Figure 1: Image generated using Leonardo.Ai from the prompt: inside of a retro 60’s car looking out the front windscreen.

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Reference List:

ElevenLabs. (2024). Text to Speech & AI Voice Generator. ElevenLabs. [online] Available at: elevenlabs.io/?utm=check&pscd=tr…m9iZXJ0aG9vazU3MDc [Accessed 14 Oct. 2024].

OpenAI (2022). ChatGPT. [Online Large Language Model]. Available at: chatgpt.com/.

Pixabay (2024). Pixabay. [Online] Available at: pixabay.com/sound-effects/search/analog%20window/.

Runwayml.com. (2024). Runway. [online] Available at: app.runwayml.com/video-tools/team…tivity/dashboard [Accessed 14 Oct. 2024].

Apple (2024). Siri. [Online Assistant].

Suno (n.a). Suno. [Online Music Generation]. Available at: suno.com/

Finally, augmenting Creativity is over and done! What an interesting course that I had the pleasure of doing. I came in so naive on what it was going to be about and quite scared that I wouldn’t be good enough to keep up  with what was going on but over this course I was pleasantly surprised on how everything went and I learnt so much and no I am able to bring in so much ai knowledge when it comes it other classes and other jobs. when I joined this class the only ai I was familiar with was chat gpt. Something that was still so new to me but also something I wasn’t familiar with. The second week in augmenting creativity we learn how to use Leonardo ai which is a basic ai generator for images and motion which I thought was the coolest thing ever. I even went home to tell my mum about it ( she thought it was pretty cool too).

We just had the exhibition on Wednesday and…wow. I was really amazed at how my peers had done and it was interesting to see what route they took when it came time to chose an audio or visual it wasn’t a surprise that more people chose to do a visual rather than an audio. Saffrons group really stood out to me and my group as when we watched it we found familiarities with the movie Everything, Everywhere all at once  (Kwan, Daniel., et al. Everything Everywhere All At Once Lionsgate, 2022.) with the changes but still the same image I thought it was incredibly well done. Something that I was able to ask the group where they got their inspiration from and they said the movie Inception (Nolan, C. (2010). Inception. Warner Bros.) We spoke a bit about how they were able to come up with such an idea and how a lot of everyone’s final productions were inspired by movies. Our group, RetroTech Fm was inspired by Late night with the devil.  (C, Cairnes ( 2024) Late Night With The devil.  Amazon Prime.)

Overall this semester I have had so much fun figuring out how to use ai and how it impacts my everyday life. I am grateful that I had such an interactive first studio and it is something that I will be taking to my next studios with exceptional background knowledge on. Even though ai is ever so fasting.

(C, Cairnes ( 2024) Late Night With The devil.  Amazon Prime.)

(Kwan, Daniel., et al. Everything Everywhere All At Once Lionsgate, 2022.)

(Nolan, C. (2010). Inception. Warner Bros.)

In augmenting creativity week 12 we submitted our final assessment which felt fantastic, and my group is extremely happy with the outcome and excited to showcase it at the exhibition. Overall, we worked hard on this assessment and using all different Ai tools for an audio helped me with my general knowledge that I will be comfortable bringing to new courses and subjects. Knowing how to reference ai properly now is something that I’m going to be able to use in the future with my career as well as finishing my studies

The Augmented Creativity Manifesto:

1. AI serves as a guide, but it is up to us to create new and different creative paths. AI is the compass, not the map. Understanding that human curiosity, not machine projections, drives true investigation is essential to sustainable use.
2. Efficiency is not the goal of creation: While AI’s speed is unquestionably alluring, creativity lives on depth, nuance, and enquiry. AI shouldn’t combine human expression; rather, it should enhance it.
3. Don’t let algorithms determine our creative tendencies; instead, create with AI, not for AI. Using tools to push boundaries rather than conforming to a data-driven model is the essence of sustainable AI.

All 3 of these manifestos tie into my overall thesis ‘Ai is able to enhance the creative process rather than replacing human input’ this thesis means that Ai serves as an effective tool that can handle the mundane jobs which allows for human creativity to concentrate on more pressing elements of their work.

