Sync-Ception

Seyyid, Somaya & Leah

AI is often portrayed as a presence that threatens to erase humanity and creativity, contributing to fears of its unnoticed, ubiquitous integration into everyday life.
Our project delves into this narrative by blending AI-generated and real footage in an interactive webpage, enhancing the blurred lines between AI and human influence.
By allowing users to engage with AI in this context, we aim to evoke feelings of unease and challenge the audience to consider how AI’s presence shapes
their perceptions of reality and creativity. Ultimately, our project reminds the audience that humans are behind AI’s creation and that AI, as a tool, can enhance the human experience
by evoking new emotions and reflections. By engaging with AI in this way, users are prompted to reflect on how AI contributes to our sense of humanness rather than replacing it.

Visit our website here: Sync-Ception 

Welcome to my FINAL blog for Augmenting Creativity.

I: Reflection

Completing the project was the biggest sigh of relief. I didn’t realise just how long it would take to complete and as a slight perfectionist I had to pull an all nighter to get it ready in time to my standard for the exhibition. I then proceeded to forget the correct time for the exhibition and was late by an hour. Yikes. So unfortunately I didn’t get to see everyone’s initial reactions but from what my teammates told me, the reaction was very positive! So i am satisfied. It was great to see everyone gathered together to present their work. I didn’t get a chance to check out everyone’s work yet since I was a bit delirious on the day of the exhibition (I was running on fumes, I looked like I didn’t care about anything which was not the case I swear) but I the few works I have checked out were really great and I just love seeing the way everyone approaches the project in a unique way. Daniel also did a great job with the lighting and mood of the room. Really great vibes all around.

II: Manifesto Statements

1. AI should never be weaponized to misinform or deceive individuals within society, especially for vulnerable individuals with limited awareness of these tools, as this destroys the trust these individuals have with technology and undermines informed decision-making.
2. AI and AI generated works should be made to prioritize the lives and well-being of humans, and respect their autonomy, acting as a tool to assist humans rather than replace not only their work but their judgements and interactions.
3. AI created works should operate with full transparency, and creators should be held accountable for the impact of their creations as well as the origins and purpose of all relevant content.

III: Thanks

I just wanted to pass my thanks to everyone involved in the studio throughout the semester, including the guest lecturers. Special thanks to Daniel for putting together this studio and broadening our perspectives every week in relation to AI. I have always laboured with  academic writing and research and now I feel a bit more confident in my skills thanks to the skills we have been taught in class. Another thank you to all the students over the semester I have worked with and talked to every week. Lastly, thank you to Somaya and Leah for being the best partners in crime for our major project! Wouldn’t want to do it with anyone else.

That’s all folks – Until next time.

Part 1: The Process

Working on our major projects has been quite the process. I have never participated in as many group meetings for a project as I have for this one. With all these meetups I found out that I definitely work better alone, in terms of how much content I get done, BUT grouping together allows us all to get our thoughts together and get on the same page where we might miscommunicate through online services.

The project we decided to create, being a browser with multiple selectable tabs really enabled each of us to contribute our own vibe and ideas into the project without needing to compromise. I loved seeing what each of us wanted to include in the project and seeing it come to life. Making sure all of our output from the AI tools was consistent with each other was extremely important and using online file sharing services like google drive was vital to this project.

I forget how it can be nice to work in a group sometimes (after previous experiences) and this was definitely one of my favourite experiences in a group project despite the HUGE amount of time it took to create this.

My teammates often encouraged me when I wasn’t feeling confident in my work. They were also able to take over the more mundane tasks where I struggle such as documentation and organizing. I work in a very chaotic manner so to have others balance me out was helpful.

As someone who is very used to taking the lead in projects it was nice to have partners willing to take equal responsibility for a project and in the end we ended up with a product we can be proud of.

Part 2: The Idea

Recently I have come across the idea that the age of truth is dead. With AI taking its position in the world, I really believe this statement to be true. This will be part of my thesis statement.

With my project I did want to encapsulate that idea that anything can be real or false and it’s hard to tell. As everyone at the exhibition will know that this was made with AI, I wondered if I showed our project to external parties if they would realise just how much of the project was generated with AI.

Conversely, will anyone be able to differentiate what’s real? We did include some real art pieces on the Elysian Art Gallery page and I don’t know if anyone will realise it was made by humans among the rest of the AI art.

Unfortunately I feel I wasn’t able to fully convey my thesis statement in the project due to time constraints. Since the scope of the project was fairly large, I didn’t have time to edit more paranormal clips combining real and AI generated footage together. On the other hand, this is something I can still work on after the project so it is not the end of the world.

