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wildsuncatchers · 4 months

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Wild Sun Catchers two years later: Thoughts on worldmaking with AI

Dreamin' and schemin' in the Aquatic Universe

I'm exploring worldmaking and worldbuilding more intentionally by framing my life (and it's one fluid frame out of many) within the context of living, traveling and dreaming in thee or a Aquatic Universe. I was doing this already, it's just that I'm now starting to imagine and articulate my experience with these particular words.

Mermaid Awakening in the desert

In 2022 my interest in mermaids took off! I started:

🐚 Researching mermaids across cultures

🐚 Wrote Wild Sun Catchers, which turned into a short animation thanks to Media Artist Jennifer Parker who is also a Professor and founding Director of the OpenLab Collaborative Research Center at the University of California, Santa Cruz

🐚 Made a mixed media collage called "Venus"

🐚Co-organized a digital merfolk happening

🐚 Participated in Asia Dorsey's Winter Herbal Immersion where we learn about herbal medicine for the kidneys and explore mermaid archetypes. This has been a big deal for me; to experience being a mermaid through plants, food as medicine and embodiment.

🐚Watching "The Little Mermaid" starring Halle Bailey

🐚 (Currently) Reading my first fictional book about mermaids called "Skin of the Sea"

🐚 Listening to The Merwomanist Podcast when I can.

Whew! So much mermaid goodness. And it's only the beginning!

Worldbuilding with AI

Photo Description: A desert-sea spiral (above) made of rocks and soil in my Grandma's backyard + sea shells, beach rocks, seaglass, mussel shells and sprinkles of sand from Fort Wadsworth in Staten Island and Beach 44 in Far Rockaway, Queens. My mermaid awakening (lol) started while I was living in the desert lands of Arizona.

And NOW, two years later, I spiral back to Wild Sun Catchers to continue to imagine and build this dreamy underwater world through AI (artificial intelligence). I used Night Cafe for this project using two art generation models; SDXL 1.0 which is "the state-of-the-art in open-source image generation" and NC Hyperreal, which "adds detail, vivid colors and a hyperrealistic style". My username is PiscesAI.

Photo Description: Elk Kelp in Channel Islands National Park

To be honest, searching for AI art generation websites has felt overwhelming. There are a lot of exciting options, and many are free with premium plans. The possibilities of AI are endless, but what about the terms and conditions? How will my personal data be used? I will admit, my excitement got the best of me and I started generating images on NightCafe without thoroughly investigating the platform. I say this because, although AI promises to change the world in massive and incredible ways (it already is), a lot of the conversation around AI is how to use it ethically, and there are many examples of how its been extractive (i.e. Lensa debalacle).

I've imagined bringing three stories about merfolk to life through film and photography, but I don't have the resources right now to see my visions through. AI is a digital tool I can use now to share how I'm imagining these long term, maybe life long stories I'm writing. But the question is, at what cost?

The AI images produced from Wild Sun Catchers are now out in the world. What will happen to them? Will my contribution be erased? Will people remember where the mermaid wearing Hibiscus flowers in her hair came from? Anyone in any field sharing anything could ask these questions. These are relevant questions. What traces of extraction are in the images I'm showing you on this website? How does the image generation work anyway?! I don't actually know. As I've said before, I'm okay with being a learner in public. I don't have all the answers now about AI, even as I share this website. I would like to go back to what contributes to the foundation of my water art practice, and that is "an activism of inquiry" which I learned from writer Bayo Akomolafe. AI needs an activism of inquiry, and I'm sure that's already happening.

What I do think would be helpful for AI users or creators is if AI platforms could have labels similar to "organic", "Non-GMO" or "Fair Trade" that speak to the platform's values, ethics and AI practices. I think this could help people feel informed and make choices.

Research on Artificial Intelligence (AI)

So far, and unfortunately, AI is proving to be a problematic technology for many different reasons. Here are a few links from my ongoing research:

The 15 Biggest Risks Of Artificial Intelligence

Experts Doubt Ethical AI Design Will Be Broadly Adopted as the Norm Within the Next Decade

Indigenous knowledges informing ‘machine learning’ could prevent stolen art and other culturally unsafe AI practices

It's important to remember the ways AI exist and could exist are designed by human beings. I notice that there's a lot of distrust of AI itself, and not toward the companies who design and use it to take and extract, especially it seems, without consent. I also notice that I hardly encounter information about people working to address the ethical issues, and I think adding this to my perspective will help me understand what's going on in the worlds of AI more fully.

