Wednesday, 2 October 2019

Dissertation Marking Schedule

BVA303 Assessment 4 (3500-4000 words)

Marking Sheet

Due: Wednesday 6th November 5pm 2019

Presentation of research dissertation includes: /100


Abstract /10 – One paragraph (not included in word count)

• Abstract clearly summarises dissertation


Introduction /15 – Two paragraphs approx.

• Title is clear, concise and accurately reflects research.

• Key question is clearly explained.

• Definition of relevant key terms associated with questioning are clearly articulated.

• Rationale – explanation of why topic is of interest: clearly outlines your original contribution to relevant bodies of knowledge.

• Methodology –Clearly summarises methodology (elaborate on in paragraph one of body).

• Outline of proposed approach to documentation – clearly and succinctly explained and linked effectively to methodology (elaborate on in paragraph one of body).

• Organisation – (one to two sentences) clearly states how your arguments will be organized.


Body /40 - Six paragraphs approx

• Headings are clear, logically ordered and relevant to content.

• Methodology is clear with regard to project question and approach to blogging.

• Paragraphs are structured – argument, example, explanation of relevance of example to 
argument.

• Paragraphs are logically ordered.


Conclusion /15 – Two paragraphs approx

• Restates / summarises arguments. (This will be the first sentences in the questions from the main body) 

• Outlines relevant key examples from body. 

• Clearly states implications of findings relevant to practical project. (Problems that may still exist in the project)


Presentation & Referencing /10

• Is clearly structured – abstract, introduction, body, conclusion.

• Correct referencing and citations (APA) evident.

• Attention to spelling, grammar and readability, and flow.

Working Copy with Remarks.


Bad Sector Block[RT1]  – Retracing the nostalgia of urban Invercargill utilising Generative Art


In my research I question whether generative art can be used to capture my fading memories of Invercargill inner city architectural facades synthesised from digital photographic collections? This can be broken down into generative art (trained AI) sharing my minds fading pictorial recollections of Invercargill's building facades, using a large personal photographic collection of Invercargill facades as the data. Generative Art incorporates a self-governed or autonomous system in some way, this project uses Pix2Pix as the system. Pix2Pix generates images by using large pictorial collections as training data, this data is crucial and has been curated specifically for the project. Having a background in computers influenced this project as computer memory can be corrupted due to age, just like people. Drawing on the parallels of technological and biological memory loss, and the subsequent corrupted output. The impending Invercargill inner city redevelopment shall remove many of the buildings that are part of the photographic collection and shall similarly fade from many residents’ memories.

The methodology employed shall be Practice-led research. “Practice-led research focuses on the nature of creative practice, leading to new knowledge of operational significance for that practice, in order to advance knowledge about or within practice.” (Skains, 2017) Combined with Top Down Learning which is creativity with an aim to output quantity over quality. One source claims that the top-down approach creates something quickly, and that it feels good to produce on your own. “You can get addicted to that feeling, and it can help you push through the learning process.” (Dalling, 2018) This project uses multiple different computer platforms to create output. A record of the works progress documented at the blog https://roycebva3.blogspot.com/ , as digital output is best shown in its native format a digital platform. Can generative art capture the fading memories of Invercargill inner city building facades? by focusing on nostalgia and memory, comparing human memories fading and computer data loss as a time-based decline of memory accuracy. Lastly examining the reception of generative art as a new art form that has created much attention. Summarise this into two sentences and integrate into your introduction. The rest should form your methodology paragraph which is the first paragraph of the body of your introduction.

Example of a rationale “I have been drawn to the counterintuitive logic of Pärn’s film. By closely examining the imagery in Pärn’s animation, I wish to propose a new interpretation of the storyline, which I hope will spark revived interest in Some Exercises, particularly as there are almost no extended writings on his film.” Your introduction should be 2 paragraphs max so a lot of editing is needed here to make concise statements which you can then go on to elaborate on in the body of your dissertation.