Overall, this week has been extremely busy, finishing up the major assessment and juggling other university subjects as well. I feel like my group, and I have communicated well and are ready to show up to the exhibition confidently knowing that we all did our very best and tried to give each person the same amount of work as the other. Were also had some sick members due to the flu and we had to compromise some ideas and work around. Now my focus has gone onto the exhibition and making sure that goes alright and the last assessment which is a reflective essay which we have done a lot of work around and I’m excited to explain my thesis and overall explain my and my groups idea and overall vibe that was assessment 4, as I think we all have a lot to say about it.

In this week of augmenting creativity we started off on the Monday talking a lot about the upcoming assessment and how we were all travelling along with recording dates and whereabouts everyone was up to. My group and I decided to stay back on Monday afternoon after class so that we would be able to finalise where each other were up to and be ready to record the next day. Overall, I feel pretty overwhelmed with the number of assessments that I had that were due this week and the next but because we have worked so hard and made up our timeline for assessment 4 it seemed a bit easier because I knew when things needed to be due by.

The day that we recorded, everything went smoothly but one of our group members called in sick, so we had to do most of the recordings just two members. We communicated properly and made sure we still were equalling out the major assessment. It was decided that the member who called in sick for the audio piece recording day would take on more of the special effects/ai roles. This decision was done quick and smoothly with everyone’s best intentions. It took about three hours to record our segment. We were able to get everything we needed within the time frame and getting a podcast suite was a great idea from Dan.

We spoke about assessment 5 and how revisiting research would help us with the critical essay/reflection. We spoke about how research led practise was the way to go as it’s known as ‘good research’. The idea of maintaining a thesis was highly relevant as well, as that’s something I will continue to work on up to the submission on the 27^th of October.  Overall, I am feeling really confident in my groups work and not worried about the submission date as we will be ready to submit by next Monday, a couple of days before the due date. My group and I have worked extremely hard in this assessment both creatively and technically. It is always hard with group assessments, because everyone always is juggling so much as a university student and just being able to communicate that to one another is very helpful and that is what me and my group have done to be able to stick to the timeline and submit this assessment on time.

We are in week 10 or augmenting creativity and throughout these ten weeks I have struggled a lot more than I thought I would. The whole process of ai still jumbles my head and feels too futuristic for me to get my head around. These 10 weeks have absolutely flown by, and I feel like I have learnt so much more than I anticipated. My classmates have been a big part of my learning, seeing how creative they are each week with different assessments has definitely helped me going and helped me get to the 8:30 am classes too. I have thoroughly enjoyed these last 10 weeks, and I have enjoyed seeing myself grow with my ai and computer skills. As we are still working on our major project and exhibition I have reflected back on these last 10 weeks and remind myself how lost I was at the first assessment and would find myself staring at my computer for hours just so I could start the assessment. Knowing that the use of ai would be in it just rattled my brain but now I am able to do 10x than what I did in the first assessment, and I am proud of myself for that.

This week we gradually improved our plan for our major work and exhibition. We changed ideas slightly as the group decided that it would be better/ more interesting if we didn’t make it visual and challenged ourselves with the audio ai that we weren’t so familiar with. the decision to do this came as a group decision and instead of doing a 60s theme game show we decided to do a car radio were someone was switching through the channels with a dark undertone to the whole thing. I won’t spoil what we have cooking but it’s very nineteen eighty-four book vibes. Overall, we are going along good with splitting up the work and what works best for people. We have booked a studio to record at next week and are excited to put it all together.

Next week things will ramp up dramatically as everyone in my group has many other assessments due at the same time and same day as this one. As a group we have decided to submit and fully complete it a couple of days before its due as this works best for everyone and will help our stress tremendously.

This week we presented our assessment 3 which had our pitch for assessment four. It was interesting to hear how everyone was going during the first nine weeks we shared our aha moments where I noticed most peoples was the second assessment. Which was the same with mine. But it was interesting to see how everyone was able to have a lot more fun than they thought they would be. It was also engaging to hear everyone’s different pitches for assessment 4. More groups than I thought wanted to do a video presentation rather than an audio just like my group just because they feel like they have more of a grasp using Leonardo ai and Runway. Using video for ai seemed more fun rather than just audio. I dabbled in using ai voice for a different assessment for a different course that I was doing in the first semester, and I did really well in that, so I thought I wanted to do something different for assessment 4 just to stretch my abilities as well as widen my knowledge.