Besides my complicated feelings about AI, I do find that generating images from text-based prompts is really fun. There are a lot of ways to worldbuild, and I want to see how AI helps me and you (?) imagine the characters I'm creating and the stories I'm writing. I want to worldbuild using multiple approaches, so AI isn't my primary or final mode of expression. Although AI is really cool, I still believe some of the greatest technologies are our bodies, imagination, understanding that we can create (without AI), and community, among other things. We can't forget this. Nothing can replace these things.

As I learn more about this technology, which is changing the world, I think the way I use AI in my worldmaking with mermaids will continue to change and evolve.

And Action! Six moments in Wild Sun Catchers

🎞 Hibiscus flowers growing underwater and oceanic hair rituals among the mer-community who live in a kelp forest in/near the Channel Islands in California

🎬 A photo of the woman who sails up and down the Pacific sailing goods from her ocean shop

📽 Memoryworkers hanging out and laughing together, who remember how the kelp forests were before they started getting sick

🎞 Thoughts on gender and age expressed through three different versions of merfolk generated from one text-based prompt.

🎬 Underwater and subtidal dreamscapes: The dreaming lives of mermaids in the Pacific and beyond

📽 The healing, regenerative and creative work people are doing related to kelp forests, seaweed and algae.

Enjoy!

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scholarstore-blog · 6 years

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Celebrating World Stationery Day - Why Journalling is good for you.

There's a constant and growing debate as to whether writing with hand is really necessary in today's day and age where we can use digital platforms for the same purposes.

The technological advances in the last decade or two have completed changed the way we look at stationery and it's need, be it personal use or professional.

However, while we keep debating about the need of hand written parchments in today's world, the conclusion would always be that we do need them. Be it to show the drawing of your kids to people by putting them up on the refrigerator, or be it noting down a message for someone else at the office. Writing stuff down on paper, is and always will be necessary, drawing and other forms of visual art, are and always will be necessary; thus making stationery, vital.

A lot of art at its core, stems from emotion. The urge to write, or draw, or paint, incepts from the urge to express something. Express happiness or condolences or love etc. One such art form, is journaling. We call it an art because there is a beauty in it, it holds emotion. Journaling encapsulates everything that one can do when it comes to art; write if you feel that's the best way to let go of what you feel, draw if with every smile you make your lips curve into one too, paint if you feel lighter with every stroke; irrespective of how terrible you are. If you don't believe us, we hope that you at least put your faith in science (or Girija Kaimal to be precise).

Kaimal, assistant professor of creative arts therapies at Drexel University led a study examining the effects of making art on stress-related hormones in your body. The results, published in Art Therapy: Journal of the American Art Therapy Association, titled "Reduction of Cortisol Levels and Participants’ Responses Following Art Making," found that 45 minutes of creative activity significantly lessens stress in the body, regardless of artistic experience or talent.

So trust the study, and just try; because the shabby handwriting, the messed up doodles, the too thin/too thick paint strokes, the frustrations of 'I-can't-make-the-other-eye(!!!!)'; all these go out of the window. The artistic level of things you make doesn't matter because your journal is your safe space, and yours only. So many millennial are seen carrying a journal, be it to use it as a diary, or to write poetry, or scribble doodles etc. The possibilities are endless and the permutations and combinations even more so.

The world you create inside your journal is where you can be yourself, without any fear, without any inhibition. The journal is not only a part of you, but also a place where you are the truest you that you can be.

Today being World Stationery Day, let's decide that we ditch making art digitally, or at least give the ditching a genuine attempt; because years later when you open an old journal, the smell of the paper, the touch of the dried up paint and textures of the pencil, and the memories that rush in like waves during a high tide, these feelings, they are unparalleled and other worldly.

That's a future event that you're making sure will happen if you do a small act today.

You, are making your future.

Start the journey to being the 'you', that you want to be, and if you're wondering where to start, we know the right place.

Hop on to our online store (scholarstore.in) and check out our array of journals, notebooks, and diaries, and choose the one that you resonate with the most. We hope that your journey ahead is memorable.

Live long, and prosper!

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