Originality is merely an illusion

or a deep fake…

The introduction to facial recognition and the way its being used thus far through the homework we had was a great idea : Watch Social Dilemma

We were introduced to tokkingheads.ai

The applications of this technology is clearly massive. And the debate of whether it should be democratised is a long winding one with no right answer.

As a visual designer and animator, I have watched quantum leaps in the tools I have used, many times around.

To give a context : I had started with working on film in the Oxberry camera at our Institute – and even then, there were just 3 such cameras in our massive country. To process the film we needed to travel to another city – followed by DI – digital interface – which helped digitise the film along with some colour correction to appropriately fit millions of colours in the medium of film into the new medium of 0-255 colours.

Eventually the processing stopped and I discovered the cracked version of Adobe Aftereffects in 2001 as a student.

Parallelly in the world outside – the rise of Adobe tools led to a lot of production level tools becoming available to smaller companies and freelancers. Soon we no longer needed to have large production suites or even Avids and everyone was fooling around with the possibilities it offered.

Thats when tools to create motion graphics got democratised – today it is an industry in its own accord and called Motion Design.

It took most of the century to reach there and in contrast,
within the decade, we are at tokkingheads…

It is only going to get faster. So Im making sure I blink.

While we brace ourselves and try to find ways of swimming along or diving in – is there a way to bring in a sense of responsibility as creators and artists without censorship.

It is tricky – might be impossible.
Im here to explore.

The exercise : Choose a historical figure and a quote to make him/ her speak

When I first saw Esher’s work something just happened in my brain. An understanding of Why…. and I needed to understand how?

It is the way we see the world that makes the world fun. It is the way we want and imagine it to be that makes it our own.

Nature has done it all – we are only imitations although amazingly fantastic ones.

I would have loved to have a chai chat with Escher – but then again maybe not – the mystery adds to the fun.

so here he is :

PROCESS

“Hand with Reflecting Sphere” by Escher.
I wanted to make this artwork come to life

Naturally his face is too small in it and the machine cannot identify him as a face to work with it.

So I found a photograph of him and worked with that instead.

I downloaded the higher resolution video – then off I went into Aftereffects to marry it with Escher

WORK IN PROGRESS – To be shared soon

While I was looking around for a historic figure to choose – I thought of the first one that I really remember being told about. She was deaf and blind.

The Day 4’s initial struggle to communicate through the medium of code reminded me of her.

Though my experiments also had an element of fun and sense of exploration… the fear and frustration of not really being able to use it was the shared emotion..

Hellen Keller had no way of visual or auditory input from the world which naturally affected the way she output herself and her thought. That led me to think of the teacher who was with her through her life and the impact she had not only on Hellen but on the future of differently abled people.

I wonder what she might have sounded like when she said W-a-t-e-r over and over again with her finger spelling it out on Hellen’s hand and the water running over them.

So here she is :

Anne Sullivan Macy