#art research

[donutdrawsthings]

Made a quick tutorial for how to apply that Frutiger Aero Button texture to living creatures, since I made an entire design with it!

[harbek]

Asemic writing art research

I'm doing an art research project for my master's degree, where I've made a ton of art pieces featuring asemic writing - aka writing with no linguistic meaning. It would help me out a TON if you could take a look at this survey I've made, and rate the images according to certain terms.

You get to look at pictures and click buttons to tell me when you think of them!! Tumblr loves polls!! ♥

Here is the link:

https://form.jotform.com/251253156042346

If you don't have time or energy for going through all that, please share this around! The more responses, the bigger sample size, the better science!!

(Also if you run out of energy, please just scroll to the bottom and hit "submit", rather than abandoning it! It's ok if you have to half-ass it!)

Regardless, I hope you have a wonderful day and you get to make some art too, whatever your medium may be. ♥

Previews of a few of the pieces:

[suhaylah]

Winter has often been my favourite season for printmaking :) Vlogs & other blog posts over on my Patreon page!

Instagram: @ suhaylah.h Shop: suhaylah.bigcartel.com Patreon: patreon.com/suhaylah_h

[danceoftheselkies]

from Rudolf Wittkower - Sculpture: processes and principles (1979)

[softie-draws]

🪧The Anti-AI Manifesto feat. Fall Out Boy (yeah, you read that right) and Sauron (uh-huh, exactly)🚫

So, I think I need to continue posting my art here, specifically the art I did for uni, specifically of the "it has 10 billion layers of lore and research" variety.

(she says, as if not all of her art has those layers)

The stress of the session kinda made me be all over the place, and now that I'm finally kinda gathering myself (mentally at least), I present to you:

Olena's magnum opus collage of the semester:

The interesting thing about this one is that every layer has its own meaning, which I am about to describe at length:

1. The Character:

It's a Creative Commons image (still, special thanks to Cottonbro studio for putting it out there), meaning that someone has put it out willingly for other people to use for whatever purpose they please. There are so many of those for different moods and topics, yet people still choose to generate slop instead.

The expression and the atmosphere have a bit of an old painterly feeling to it. I've been thinking a lot about how artists used to spend years perfecting a piece of art, and nowadays artists (not just visual artists, mind you!) are forced to pump out as much as possible as cheaply as possible in order to sustain relevance.

I didn't choose an actual historical painting because, well, it's not like our brains and physical capabilities have changed as much as the world has since. We are simply struggling to catch up.

The hand reaching towards the character: I feel like the usage of AI and algorithms is limiting human connections. I am worried about people that use AI to talk to people they're interested in, or people that treat AI as a human companion (aka befriending or dating it) 👀. Because I truly believe those people can be easily taken advantage of by the technology and the respective companies developing it, while they genuinely and profoundly struggle to find meaningful connections in this life.

Original stock image by Cottonbro Studio.

2. The Background:

The background has solid, geometric, blocky shapes and dull colours. This reminds me of all things generic and corporate, mass, anti-individual. It's like a Soviet apartment block, a house that doesn't feel like home (trust me, I live in one). AI-generated art just doesn't feel like art, doesn't feel authentic, doesn't feel individual.

The star/explosive shape: it is there to convey the risks of the AI bubble bursting. The companies who have invested ridiculous amounts of money into AI do not create any revenue, but the consequences, of course, will be put on the common folk head.

Also, my teacher said it reminds him of the Statue of Liberty, which I didn't think of, but which definitely makes a lot of sense.

The corrosion/glitch-like effect is, of course, to allude to the machine that generative AI actually is. Machines are just as flawed as human beings that created them, and instead of taking that into account, the companies behind the AI seem to only emphasise them.

The corrosion/glitch-like effect up close.

3. The Fall Out Boy of it all:

I'm not going to pretend that I didn't use FOB lyrics because it's my favourite band, and has been for years.