It still does a pretty good job if i do say so myself 🙂

AI in the art and creative industries, being relatively new, can be nerve-wracking to use at times. Personally, with anything I’ve created using generative AI or similar tools, I feel that once it’s known it uses AI, the reaction to my work would be underwhelmed or even agitated from the other party. While (in my opinion) using AI tools does not require nearly as much skill as traditional art forms, it is still quite a process to go from an idea in your head to having something you can feel proud of. A stigma around the use of AI in the creative industry is still very present with other amateur/new artist and I wonder how long it will be before the tool is mostly embraced by individual . It is however already VERY integrated into most large businesses these days. It could just be a loud minority vs silent majority situation.

While putting together my portfolio for my exchange process, I hesitantly decided to avoid including works that contain AI generated content out of fear that it would not be received well by the school as the school I was applying for was a more traditional art school. This hesitation around AI is probably something I am not alone with. Of course with everything there will be people who criticize it and vice versa. It could be possible that more exposure to working with AI is needed for it to become less stigmatized in the creative field.

AI work still requires a lot of creativity to make work so it shouldn’t necessarily be automatically disqualified by people as being low level work, a sentiment I see quite often online. However I have read a comment thread online speaking about how AI tools would be the end of amateurism. I don’t really think this would be the case. People who don’t bother to learn how to use AI effectively will always be around so that people who do make use of the technology will always be at an advantage.

It makes me wonder if AI has been implemented into schools as a class yet (below university level). Prior to this studio I rarely ever used AI tools but now I often find myself turning to AI to help me with tasks where I get lost.

I have also noticed the presence of AI tools become common place. Whenever I search on Google for a question, the first answer is one generated by Google’s own AI. It is very interesting to see AI slowly be integrated in just about every aspect of our lives in a very open manner/not having it hidden in the background.

It is the final stretch of our time with this studio unfortunately, but it is not the end yet so I will save the goodbyes for then.

Recently, my full focus for this studio has just been on our major project. My team members, Leah, Somaya, and I have been toiling away this week, working on our project.
We are all very excited to see our vision come to life and the way we have formatted our major project really allows for each one of us to add multiple aspects that represents our views and inspirations in creating our media piece.

We gathered for our first out of class meeting on Wednesday and spent a good 5+ hours finalizing our concepts, details and making sure to add our own flair to each section of our work. It was a great environment,
especially realising how while I may have ideas for one part of our projects, my team members can fill in with their own great ideas for other parts where I start to blank. We have a super strong base now to start working with and have begun to start generating our AI aspects.

I also can’t wait to see what the other groups come out with, everyone seems to have strong concepts and a vision.

In class we were able to experiment and learn a multitude of new equipment that I have not previously encountered. I am not sure what the camera is called but it is pretty big and there’s so many buttons, so it was a bit confusing, but in the end I think I have a basic grasp now of how to use it and the lapel mic. I actually now want a lapel mic but then I remembered how expensive equipment can be. We also had our first online class of the semester where we learned a lot of tips and tricks.

I won’t lie, I get super distracted at home which is why I always go to class. The online class helped remind me why its beneficial to attend campus but it was still very helpful. I actually did not know there were screenwriting programs available which is funny considering I did partake in a screenwriting studio last semester.

This week and last week I’ve really started noticing just how much content online utilizes AI voiceovers and now I question what other aspects of it was generated by AI. I really don’t prefer AI voiceovers and it has become something I unintentionally listen for now. In my eyes it does cheapen the effort of the content in a way and I think this is something a lot of people feel which could change in the future, but AI generated content often does leave the impression that the work wasn’t made with passion and instead may be just a simple content farm for views and revenue.

This week we had our presentations on Monday. At first I was fairly uninspired while preparing for this as I didn’t really have my own sort of thesis and key idea yet. After taking a while to think about what my idea was, I wanted to come up with something a bit unique rather than simply AI and its connection to art, not to discredit that, but I find interest in the more niche aspects of different areas and I choose to focus on how AI is can be used as a tool for misinformation and deception in society. While I may seem critical of AI, I think our class focuses on mostly the positive aspects of generative AI so I decided to do something a bit left field in that regard. It ties in with my major project as my group plans to create a piece containing multiple different aspects of societal issues and concerns from politics to conspiracies. With this in mind, we do have to be careful in creating anything too controversial but I still want it to be thought provoking and I know I am going to have so much fun developing this project. The AI we plan to use will mostly be in imagery and voice models of certain figures but we don’t have the fine details planned out yet.

