aimediachildren

[aimediachildren]

These are some notes trying to think about a narrative. I think i have a lot of time to develop these ideas, but at the moment I think there would be three characters - a dad, and two sons (well the ai may not actually have a gender) one of the sons is human, the other is an ai created by the dad. Both the children have seen violent media and things they shouldn’t have on their own devices growing up. The fears of what violent media/technology can do to the developing mind of children will be played up largely to highlight the fears of it, shown somehow in the designs. One of the children will become agressive (the human) and in contrast the ai will fear the world and humanity, after witnessing violence. Essentially saying maybe we aren’t scared of technology, but rather ourselves and what humans do with it? The idea needs more developing but i think this is my starting point.

it could be interesting to make the two children Cain and Abel from the bible but i need to research this story further. Maybe the human could end up killing the ai like Cain does to Abel.

[aimediachildren]

Previous Projects

In previous projects I have worked with similar concepts and pathways when designing but feel as though I didn’t explore their meanings to the fullest. Now with an fmp I think I have the time to do so and make what’s hopefully a very dense project. My most enjoyable project to design and make yet has to be my bad taste project in which I look at how young boy’s grow out of using and playing with army toys. I also use my designs to reflect the relationship between my brother father and myself. I think this idea of questioning how children see violence and think about it is very interesting considering youth and war are such juxtaposing ideas.

Another project which I think to be very relevant is my typography project which I mentioned previously. My chosen letters were ‘X’ and ‘O’, and I eventually went down a route which led me to compare the violent tendencies shown in both humans and ants as I noted down the similarities. I think the way humans throughout history seem to be drawn to violence is very interesting, considering how negative a thing violence is. I would hate to fight anyone, yet can understand the thrill of watching a violent scene in a film. I spoke at biblical references earlier, and the first murder where Cain kills Abel could be something interesting to look into and refer to… In regards to design process I think this project was very strong for me, in how I took elements of medieval clothing and reimagined them in a way suitable for streetwear, changing strings to elastic with toggles etc. In my last paragraph on Victorian reference points I mention how I would be interesting in reimagining clothing from this time period in a similar way. But first I would need to get my narrative decided firmly – who is wearing these outfits, where and when is this set, what are they doing. I think I am getting close.

[aimediachildren]

Experimenting some figurative drawing on my computer, from life. I used the magnetic lasso tool on photoshop on a blank background so that the computer would distort and influence my line when drawing. I used my finger on the mouse pad to do these. I like to think it looks like I’m trying to draw and my computer is fighting against it and distorting it.

[aimediachildren]

[aimediachildren]

Reference points

There are a range of references which I believe to be relevant to my topics which I want to explore and I believe there are many more which I am yet to research. In regard to the artificial intelligence route of my project there are mainly films I am drawn to and have been given inspiration from. Alex Garland’s Ex Machina is a large source of inspiration for me due to how he uses the genre of speculative fiction to create commentary on the male gaze in cinema; the ai in this film, Ava, is designed to be attractive to Caleb’s tastes in which Nathan rather creepily finds out by finding out his search history (porn). The narrative draws us to believe that initially Nathan is simply carrying out a Turing test to see if Caleb believes the ai to have a consciousness, then as the plot thickens we are led to believe he was trying to see if Caleb would fall for the ai. But further toward the end we realize that the test all along was to see if Ava would trick Caleb to fall for her in order to try and escape the lab and have the freedom of living a normal life which is all she wants. The intelligent narrative in this film is what I enjoy the most, as I want my own project to have a narrative to it too. I’m intrigued the bible is referenced in this film which often talks about Nathan playing god; ‘You know, I wrote down that other line you came up with. The one about how if I've invented a machine with consciousness, I'm not a man, I'm a God.’ Like in Frankenstein, it does not end well for the scientist. In closer regard to fashion design, what’s very interesting about this film is how Ava is played by Alicia Vikander, a ballerina. Alex Garland decided this made sense due to how immaculately she can control her body movements, making her ideal for the role of ai as her body seems to move around almost too perfectly, giving her a feeling of otherness. This is something I would want to think about when I choose models for my outfits I eventually design; how will they move around, how will they interact with each other and what will this mean? Some other films I’ve been interested in that involve ai have been metropolis and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Undercover designer Jun Takahashi is someone I should think about and refer to considering he has done a collection relating directly to Stanley Kubrick’s work. Id also think about his f/w 21/22 menswear collection which is inspired partly by the anime ‘Evangelion,’ with interesting designs that appear to turn the models into what could be cyborgs at times (although I do not want to design what is essentially a robot costume.)