Still, one of the main things I love about the band is the sheer amount of creative power and beauty that's put both into the lyrics and the sound. The band is a powerhouse and you can't prove it otherwise. If they ever use gen AI for their music, this work will turn into a lament, yet I feel hopeful that it will not happen.

The glitch effect on the character is actually made out of God knows how many repeated lines of "boycott love" lyric from Disloyal Order of Water Buffaloes. A lot of this song to me is about a struggle to connect — whether to your audience as a member of a popular band, or to individual people in your personal life. To me, it continues the topic of disconnect made worse by gen AI.

The closeup on the (fully handmade) glitch effect.

The lyrics scattered around are from Baby Annihilation. I have seen people speculate that the majority of this song refers to Trump's first presidency, and I tend to agree with them. And now that we got to his second term... yeah. It affects us all. As a Ukrainian, don't even let me get started. There's an obvious endorsement of generative AI from the US government right now, as well as pressure for surveillance (more on that later).

Baby Annihilation also gives this melancholic, depressed sort of feeling. As someone who's had depressive episodes before, I can totally feel it. Disconnect and lack of creativity and genuine sympathy amplified by the widespread of gen AI definitely doesn't help during those.

4. The Eye of Sauron:

I swear it is not there just because I'm a Tolkien nerd. I swear. It's because of the Palantir Technologies, Inc., criticized for its involvement in expanding government surveillance through AI and facial recognition technologies. When I heard what they called it, I'm pretty sure I choked. Naming it Palantir??? The surveillance??? I'm sure next thing we'll get is Evil Corp Inc. They're not even hiding anymore.

In other words, the misuse of AI by the governments is also something worth being concerned over. However, what I'm even more concerned about is the widespread of harmful misinformation that happens when AI starts looping on its own mistakes, and the whole internet becomes filled with disinformation with barely any way to find out the truth.

Staring right through you.

5. The rainbow film effect on top:

I joked with my friends that this layer means we need gays to win against AI, but that's not really it, is it?

Rainbow is an ambiguous symbol. In some cultures it means luck, while in Jewish culture, for example, it is considered a bad omen and a warning. Therefore, in general, I consider it to be about the ambiguity. AI can be used as a tool for good, but in the current state it is entirely unprotected from misuse of power. We need to impose regulations and make sure humanity can benefit from it as a tool, not kill its own humanity with it.

Speaking of the gays, rainbow is also a symbol of diversity to me. I do feel like genuine diversity of creative voices is what we need. We need art. We need humanity. We need real, human experience from people around the world, we seek connection, we need to remember how to actually uplift and support each other as people. So, in a way, maybe it is about needing gays to win against gen AI. Or more like, we need collective human effort to help us survive and keep our vivid and vast humanity and creativity.

So, this is it! Discussions are welcome! AI art is not👀

Also, special sense to @the-red-butterfly for encouraging me to post this here 😌

Hope you all enjoyed the read!

💜

[heart-shaped-queer]

Trying to do research on Pinterest for my art exam and I swear every other image is either ai or ‘ai modified’ 🫩 I am not putting that bs in my final research pages

[k00334617milopitto]

Research update

Due to being sick the past few days, and I might still be sick for the rest of the week, I'm not sure, I will take time now to post more about my ideas, the artists and things that inspire me and information about the theme I'm doing.

(The outlined text links to web pages of where information has been sourced from)

To start like I've mentioned plenty, my whole project so far is centering around hoarding and how it relates to consumption and production. So let me inform you a little more in depth about it:

As mentioned before, hoarding means a person collecting a various mantitude of items and having extreme difficulty getting rid of and keeping organised of everything they own, it is a serious mental health disorder that often affects many disabled people or people with other mental health disorders, for example OCD and anxiety, it is also often a trauma response in other to cope with the potential PTSD a person might have.

