Blessed|Blursed|Cursed

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The Computer’s Hallucination

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What do computers see

while we leave them be

and on the couch we watch TV?

Resulting video from the audio mix and a model weight form styleGAN, my dataset, and birds.

Resulting video from the audio mix and a model weight form styleGAN, my dataset, and landscapes.

I used a base google colab notebook, VisionaryArtGenerator, altered it and then generated 7000 images from the input. Using those images as a dataset, I used a style GAN to create a .pkl file to input into another google colab notebook called Lucid Sonic Dreams.

VisionaryArtGenerator-https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1Zny3nZwzkGqzVd-PBQaEK48w9HC2SaL_?usp=sharing

Original .pkl to start the process-https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Vsx7oGYhGchjHyOs2UOzofaNNULsc3yJ/view?usp=sharing

https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1T6D9Dkjak19tiynIEBIIk4ozZbJd1yFN?usp=sharing

https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1T6D9Dkjak19tiynIEBIIk4ozZbJd1yFN?usp=sharing

Sample of dataset.
Sample of dataset.
Audio source files.
Audio source files.
I trained the dataset on two different models, this the start of the landscape model.
I trained the dataset on two different models, this the start of the landscape model.
This is the output of the model trained with the dataset.
This is the output of the model trained with the dataset.
This time I trained the model on birds.
This time I trained the model on birds.
Output form the birds model.
Output form the birds model.
LandscapeToGod process video
LandscapeToGod latent space walk.
BirdToGod process video.
BirdToGod latent space walk.

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BONUS ROUND

I used the same process as above with the audio I used for Not A Dream and this is what came out… 

Adrfit_in_the_Ocean_Cover

Do Machines Hallucinate?

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Yes, machines hallucinate, proof of that is in the video below. I used a few tools to make the machines produce some hallucinations. 

Lucid Sonic Dreams by Mikael Alafriz, Google Colab Notebook can be found at https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1Y5i50xSFIuN3V4Md8TB30_GOAtts7RQD?usp=sharing

Visionary Art model weight by Jeremy Torman can be found at https://www.reddit.com/r/deepdream/comments/leqwxs/stylegan2ada_pickle_file_in_comments_with_colab/

Not A Dream

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TRIGGER WARNING

Flashing Images, odd, dark, unsettling, computer generated (GAN)

I did not set out to make this video unsettling however, that is what it became. I can’t come to a reason why the end result feel unsettling, just kind of a visceral reaction. A data set with 500 images of people from my life were used in a styleGAN through Runwayml, this resulted in two latent spacewalk videos which I then layered over each other. I also included the 500 images from the data set, which are played in rapid succession. This again was layered over the two latent spacewalk videos. A variety of opacities and effects were used to make the final edit. 

For the audio track I recorded the words “isolation”, “distance”, separation”, “time”, and “being”. Using Audacity I cut the words, looped them, stretched, adjusted pitch, and speed. The end result sounds very mechanical and dark.

The end result feels like it was pulled from the minds of the characters in Harlan Ellison’s short story ” I have no mouth, and I must scream”. 

I’m not in a terribly good mood after having watched/created it, viewer discretion is advised.

TRIGGER WARRNING

FLASHING IMAGES

UNSETTLING

DARK

VIDEO BELOW

 

TRIGGER WARRNING FLASHING IMAGES UNSETTILING

Screen_Cap

Proposal for a midterm

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Thoughts of isolation and separation stir on this day, 40 revolutions around our sun. This doesn’t really change anything although it does make me reflect on time itself. For my midterm my intention is to play with the feeling of time through sound and video. 

I have recorded the words “isolation”, “distance”, “separation”, and “time” and have started the process of manipulating them in Audacity. Trying to remove the meaning from the word by altering the sound and in some cases making the sounds unrecognizable as words. The intention is to be able to play back the newly creates sounds at varying speeds to change the feeling of time associated with it.

These new sounds will be played with video of past memories, a collection or catalogue of images in from my life. Using Runwayml the hope is to again distort the images to the blurred realization of a memory. Hopefully the combination of sound and images will produce some kind of time dysphoria.

Volume UP
Too_Cute_3_orig

Too Cute?

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Too Cute?