We also had a guest lecture with Prof McCosker. It was quite insightful and helpful especially with the discussions we had in class. Another student, Noah, made a great metaphor for what working with generative AI feels like. Whack-a-mole. You nail one thing down just for another to pop up and it always seems to work like that with AI tools. Both satisfying and frustrating when it happens.

Something interesting I found this week actually came by me by complete surprise. I am an avid listener of the K-Pop music genre and I was taking a look at the music video for a newly debuted girl group. To my complete shock, their music video has AI generated video in it and it looked quite similar to the output we get from Runway. If I am going to be completely honest, it was very poorly done and made it seem cheap. Reception to it’s use is utterly negative. This is could be a concern for generative AI. When it is utilised in poor taste for millions to see, it sort of cheapens and makes AI look uncredible. If it was used in smaller doses with better transitions it could have been fine and went unnoticed but this is a great example of how NOT to use generative AI, especially when your newly debuted group has had a lot of traction. It not only made AI look bad but the group itself seem a bit low budget.

Here is the link timestamped at one of the AI generated scenes.

First week back! I worked on and submitted my Assignment #2 work this week (late) and it was quite the process. Initially I was actually really demotivated after trying out so many of my ideas in Runway. Nothing was coming out the way I envisioned it and I tried so many times with so many different story ideas I had. I gave up for a while feeling burnt out that nothing was fulfilling my vision. This is sort of where generative AI can be great but also lacking. I wouldn’t be able to create these pieces without it since I don’t have the art skills but then again it doesn’t follow what I see in my mind’s eye which is really important to me. I have strong visions and a sense of what I want my media project to look like, feel like and sound like but oh my god can it be a tough cookie to get the right output.

Eventually I stuck down with one of my ideas, something I never tried before, a sort of mini anime episode. Honestly after getting past the initial turmoil I started really getting into it. Sometimes the slow speed of Runway did ruin my steam though but it was also an anticipating wait to see what comes out. I began enjoying creating my media piece, seeing the pieces and vision come together was so satisfying. I did have to cut some corners where the output was lacking. I used black screen moments with sound which I thought still worked as it kind of added a what will happen / tension moment through out (when it wasn’t used as a transition that is). I could’ve rushed my project at the end to get it in by the submission time but I wanted to feel proud of my work so I decided to eat the late penalty and keep toiling on until the early hours of the morning and finish off the next day. Putting the finishing touches really made me feel like I put together something really entertaining that I would watch for fun, and I did watch it over about ten times after finishing it. Overall while it initially was tough to get through the hard parts, the payoff was so worth it and it showed me working with AI really can be a process too and aids in media making especially where I couldn’t do it myself.

This week we also had Kate Geck as a guest lecturer in our class and I found it very inspiring. A lot of her work resonated with me and it was really new for me to see how AI can be implemented into physical forms. To me when I think about AI works, I only think about like digital art and video, but seeing her tapestries and art exhibitions was so eye opening. I also love the colourful nature of her work. I have to create a portfolio soon and it definitely gave me inspiration for new ways I can create art. Art doesn’t have to fit into a category and it doesn’t have to portray a certain characteristic to be seen as true art as long as it means something to you!

First piece, Shadow Tresses, 2024, Liang Luscombe. In this piece it depicted almost witch like hag hands and tree branches through the shadows of the canvas it was being displayed upon. I had no idea what the material was at first, maybe some type of leather? I even thought maybe that’s what dried out human skin looks like at one point. Upon reading the description panel, it is Kombucha leather which I have never heard of before, but I am assuming its an ethical type of leather. I thought it was quite cool though and was a great canvas for the artwork. I wonder how artist decide on the material they are going to use. It was immediately my favourite artwork in the exhibition, hidden away in its own corner away from everything else. Maybe it was the inner child in me? It almost seemed like a creepy children’s story come to life in the best way. Maybe it was just me being easily amused by something simple because it was moving, I am not sure… To be honest, I didn’t really feel anything besides wonder and intrigue looking at it. I find it one of my faults. I just like looking for art for what is visually stimulating or pretty without ever really caring about the deep thought behind it. Sometimes it makes me wonder if I am truly artistic. I get bored easily when viewing art, but this piece did keep my attention the longest. In fact, the second thing that kept my attention the longest was the pretty hanging lights which weren’t really art pieces. Looking behind the artwork and seeing all the intricate pieces playing their role to create the art was so interesting. You don’t often think about how much effort goes into these things. My only question is where AI comes into this art. I just realised that the artwork I found most connected to was the art work that had the least amount of AI involved and the most amount of real moving parts, physically there for me to see. I realise all my favourite artworks were more physical pieces compared to things through a screen or flat writing. The lighting of this specific art was really dark and moody and the closed of nature of it added to the atmosphere.