A little less related to ai and sci-fi as a genre and another potential route for design references could be the Victorian era. This could come in from a more metaphorical point of view, as I could refer to this time period in which fear of technology and the future was seemingly at a high. Furthermore, on the topic of children being influenced by technology, potentially negatively by seeing things they shouldn’t in media, could work with references to a Victorian time period. This is because there was much child labour in Victorian Britain, with only 20% of children actually being in school, while the rest experienced things they certainly shouldn’t have had to working in factories, as chimney sweeps etc. William Blake famously describes the factories as ‘dark satanic mills.’ Maybe the outfits worn by children and other Victorian workwear could find its way into my project. I would not want my designs to be Victorian costumes though; I would want to take certain ideas away from this time period and reinterpret them, similarly to how I took medieval designs and reinterpreted them in a modern style in my typography project, which I will come back to later on.

  Some other visual references I would like to think about in this project would be the film Ivan’s Childhood dir. Tarkovsky, real life ai (throughout time not just currently), Comme des Garcon Dinos and Comics by Rei Kawakubo. I’d even go as far as comparing nature with technology - how do animals move, how do robots move, how does an ai’s voice compare to human voice etc.

[aimediachildren]

Three blast sheets on the themes of artificial intelligence, the media children absorb and god/spirituality and questioning vanity. 

[aimediachildren]

[aimediachildren]

Artificial intelligence and the effect of new media on children

Aldous Huxley stated that ‘Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.’ In 2022 society has many fears of what the future holds, with mobile phones and social media becoming embedded in our daily lives. People fear more than just this aspect of technology; global warming, the possibility of war, technological advances appearing to ultimately damage ourselves. These concerns are nothing new. The anxieties toward technology and new sciences ultimately starting to grow in the Victorian period; a religious society feared what this meant for mankind, gothic literature such as Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein playing on these fears exactly as we see humans punished for playing god. Frankenstein is just one of the first ideas for artificial intelligence, ai being one of humanities fears played upon in many different examples of literature and film. What’s so intriguing about ai being used in speculative fiction is how we can often see it as a metaphor for fears unrelated to technological advances; it is often used to reflect a fear of our own human nature as a pose to computers. Do we fear computers taking over us, or the fact we now have the power create such a thing? My chosen subject area will be artificial intelligence, and I will use this to create metaphor for a human anxiety that I am most intrigued in. What I have become most drawn to over the last couple weeks is how media effects the brain of a child. Children are currently experiencing something no generation has quite experienced before, with technology now becoming a large part of their upbringing. According to www.npr.org more than half of US children (53%) own a smartphone by the age of 11. This allows them access to anything they can find on the internet, provided there are no parental controls set up, and even these wouldn’t rule out all there is to find. There’s a debate as to whether this newfound independence for children and technology will be beneficial as it can be used for good; educational and creative purposes definitely exist. But parents do also fear what they don’t know when a child owns their own device. There’s a sympathetic view where a parent may worry about predators online, especially so if their child is connected to social media. Social media itself is another worry, as it appears to worsen the mental health of adolescents and even adults too; ‘The rate of adolescents reporting symptoms of major depression in a given year increased by 52% from 2005 to 2017. From 2009 to 2017, it grew by 63% in adults ages 18 to 25.’ – etactics.com. A parent can also fear what specific media their child absorbs, much of the internet having little to no filter. From a 19yr old boy the ‘I confirm I am above the age of 18’ button never stopped me from going to any website in my younger teenage years. There is all sorts of violent and explicit material available on the internet that children can come across, and a parent worries how it may effect their child’s developing brain as there is less control over what they take in. AAP states on their website that ‘Research has associated exposure to media violence with a variety of physical and mental health problems for children and adolescents, including aggressive and violent behavior, bullying, desensitization to violence, fear, depression, nightmares, and sleep disturbances.’ Many psychologists conclude that an over-exposure to violent media leads to two different outcomes; aggressive behaviour, or a fear of the world. Many blame violent media itself, computer games taking much criticism over recent years as some go as far to claim it responsible for school shootings in the US. I struggle to blame the media itself, and believe that a parent is always fully responsible for what their child takes in. The worry of what your 11 year old takes in disappears when you don’t buy them a smartphone at such a young age, and control what other media they take in whether that be computer games, films or music. I want to say this with my project and will interview and look for the opinions of others, in particularly parents and younger children to construct a more informed opinion.