 It was good hearing the feedback for each presentation because I was able to listen in and gather an understanding of what the panel had to say and what readings they were providing for different students dependent on what their media thesis and key idea was. The feedback that I was given consisted of feedback regarding assessment 4. The panel loved our idea of the 60s theme commercial and gave us some ideas that were worth looking into. They liked the idea of the person coming in from 2024 from the audience and told us we could definitely build on that. We were given a movie recommendation of ‘late night with the devil’. so now I have some homework to be able to do to get a better understand for what my assessment will look like. this was extremely beneficial to my learning and the feedback that I gathered from the panel I will be using in the upcoming assessment.

I found this presentation to be quite worthwhile, whilst listening and reading each presentation, I was able to gage a better understanding at where people we at and what ideas they had in the early stages of assessment 4.  Overall im feeling on track for assessment four. My group is keeping up communication as well as sticking to our timeline whilst also being very aware that we each have a lot going on with our own lives.

In this week’s classes we focused on talking about assessment 3 and 4. I was able to finalise my group and finalise what we were thinking about doing. We have this idea of making a video with the vibes of Abstract, AI vs reality, Audio AI, Eerie and an Uncanny feeling to it. Following a story that we can each take videos for and video ourselves so that we can collaborate fairly. We decided to do a video because it made a lot more sense to one another because we were all more comfortable and confident in video rather than just audio. We thought this would be easier for the studio presentation as well.

We also had a speaker come in on Monday, Kate Geck who spoke to us about what she is doing and how it incorporates into ai. She focuses on design, art and research within ai. She was able to show us a lot of her cool projects that she had done through the years.  She showed us how she worked on fashion and projections within augmenting reality using 3D onto buildings. She spoke about how she makes speculations which I thought was really cool and interesting. She spoke to us how she incorporated ai with each installation that she showed us. She focused her discussion on machine learning which is a creative practice that explores alternative metaphors using ai. The way she does this is by thinking about different types of metaphors especially technology so that she can use those in her work.

Kate focused her talk on the butterfly knowledge and how she had incorporated this into her exhibitions. She showed us how much knowledge she has about butterflies and dissected each of their habits and how they live.  She has had many exhibitions using her butterfly knowledge “Impossible evolution’ 2022 which is a tapestry with the butterflies woven into it and it had a look that gave it a very digitalized feel.  The butterfly looked very machine made. It also took 6 months to make which I found amazing due to the amount of time and effort that would’ve influenced.

Overall, this week’s classes I found them to be very insightful. Listening to Kate’s talk on all the projects she has done and how much time and effort she put into each project was really inspiring and made me think about assessment 3,4 and how much effort and time this is going to take. Especially it being a group assessment I will need to be very communicative

To start off the semester we went to ‘This Hideous Replica’ exhibition which I thought to be cool and a good use of our time. It was interesting to see the different types of effect that ai had on these artworks. One of the works that resonated with me was the ‘solid gold nugget planted in false gold’ I thought this one was interesting because of the concept of how it’s a joke and how you can make different types of art funny. The whole concept of a real gold nugget being places in false gold just made me laugh out loud a bit. It responded to the overall theme and concept of the exhibition by showing that not everything we see is real and there are people that would do this today to make someone look like a fool and to get a laugh out of them. This artwork was sprawled out on a table with each photo of the nugget and different types of nuggets around the table in photographs with numbers on the back of them and a plaque written up next to the artwork explaining the piece in a joking way and how the piece came together from a particular story. The artwork was in an open area that looked a bit like a hallway yet had a lot of space to walk around the table so that I was able to see every angle.  The different types of material that were used were photographs on blocks and bigger photographs of the pinkie above the artwork. The blocks were all on top of one another to make it looked like it was carelessly placed there.