The second art work I found intriguing was the four changing panels, Nobody has real friends anymore, The gunman gives ‘pop music’ a new meaning, life sucks in bear country, This is where humans will move when we destroy earth, 2016. I was also wondering what this material was and it was lenticular print, which I also had never heard of before interestingly enough. I don’t seem to know much about the unique ways art can be displayed. I found this one cool because depending on where you stand, the words you see on the panels changed, kind of like how the way someone views something or the place they come from can change their view or the way they see things. It was amusing to see myself and other students walking backwards and forwards together to try to see the words differently. I wish society could do the same and try to see things from different angles rather than black or white. The art was also black and white though. I enjoy interactive artwork like this. To make me move and use my body to appreciate something is to make me moved. This piece of artwork was rather small in size in regard to each individual panel, but it felt like a larger piece because of the space it took up. You could really focus on it despite the other nearby art, specifically the rather loud physical piece that I actually couldn’t find the name for. The lighting also played a big role in this.

Overall, it was an enjoyable experience, and I hope I can one day learn to appreciate the deeper meaning and ideas behind artwork perhaps. If I never do learn it then perhaps its not for me to view art and the world in that way but rather from my own wonderous mindset, to only see the beauty in everything.

This week we started off with the AI prompting battle in class! It was really fun and I got a chance to work with students I hadn’t previously spoken to before. It was interesting to work with new peers because their thought process was so different to my own. I thought the ideas they came up with were very out there compared to my own. I find my own creativity when I’m given a time limit is restricted compared to when I am free to wonder. However with the use of AI, I can start to take more risk with the work I create. In fact now I have been using AI quite a lot more than I had been in the past. I never actually actively used it often besides the previous studio I participated in but now It has become a valuable tool for me especially as I struggle with academic work and planning. It has helped me plan assignments and now I think I can try use it to assist me in my media creation as I haven’t yet tried that and our Assignment 2 would be the perfect time to practice.

All that random babbling aside, It was enjoyable to see everyone’s work and how each group approached the prompt differently, although at times, a lot of our work was quite similar despite not knowing what each other prompted. I was very competitive in wanting to win and in the end my group won and took home our mini trophies which I am very proud of. Bragging rights! Thanks to our very generous tutor/teacher (I still don’t know what to call it) Daniel for providing us with the prizes and snacks a long the way. Much Appreciated.

Assignment #2 is one I’m weary about as every attempt so far of creating a video through text to video generation has varied wildly making it quite difficult to create a consistent character and setting for the story. Hopefully I can still create something I can be proud of but we shall see.

Recently I have heard good things about Google’s AI assistant, Gemini. Well in terms of helping with more academic tasks which ChatGPT often gets wrong. It would make sense for Google to create a very capable AI assistant as they have access to the widest database on the internet through their platform, however ChatGPT has already been established as the top dog in AI. It will be interesting to see if any future applications can take out the top spot, either way, competition drives companies to do better so I’m all for it!

This week we focused on creative constraints when working with AI. I found that when I thought about creative constraints, I was thinking more in terms of personal creativity and ethics rather than limitations of software. The discussion in class helped me to realise more constraints than I had initially thought of. Working with AI to create media needs a lot more consideration than simply the prompts we feed into the generative AI. In the past, I would simply list the main features in the imagery/video that I wanted without much thought to other processes such as camera angles, lighting, mood and more. With our upcoming assignment I will be able to think about these conventions more closely to create an even more accurate image/video generation to what I see in my mind. I also learned that Runway actually has specific tools and directions to help guide the AI generation tool which is very useful.

We also had the practice prompt battle in preparation for our next class. I found this activity really enjoyable and I look forward to participating in class again on Monday. Hearing my peers ideas and coming to a unanimous decision can be difficult at times but it is a valuable skill to learn especially in the creative industry which is often collaborative that we are in.

A piece of news I learned about this week, despite it being a bit of old news, was how Apple is integrating ChatGPT into IOS 18 in Siri. I never really use Siri because I found it quite useless but now that ChatGPT will be assisting the software, maybe I will give it a try. In fact I have a Google Home and Amazon Echo in my room but I also find them quite useless except for the Echo tracking my deliveries and the Google Home only for weather and alarms. They were cheap so it isn’t a big loss but if the AI used in these products improves, especially with ChatGPT, I can see AI in my everyday life grow substantially compared to how much I use it now. While I obviously do use AI in my everyday life a lot without realising, I want to see more deliberate choices in my free will to choose to use AI. Until then I feel like AI will just remain an afterthought for me. I had only started to use ChatGPT semi regularly for the first time this year so I am a little late to the trend but I am starting to realise how useful these tools can be.