I’m not really sure what I have done here. Cute? Horror? Bazar? I really don’t know. My wife walked by as I was making this image and her response was “Ewww!! What the hell is that?!?!” To which I responded “Isn’t it cute?”, she walked away. The oversized respirator adds to the horror aspect of the image, the large eyes that have a very fuzzy or milky quality to them, the pupil formed only partially all at to the uneasy feeling I get when I look at it. Big eyes are cute right? Like many of Mark Ryden’s paintings….wait, are those cute , or just creepy??

This image may haunt me and when I send it to my brother, the photo of is his son, he most certainly will never forgive me. But on some level isn’t that the point? To create work that challenges the viewer in some way, to make the viewer walk away and think about it and at some point in the future return to the mental image. 

Is it worse to view the image as an on looker or be the image’s creator? After all you know what went into making it, but it does ask questions about how and why your creative process led you to the outcome. I will probably put this image deep within my archives so I don’t accidently come upon it.

Cover_Image_Liminal-2

through

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awakened from a dream,…no a nightmare,…or a thought I’m not really sure, in a place familiar and alien at the same time…my room, lived in, but not by me…the door before me is open…i move through it…the space seems to shift around me as i proceed inward…till the space is completely unrecognizable as anything familiar…the longer i move…the stranger and less finite the spaces become…morphing…changing…unstructured…in the end i am standing…alone…on a street..i don’t know…in a body i don’t yet recognize…

Divination_5g

Read the Heads

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My bloodline flows from Sicily, both sides of my family are Sicilian, all of them. Stregheria is the term used for witchcraft in Italy. My mother has always said that she is a witch, and I have always believed her. Many times a child I would find piles of salt outside of doors and windows, I was told that was the remains of evil trying to enter the house. To this day I’m not sure if that was my mom’s ploy to keep us kids from reeking havoc in the house or if it was evil actually being stopped form entering the house. Either way I still have a propensity to believe that it was evil being stopped. Over the years my sense that witch’s blood flows through my veins has become more and more vivid.

Fava beans are said to carry a great deal of luck and were used much like tea leaves, bones, or dust for reading the future path of an inquiring person. Fava beans have a very distinct look light reddish-brown in color with a very dark brown small line at one end.

Read the Heads

Heads are all over the place in Sicily. The most prominent is on the Sicilian flag. The head of Medusa sits in the center of the flag, an amulet guarding from bad luck symbolizing a mistrust of fate. The whole symbol referred to as a Trinacria, was often used to ward off evil from homes usually placed behind doors so the evil would turn to stone before entering. 

The other head found with ease in Sicily is the Moorish Head, usually made of ceramic and extravagantly decorated. The lore behind these heads varies but generally follows a tail similar to this excerpt from Times of Sicily:

The original folk tale behind the ceramic heads comes from Palermo and tells of a Saracen merchant who falls in love with a beautiful local girl. Together they start a passionate love affair, until the girl discovers her lover has a wife and children waiting for him in his homeland. In a fit of jealously and rage she murders him in his sleep, cutting off his head, so that her lover would stay with her forever. The girl uses the head as a vase to grow a beautiful basil plant. Others seeing her flourishing plant, forge themselves the colourful clay head pots in an attempt to recreate the bountiful fertility.

Full text here https://www.timesofsicily.com/truth-behind-sicilian-ceramic-moorish-heads/

Read the Heads
Read the Heads
Read the Heads
Read the Heads
Read the Heads
Read the Heads
Read the Heads

So when it came time to create an artwork while using a a divination practice I took the ideas from Sicilian heritage and my obsession with action figures and combined them to create a new divination practice that ultimately became the artwork itself. A series of 13 photos were taken of 14 heads. Each toss of the heads yields a different random pattern form the heads. I then layered these photos and applied a variety of transformations to achieve a series of gifs. Here are the original 13 photos without any editing.

Read the Heads
Read the Heads
Read the Heads
Read the Heads
Read the Heads
Read the Heads
Read the Heads
Read the Heads
Read the Heads
Read the Heads
Read the Heads
Read the Heads
Read the Heads
IMG_4191

A Cursory Search

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The below gallery contains both found and observed images that I find to be Blessed|Blursed|Cursed, mostly of the Cursed variety. At this point I’m still uncertain about what my definition of cursed media is but I think these images do a fair job at helping me to have a better understanding of what it takes for media to be cursed.