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.