Your introduction should be two paragraphs and include:
·         Outline of proposed key question
·         Definition of proposed key terms associated with questioning
·         Rationale – explanation of why topic is of interest
·         Methodology – explanation of proposed methodology employed
·         Outline of proposed approach to documentation
·         Statement of proposed main arguments
·         Organisation – outlines how research may be organised                  

                Practice-led research combined with top down learning create a results-based methodology for this work. Experiments focusing on the output of the generative art, instead of the technological reasons the software operates in a top down method. All software used is open source removing copyright concerns. A digital practice matches perfectly with blogging as an ongoing record of the projects progress. By remaining digitally native for all work, the technology behind the scenes can all add content to the blog via the internet. Content shall be screen captures, video and digital photographs as evidence inside the blog. https://roycebva3.blogspot.com/ is also tagged into the different areas of exploration via the labels function.

Example of organization, this should be the last two sentences of your introduction that provides navigation for the reader: In my first section, I sketch out a set of New Wave aesthetics and problematics by closely analyzing the works and writings of Kuri Yōji, the most prolific of a trio of trailblazing independent visual artists from the early 1960s operating under the banner Animēshon sannin no kai (“Animation Association of Three”). After highlighting a number of central issues within Kuri’s unusual shorts including gender, sexuality, urbanization, and high-speed economic growth, I turn to an examination of two short films directed by Mori Yasuji (Koneko no rakugaki [1957, Kitty’s Graffiti] and Koneko no sutajio [1959, Kitty’s Studio]) during the inaugural years of production at animation studio Tōei Dōga, focusing on how labor conditions ultimately curbed formal experimentation. In my concluding remarks, I work through various contradictions and commonalities between New Wave cinema and contemporaneous animated media, and chart a course in search of an intermedial “New Wind.”


                Invercargill is New Zealand’s southernmost city and was established in 1856, with a diverse range of historic building facades covering most architectural styles.  On the 18th of June 2018 HWCP Management Ltd.’s plans for the inner-city redevelopment were made public on the Invercargill City Council’s webpage and called for the demolition of many historic buildings to make way for a new unified structure covering a square blockreference to webpage?. With impending destruction of these building facades, I documented a visual record was gathered using a Digital SLR camera and wide-angle lenses. According to who, role?Lydia Yee artists collections are typically amassed with an intent to build and transmit knowledge and this project is no exception. It was during my editing of the images that the collection sparked memories of former businesses that had occupied each building, casual conversations amongst different groups sparked more memories. According to who, role?Joshua Sarinana sifting through images will evoke strong emotions, some of which may be positive, and remind you of how you earlier times. With all photographs falling under the term nostalgia (as photographs are all in the past) curating strong nostalgic images becomes more a personal collection of memories.
Remember to format each paragraph:
1.       Statement/Argument
2.       Example
3.       Explain relevance of example to argument/statement


Urban nostalgia helps people to maintain a sense of emotional continuity in a rapidly shifting landscape of their personal and social lives. Who, roles? Adams and Larkham define Urban Nostalgia as a group nostalgia, that can be manufactured by civil administration or by architecture. Integrate quote “Urban areas that have gone through substantial change hold onto the past as a way to cope with the changes that occur (redevelopment).” (Adams & Larkham, 2015) The sentimental conversations with others created a nostalgia for buildings but it became apparent that many of these memories were incorrect.   
Examples of ways to integrate quotes:
Ōshima constructed a loose paradigm around “the three S’s – speed, thrills [suriru], and sex,” elements he believed typified the emergence of a fledgling group of cinematic “modernists.”[3] 
The need for animation “to evolve” through “new processes and technologies,” lest the craft prove “unable to break free of established thought patterns and methods,” echoes Ōshima’s berating of uninspired studio “program pictures”[10] and Matsumoto’s diatribes against overly-naturalistic documentarians.[11] 
One confused artist commented “I don’t think he meant ‘realism’ I think he meant something that was more convincing.” (Thomas, Johnston, 1981)  
The advantages of such an approach are an “insider knowledge” (Adams, Jones et al, 2014) in this case, the insider knowledge of an animator practitioner, attempting to make sense of their work through the practice of animation, itself based on very person expressions of emotions drawn from personal memories.