One of the other artworks I found interesting was the video that was on 3 different screens that I couldn’t get the name of. The artwork consisted of 3 huge screens with images and motion and words plastered on them using a gigantic projector system. There were 4 projectors being used for this exhibition. It used ai with some of the words on the screen and you could tell cause most of it didn’t make sense. It responded to the theme and focus of the exhibition because it felt like it was the main attraction, and everyone would stop and watch the full 15 minutes of it because it was so interesting and eye opening to see it with the different sound that were used it felt like your eyes were glued to it. The space that was used for this exhibition was the biggest out of the whole exhibition. It was in the most space and had an area that a group of people would be able to watch it.

Overall, I loved the exhibition, and I wouldn’t have normally gone if it wasn’t for a class and was interesting to hear how it all came together. I will be telling people to go here because it was very insightful.

Within this week, I was finishing up on my assessment when I realised that I was having lots of issues with Leonardo ai. It seemed as if it was taking a long time to load out my generations after I wanted to put a type of motion on it. It was difficult when doing this as I felt rushed and felt like I wasn’t able to give my best. I struggled with this assessment a bit because of all the constraints, and I felt like I definitely needed to give myself more time to work on it, but life got in the way. The generations were taking around a day each to generate and I thought I would use a different ai motion application, yet I wasn’t familiar with most of the other ones and felt pretty comfortable using Leonardo ai and I knew that it worked in the way I needed and wanted it to for this assessment. Overall, I know I didn’t give myself enough time for this assessment, but I feel like I did ok in the reflection because I pointed this out and spoke about the troubles I had. I also spoke to peers in my class that said they didn’t love that we couldn’t take our own footage like the first assessment and had to solely rely on ai to do our assessment for us essentially. I felt like that was a collective experience and hopefully for assessment 3 I can 4 I am able to give myself more time and really reflect on what advice I’m given after this assessment.

In the upcoming weeks, for the week couple of weeks we are going to an exhibition that I don’t know too much about. And I feel like that will be a bit of a fun lesson because I’ve heard good things about the exhibition from friends. I will also be working on assessment 3 and 4 because they are just around the corner, and everyone seems to be flooded with assessments at this time so it’s good to get a head start. In two weeks’, time we have a presentation for assessment 4 and how we are going to execute it and we can either work in groups of with ourselves. The presentation is on Monday in class and only goes for 5 minutes so I am more than happy to do that myself because I am able to work on my own and don’t have to rely on other people’s schedules which I feel like everyone can relate to because everyone is so busy at this time of year. Overall feeling good about assessment 3,4 and ready to get into the second semester.

In week 5 we were able to watch everyone’s mini documentaries for assessment 1. it was good to see everyone’s different vibe of the assessment and I think I gained a bit of knowledge and inspiration for what to do for the next one. It was interesting to see everyone else’s differ spinoff when given the same constraints. Observing how my peers worked with the assessment, allowed me to learn a lot and provided me with new perspectives on how to approach the next one. Overall, this helped highlighted the importance of rewatching them all together as a class. I was able to identify strengths and strategies in other people’s work that I might not have thought of on my own. My appreciation and grasp of the creative process have been greatly enhanced by this group experience.

We spoke a lot about assessment 2 and how we would be integrating ai into the whole assessment. Which I am pretty nervous about, but I think it will be good to gage an idea on how to do that and I think it will be very important to know to do. AI is and will probably be a difficult concept to incorporate, especially given how complicated and quickly developing the subject is. Nonetheless, I understand that developing my ability to integrate AI well would be extremely beneficial for future projects and potentially employment chances, in addition to this course. The use of AI in contemporary creative processes is becoming more and more evident, and becoming proficient with it could lead to many opportunities.

To end the week, we did a Prompt battle with having a lot of constraints and different prompts to make. Most of them were film genres whilst adding more random and opposite vibes so that the ai would be a bit confused and we had to tweak it so that it would make it more accurate. An example of this was film noir and pirates. I personally haven’t seen any black and white films with pirates. It may be a thing, or it may not. We also did a spaghetti western theme whilst creating cowboys having a standoff. This seemed to be easier for Leonardo ai to comprehend whilst it did still add on 6 fingers or no eyes. It was easier for the ai to comprehend something that more people have searched up rather than something a little bit more random that not many people would be looking up.