Something you might not be aware of is that what someone hoards can be literally anything, from boxes to digital information, and for some, especially those with OCD, memory hoarding, reasons for doing so can range from being a calmin coping mechanism, to parnoia and anxiety, fear of still needing it in the future, to emotional attachment and so on, it can also happen if someone struggles to organise things in general or clean things up due to lack of mobility and energy which can be cause by various disabilities and disorders.

Severe hoarding can cause numerous issues, from health complications due to lack of hygiene or injuries from lack of space, to worsening already present mental health disorders and disabilities, it can also affect those around the person with the hoarding disorder.

As it hopefully is obvious, it heavily relates to consumption and production as hoarding literally is activaly participating in consumerism and production of the things that are being hoarded, and it also 'produces' various issues as mentioned.

(Source of image linked, using this as an example image)

Now continuing on, the things that have inspired me how to visually showcase hoarding, are things like decora fashion, which although partaking in such fashion in of itself is not an act of hoarding, the maximalist nature of it mirrors the nature of what hoarding can look like.

The fashion itself is a subgenre of Japanese alternative fashion, a way to rebel against conforming to society in a colourful and youthful, accessory filled manner, it has also been a way to reclaim one's childhood since the fashion often includes accessorising and dressing after childhood nostalgic items and childhood fictional characters, which in my opinon can also be a form of comfort for those with childhood trauma, those who were forced to grow up too quickly, as well as to rebel against the idea that adulthood can't have anything childish about it.

To me in a way some forms of hoarding can relate to this fashion style as it can also be a form of coping from childhood trauma and clinging to past nostalgia desperately to cope, to me they mirror each other as decora fashion can be a fairly healthy fashion style as it takes a lot of time and effort and even self care to be able to carry out the style, while hoarding is an incredibly unhealthy way of collecting things, they essentially have similar aspects but are done in opposite sides of healthy and unhealthy.

And that's what makes me want to combine the two in my art pieces, showing the beauty and vibrancy of decora fashion and showing the effects and tragedy of real hoarding, in a way it is also a statement on how often the pretty things we see and put out, especially on social media, are hiding the tragedies and horrors behind it.

In a way that's what capitalism does, and that also relates to consumption and production!

It all connects, art whether you want it or not to can always find many ways to make a political message, isn't that wonderful? How powerful we can be as artists, able to have impacts with our art.

(Example of Decora Fashion, Instagram of person above included)

What about artists that inspire me and works of art that I find relates in some ways to my ideas? Well unfortunately our class was recommended to do research about said artists through the library but due to being sick I'm unable to access all the books there, but that doesn't mean I don't know any artitst at all!

And well all the artitsts that inspire me most are contemporary, most of which can be found through their social medias, so let me tell you about some of my favourites who I think relate to the ways I want to make my art for this project!

Someone who I've consistently followed and felt inspired by is Yuu Miyashita's work, a japanese singer and artist, often making his own album art and at times animating his own music videos, his work, the fluidity in his animation, the use of light and colour, the thin line work, it all just is so etheral to me and the amount of emotions his work evokes in me, it's hard to say exactly how he directly influences my work, but I know I heavily take after him in some ways, at times it might just be the emotions I feel from his work is all that affects me but to me it's still important.

(Example of Yuu Miyashita's art work)

Now another artist who I really like and I think for this project I take heavy inspiration for the vibrant colour used in their artworks, as I envion my work pieces to become full of colour is known as @/nounoknown is another Japanese illustrator, known most for making art for vocaloid songs, specifically GUMI, seeing their works on youtube thumbnails for music videos is something that brings me a lot of nostalgia as someone who grew up listening to this type of music, and I think that's an important aspect that relates to the themes I'm exploring, specifically the childhood aspect.

(Example of nounoknown's art work)

There are many more artists that inspire me but I think I'll leave it here for now, I really hope you enjoy this more research based post, it is quite long! I hope to feel better soon so I can get back to college to create more physical works!