                Data loss and memory loss both create erroneous information. As a result of the erroneous memories the correlation of time-based memories fading fitted with my observations made during time spent working on computers that had failing hard disk drives. The recovery of a hard drive will often leave artifacts in a digital image or data will be recreated incorrectly. A leading cloud storage provider Backblaze.com has compiled statistics that show 22% of all hard drives fail within the first 4 years creating a demand for data recovery reference?. Hard disk failure is caused by excessive use or physical damage, both are the same reasons that the human brain suffers memory loss. Whilst hard drives can be recovered the human brain cannot leaving a space to create mis-remembered visuals in the same way. The Computer Vision field of computing has led to many exciting applications for generative art. This project is using Pix2Pix trained on the photographic collection of building facades, [Figure 1] GAN created Zookeepers Cafe from a AI trained on Venice and was the first image I generated. The frontages have an eerie mis-remembered look about them and share the artifact heavy image quality of a recovered drive.

Seeing art through fresh eyes and generative art. The first sale of generative art reached $432,500 at Christie’s auction house [Figure 2] La Famille de Belamy (Obvious Art, 2018) was trained on classical portraits to create fictious family portraits, the work is signed by the underlying algorithm used by the software. After this the generative art community started to explode with new and amazing software flooding the internet. Generative art evolved more to video and audio as the technology grew capable of the vast amounts of data. Real-time interactivity is within the function of most generative art models.  ( I want to include some information about my own project on interactivity but I am still working on this so don’t have anything to write currently)  



                At this stage I cannot state the implications of my findings as this is still work in progress. My personal feeling is that I am experiencing nostalgic feelings towards the images, this is most likely due to how close to the project I am. After the discussions on the 30th August I feel like including something about the site I am showing the work at Des Branks. And how the presentation of the work will impact on spectator reception. As this is a new development it shall be worked into the next draft.
 
References
Adams, D., & Larkham, P. (2015). Walking with the ghosts of the past Unearthing the value of residents’ urban nostalgias. Urban Studies Journal Limited 2015, 53(10), 2004–2022. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042098015588683

Beach, B. (2013, November 12). How long do disk drives last? Retrieved August 30, 2019, from Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup website: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/how-long-do-disk-drives-last/

Dalling, T. (2018). Two Approaches to Learning Programming: Top-Down and Bottom-Up - Programming for Beginners. Retrieved May 29, 2019, from http://www.programmingforbeginnersbook.com/blog/top-down-bottom-up-approaches-to-learning-programming/

ICC. (2018, June 19). HWCP unveils CBD redevelopment. Retrieved March 21, 2019, from Invercargill City Council website: https://icc.govt.nz/hwcp-unveils-cbd-redevelopment/

Kluszczynski, R. (2010). Strategies of interactive art. Journal of Aesthetics & Culture, 2, 27. https://doi.org/10.3402/jac.v2i0.5525

New Zealand Government. (2019). Invercargill | NZHistory, New Zealand history online. Retrieved from https://nzhistory.govt.nz/keyword/invercargill

Obvious Art. (2018). La Famille de Belamy [Generative Adversarial Network print, on canvas]. Retrieved from https://www.christies.com/lotfinder/prints-multiples/edmond-de-belamy-from-la-famille-de-6166184-details.aspx?from=salesummery&intObjectID=6166184&sid=18abf70b-239c-41f7-bf78-99c5a4370bc7

Sarinana, J. (2015). Nostalgia and the Collapse of Imagination. Retrieved April 5, 2019, from PetaPixel - Nostalgia collapses Imagination website: https://petapixel.com/2015/09/10/nostalgia-collapse-imagination/

Skains, L. (2017). Creative Practice as Research: Practice-Based Research. Retrieved March 22, 2019, from http://scalar.usc.edu/works/creative-practice-research/what-is-pbr

Tate. (2018). Cubism – Art Term. Retrieved June 17, 2019, from Tate website: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/c/cubism

Trounson, R. (2019). GAN created Zookeepers Cafe from a AI trained on Venice [Digital Rendering]. Retrieved from https://www.facebook.com/roycetrounson/photos/pb.261352814369541.-

Yee, L. (2015). Magnificent Obsessions. Prestel.

