Project Progression
This section contains all of the progress from the start to the end of the project.
Project Idea Development
At the start of my advanced project, the idea for my project changed a number of times; the focus was always to be on the wider topic of AI, but as my idea progressed, it became clear I needed to focus on one specific area of AI.
The initial idea was to focus on AI in general, talking about its development and impact on people and whether people can tell if something is real or AI-generated. The main output was going to be a short documentary with some photographs to complement it. After discussions with my supervisor, it was clear that I needed to narrow down the question and have a more specific documentary topic.
The second idea was to focus on the development of AI in the 21st century and why many people who experience AI content do not even realise that it is AI. The documentary would look at examples of AI being used in real life and explore the positives and negatives of these to see the impact on people.
The third idea I found was the niche of edited images and AI on social media and how this could potentially be distorting people's realities online. This idea was to create a documentary and photographs to highlight how hard AI can be to spot. This idea is what was submitted in the proposal form.
However, after discussions nearing the final stages of the project, it was clear that a focus on a photography project would better suit the topic instead of having a documentary and a small number of photographs. This is because using images can showcase what AI can do and whether people can see if these images are edited or not.
Supervision Communication
Below are some screenshots of a number of different emails and communications with my supervisor. These emails, alongside the regular supervisor meetings, were crucial to the development and final output of my project.
The supervision communication and supervision meetings helped my development heavily in the initial stages of my project. This is because after feedback I narrowed down my project topic and produced a strong project question and focus. This then helped me to produce my project proposal. Discussions with my supervisor also made it clear that focusing my outputs on photography would better suit the topic of the question, which is why I did not end up creating a video for the final output. I also had communication with my supervisor about forms such as the health and safety document, risk assessment, and crits/interim exhibition paperwork. All of which were necessary for the development of my project professionally. I also had a meeting with my supervisor about the interim report. This is because I had never written a long report like that before and needed help with how to structure the report and how to carry out my own research. These meetings helped me to develop my interim report and choose the correct methodologies relating to my project. I also had some smaller emails with my supervisor asking questions as the project went along to make sure I was on track.
Crits Exhibition
In the crits I showcased the theme of my project and a number of images that could be like what the final project would exhibit. The main aim of this crit session for me was to explore how I can potentially make my exhibition interactive. For this crit, the aim was to get people to mark where, on what image, they thought the level of editing was acceptable.
The main feedback received from lecturers and classmates said that this was a good starting point to expand on. One piece of feedback suggested maybe to make small games out of the exhibition and come up with a better way of interaction than what I had used. Another piece of feedback said to make it more clear what and how the audience are meant to be interacting with my work. These are both the main points of feedback that I aim to improve on for the final exhibition. Other feedback suggested that I could find a way of revealing images one at a time so it adds some humour as images become further away from reality.
Interim Exhibition
For the interim exhibition, I showcased one of the aspects that I wanted in my final exhibition, portraits of people, to see if people could tell what is AI-generated and real. The main piece of criticism from the first exhibition was to make it more clear what the audience was meant to interact with; this was addressed with the text displayed in my exhibition. Feedback from the first exhibition also said to experiment more and find better ways for the audience to interact, so for this interim exhibition I decided to try a lift-the-flap to get the audience to guess in their heads if the image was real or not and then reveal the answer to themselves. The aim of this interim exhibition for me was to see if the audience thought that these aspects worked well together.
The feedback received from this exhibition was overwhelmingly positive. Most of the criticism of this exhibition was about how this work could be displayed/tweaked for the final exhibition. For example, images could be printed and displayed in frames; the lift-the-flaps could be made out of wood; more images could be used, and potentially different lighting could be utilised. These will all be taken into consideration for the final exhibition.
Interviews For Research
Throughout the research stage of my project I conducted a number of interviews with participants to get a first-hand insight into people's opinions on the topic. During these interviews I showed participants real and fake images to see if they could tell what was real. Originally this was going to be one of the main aspects of the project, but after discussions it made more sense to focus my project on one main output: photography.
More information about these interviews can be seen under the title Primary Research on the Research & Application tab.
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Interim Report
This is the interim report that discusses the progress of my project so far. Things covered in the report include my research question, methodology, overview of text and practice-based references, evaluation of my progress and projection so far.
Report Plan
Final Report
The feedback from this report has helped develop my project further. Most of the feedback was in relation to how I could have improved the report and what went well in my report. In terms of feedback relating to the progress of my project, it was made clear that in the report I should have written about the context an image is placed in and how this can be a factor in distorting people's realities. This is something I spoke about in the crits and something I should have expanded on in the report, so going forward this will be one of the focuses of my project.
Sketches For Exhibitions
The images below are some of the exhibition ideas I had across the project.
Photoshoots
These are some of the behind-the-scenes shots taken from the various photoshoots that took place for the project. I did not need to book specialist equipment for this as I have my own Canon camera with different lenses that I could experiment with. I also had my own tripod to stabilise the photos being taken.
Editing Process
The screenshot below shows some of the editing carried out in Photoshop to create the final edited photos for the the project.
Creation of AI Content
As my project is on the topic of AI, some of the images were AI-generated and deepfaked to showcase the realism of this technology against real-life images. Below is the process of creating these images on the software.
Final Steps
As the end of the project nears, I am now turning all of my attention to the exhibition at the end of the month. I will be fine tuning all of the photographs for the exhibition and choose objects I will need, such as the photo frames and lighting.