bumble_b-TextSynthesis

Narrative Device seemed to be down, so these are both from InferKit:

“I really want to get my nails done tomorrow. I wonder what color and design I’ll get… I’m thinking pink, of course. Now, to sleep so I can get up early for work tomorrow.

I’ve had a headache all day. I went to work, ate my lunch, and went back to my desk.

It has just kept on hurting. I am tired and I’m hungry. But mostly, I’m in pain. I took Tylenol and my left arm has a numb feeling. I’m just hoping it goes away soon… Otherwise I’m going to call in sick.

The worst part is, I’d rather get my nails done and feel pretty than lay on my bed and cry. (And be bored.) (I have work to do, too.)

Today, I got up at 5: 30, had breakfast, and left at 6: 30.

I was out of there by 7: 45.

I got to work at 8: 15.

I don’t usually get to work that early.

I had to leave at 4, but I got a lot done today.”

I gotta say, I was really disappointed that the nails weren’t talked about again after the first generated sentence, so I was thrilled when they made a reappearance!

“I just turned 21, and I’m going to a trivia night at a bar for Friends (the TV show). I LOVE the TV show Friends!

I know most people who love the show don’t do that whole nostalgia thing.

But I do.

I think it’s hilarious how much they’re all still together.

They’re practically cousins.

On the show, every episode begins with them thinking they’re the last people on Earth.

And they find out the opposite is true.

They can’t believe they’re still friends after so many years.”

I tried giving it something very specific, like a TV show that already exists, to see if it knew anything about it. Clearly it did not! Lol

bumble_b-ArtBreeder

Since I’ve already used ArtBreeder, I tried out ProsePainter. I actually really hated ArtBreeder last year, so I’m excited that I really enjoyed this one!

Here was the starting image I used (one of their defaults):

And here is the final image:

These are the prompts I used and where I used them to make it look like this:

“radiant fireworks of diamonds” on the background

“red demon eyes” on her eyes

“long black hair” on her headscarf

“blue lips” on her lips

“dark brown unibrow” on the gap between her eyebrows

“gross green boogers” under her nostrils

“big flowers” on her forehead

Again, I am absolutely too tame when it comes to these projects and only ever find myself interested in altering the features that are already there with things that could be there, like “red eyes” on eyes and “blue lips” on lips. I tried branching out a little with the flowers on her forehead and really enjoyed that result.

bumble_b-Pix2Pix

I’m very much a rule follower, so it honestly didn’t occur to me until just now to do funny stuff and see what it generates. I really focused on trying to make them as realistic as possible, and I’m honestly really happy with how they turned out, especially the shoes.

bumble_b-LookingOutwards03

Last year, I chose the Simpsons vs. Family Guy project (which I wrote about here) that I still maintain is the coolest freaking thing ever! But in the interest of variety and learning, of course, I found another project that I really enjoyed, which is Max Braun’s StyleGAN trained on eBoy’s database of pixel art.

Basically, he fed a bunch of images to a machine, then told the machine to make its own of them! Since I’m a sucker for all things pixel art, this really stuck out to me artistically. You can read his documentation here.

I really enjoy old Flash games, and this reminded me of them a lot! I just love the old/2000s pixel art style. If I ever get the chance to make a video game, I want it to look just like this!

bumble_b-LookingOutwards04

No Fun (2010)

Link to project with video, pictures, and more details

The project: A Chatroulette performance piece, where they simulated a suicide and recorded people’s reactions. This video artwork is then staged on a laptop on an inflatable mattress for people to see.

Why I found it intriguing: I found it intriguing in that I absolutely despise this project LOL. I don’t know why anyone thought this was a good idea for art. I’m not sure if they were going for a What Would You Do? style piece where they wanted to get people’s reactions to find humanity in this world, but the medium they used just makes no sense for that. The point of Chatroulette is that you’re paired with a random person anywhere in the world. You don’t know who they are, where they are, anything about them. What the hell are you supposed to do if you see someone who has committed suicide other than be traumatized and literally have no ability to do anything about it at all? You can’t call the police, you can’t help in anyway, and then all you’re left with is trauma and guilt. The fact that these people are unknowing participants to this just really rubs me the wrong way. I just find it really disturbing and for no reason at all.

I guess, if I was trying to understand, I can see the point of this artwork being that websites like Chatroulette are just overall “No Fun” and able to turn pretty messed up pretty quickly in these ways where you’re totally unable to help, but I just can’t really get behind the fact that they’d subject a bunch of people to this.

The Chatroulette project shown in class, where people’s faces were turned upside down, was so harmless and fun, whereas this one just seems somewhat unethical to me. But, I’m open to being proven wrong on that.

bumble_b-facereadings

The most striking and disheartening thing about “Against Black Inclusion in Facial Recognition” is the realization that the system itself is so broken that people would rather face the racism of machines unable to detect their faces than face the racism that would occur if the machines were able to detect their faces. The fact that people would rather not be included at all to protect themselves… it really makes you think.

I really enjoy Last Week Tonight, so any excuse to watch it I will take! In one part, there’s a Russian TV presenter demonstrating the app FindFace, under the scenario where you see a pretty girl at a coffee shop and are too nervous to approach her. Apparently, all you have to do is take a photo of her and wait for the FindFace results that will bring up her “profile.” Whether that’s Instagram, Facebook, or FindFace’s own hypothetical social media platform (I don’t know), it is TERRIFYING! I mean, what a way to empower the creeps of this world!