Trounson, R. (2019). GAN created Zookeepers Cafe from a AI trained on Venice [Digital Rendering].
Figure 1



Obvious Art. (2018). La Famille de Belamy [Generative Adversarial Network print, on canvas]
Figure 2



Annotated Text

Top Down Learning – Creativity with an aim to output quantity over quality.
Linking to Research led methodology

Bhutani, S. (2018, December 26). How not to do Fast.ai (or any ML MOOC). Retrieved from https://hackernoon.com/how-not-to-do-fast-ai-or-any-ml-mooc-3d34a7e0ab8c

Compares learning code to learning a sport. You just get into it without needing to know the underlying theory and create. Do a small part each day and you will achieve more than learning the fundamentals. The source seems to have interviewed many of the main players in the AI industry and has some very good quotes including Ian Goodfellow the leading authority on AI, ML, DL. I was working from a bottom up style and not progressing as fast as I would like, so after reading this article I changed my approach and have created work output rapidly. This did make me re-evaluate the methodology that I was using.

Interactive Art – How to turn the spectator into a participant with Computer Vision.
Performative Theoretical application to my practice

Kluszczynski, R. (2010). Strategies of interactive art. Journal of Aesthetics & Culture, 2, 27. https://doi.org/10.3402/jac.v2i0.5525

Breaks the strategies of interactive art into Instrument, Game, Archives, Labyrinth, Rhizome, System, Network, and Spectacle. Finishes with about the application of research-led based practices complimenting interactive art. Professor Ryszard W. Kluszczynski, PhD, is the Head of Department of Media and Audio-visual Culture at Lodz University, Poland. He is also the Professor in Academy of Fine Arts in Lodz. From 1990 to 2001 he was the chief curator of Film, Video and Multimedia Arts in the Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw. He has curated numerous international art exhibitions and is currently the curator for the Second International Biennale of Contemporary Art in Poznan 2010. The definitions made a huge help in which type of interactivity I was looking for in my practice.

Nostalgic Curation – Collecting photographs of Invercargill with an aim to trigger nostalgia.
Linking to studio practice and Research Led

Sarinana, J. (2015). Nostalgia and the Collapse of Imagination. Retrieved April 5, 2019, from PetaPixel - Nostalgia collapses Imagination website: https://petapixel.com/2015/09/10/nostalgia-collapse-imagination/

Clarifying what nostalgia is in conjunction with photographs Sarinana brings context to the digital world. Instagram filters are used as an example of faux nostalgia. Nostalgia is explained as a coping mechanism for the brain and used to reinforce happiness. Sarinana holds a PhD and is a Photographer and Neuroscientist. I had no idea that the topic of nostalgia was so big when I started this and find the whole chemical reactions to the brain as an aspect that needs more research. Collecting and happiness are relevant in my own life.

Urban Nostalgia – Examining moments in time and defining Urban Nostalgia.
Linking to studio practice and Research Led

Adams, D., & Larkham, P. (2015). Walking with the ghosts of the past Unearthing the value of residents’ urban nostalgias. Urban Studies Journal Limited 2015, 53(10), 2004–2022. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042098015588683
Defines Urban Nostalgia as a group nostalgia, this can manufactured by civil administration or by architecture. Urban areas that have gone through substantial change hold onto the past as a way to cope with the changes that occur (redevelopment). Adams and Larkham are both Birmingham City University lecturers and are both well published in journals about architecture. Helps my practice with the group aspects of nostalgia and with the impact that redevelopments to inner cities can make.








 [RT1]The Title is a reference to Computer Long Term Storage failing, the inner city block and of the Human memories forgotten.

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