be useful
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