As technology advances in these ways, it should really only be in the hands of ethical people… whom I don’t really think exist among the elites who would be making and accessing this technology. In fact, this reminds me of a demonstration of deep fakes, where whichever company that had developed it (someone recognizable like Microsoft or Sony or something, but I can’t remember) showed how after getting a bunch of samples of someone’s voice, you could type in whatever text you wanted and it could be said perfectly in that person’s voice. They said that, though they had developed the technology well, they would not be releasing it to the public… for obvious reasons!

bumble_b-Reading03

1. This may be a pretty obvious and elementary take on the question of effective complexity, but cliches are cliches for a reason… If, in grade school, you ever did the wintertime craft of folding paper and cutting out pieces to make a snowflake, you might remember that every single one came out looking completely different and unique. Hell, I still do it sometimes for fun when I’m bored, and I’m always entertained by the outcome. I think that’s a good indication that it’s effectively complex.

Since it’s human made and not generated, I do think it sits more toward order than random, especially considering that you can probably try and recreate a pattern by cutting a new one out in the same way you previously did. But, if you are trying to create different ones every time, you will!

And, for the age of technology, there is also a Tik Tok filter where you can make a snowflake pattern using your nose, and it’ll unfold into something unique! Here’s an example of the filter in use.

2. A lot of the problems that are brought up regarding generative art really make me think… especially “The Problem of Authenticity.” This is one I’ve seen debated quite a bit: “Given that it is in part created by an unemotional and unthinking system, is generative art really art at all?” My opinion on this subject also takes into account “The Problem of Locality, Code, and Malleability”: “Is the art in the object, the system, the code, or something else entirely?”

I believe that the person coding it and the machine making it are partners in the artwork. Of course it’s art! The machine wouldn’t be making that art unless it was told to make that art by an artist who had an idea, a plan. And of course, the artist wouldn’t have any art to show if the machine didn’t carry out their instructions. Any time I code something generative, I have a vision, and I add in the randomness that makes it generative. The machine carrying it out every time is my medium.

bumble_b-LookingOutwards02

Zach Lieberman

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I find the colorful trail that the blob leaves behind really satisfying! It kind of reminds me of the trail that old Windows XP computers would leave behind when they were not responding and you dragged the window around the screen!

Manolo Gamboa Naon

Link to project I really enjoy this project because it reminds me a lot of today… the first day of spring… Persian New Year! I see grass and flowers and beautiful lively color, and it makes me excited for warm weather.

Sofia Crespo

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I couldn’t really tell you why this project caught my eye, but I guess I just really enjoy the glitchy/retro feel along with the pattern of something as random as a parrot!

bumble_b-timepiece

Sketch on OpenProcessing Sketch on p5.js

Note: You have to press play once yourself on OpenProcessing for some reason. On p5.js it autoplays right on startup.

My clock tells the time of day by playing a song on SoundCloud with that title. I achieved this with a really simple code that pulls a SoundCloud embed code from a 2D array where the first index is the hour and the second index is the minute. So basically, I have 12 arrays each with 60 values. I wasn’t sure what to expect when making this clock, but it reminds me a lot of the lofi music lives on YouTube that help people study. Though the songs never make it past one minute before switching over to a new one unlike the lives that play full songs, I think the feature is a really interesting way to experience the passage of time while working or chilling! Some of the songs have lyrics that match their title, like “It’s 12:43 right now and I can’t sleep” or something like that, which is also a cool way to hear what time it is. I mentioned that timekeeping devices that engage my sense of hearing are my favorite (cuckoo clocks!), and I’m really happy with this exploration of that!

I originally planned on using Spotify, but the Spotify embed didn’t really serve my needs properly. It looked ugly, made the user sign in before listening, only played a 30 second snippet of the song, and wouldn’t even autoplay! It was a nightmare. After some troubleshooting and research, I found that SoundCloud worked a lot better and had the features I had envisioned!

Since I’m so busy this month, I tried to keep this as simple as possible, which totally worked! It took me just about 15 minutes to come up with the structure and make it work. The only flaw with my brilliant plan… I severely underestimated how long it would take to hand pick over 700 songs! There are also a lot of bad songs out there… like, straight up BAD… that I had to sift through! But, I picked songs that I found good and interesting (even if they weren’t my taste). From Russian rap, to Spanish screamo, to just straight up NOISE sometimes, I got to explore really cool genres and pick a good variety for my clock.

With that comes my big disclaimer… a lot of these songs are explicit, so beware. There’s lots of vulgar rap music and songs in languages that I can’t speak so I don’t really know what they’re saying. It feels really irresponsible to make something with pieces of other people’s work that I can’t fully listen to with my time crunch, so if you listen to my clock and hear something that’s not okay, please let me know so I can replace it ASAP!

On the other hand, I did get to pick some songs that were really meaningful, like a tribute to the artist’s friend who passed or a beautiful song about the impact of police brutality. There are funny songs, calming songs, scary (SCREAMING) songs, and I really love that the most about it!

bumble_b-Loop

Sketch on OpenProcessing

Last year, I made a looping gif of a bee circling a jar of honey. I originally wanted to do something similar for this project, with a fish swimming around in a fish tank. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a whole lot of time, so I gave up and decided to quickly just make a circle (or rect, rather, but you get what I mean) that gets bigger and smaller. Once I made it, I felt it was a little TOO easy and plain, so I just made the colors switch every time the rectangle reached its minimum and maximum size.

The loop definitely works seamlessly, but it is very boring and plain, which I’m a little sad about! I did the best I could with the very limited time I have though, so I’m glad it at least meets the requirements! One of my goals was to make the loop seamless without using animLoop, which I did do!

(An obviously outdated original sketch)