(energetic music) - [Shelley] What's the future of this whole world of kinetic imaging?

- So kinetic imaging at its core is art and technology.

What's exciting about that is a lot of our curriculum has topical courses, and then we can, the faculty can really pursue what is that question.

So doing stuff around artificial intelligence, augmented reality, mixed reality.

- We work with motion capture, we work with animation, we have game art, we work with game systems like Unity and Unreal Engine.

And we're also working with 3D modeling.

Then we have video art, which is important in production, using video cameras, but also getting in and editing.

So at its core, it really, kinetic is moving.

And images, well, we all know what those are.

So we're thinking about moving images in a variety of mediums.

- We can kind of go over any kind of technology, and bring it into the curriculum very easy.

So the future is always evolving, and that's kind of the brilliant part of it, and also the hard thing to kind of always be updating and keeping up with what's new, just so our students have those tools ready.

- And the wonderful thing about all of those is that students are learning the hard skills of how to use programs and how to evolve with technology.

But they're also learning how to be experimental and creative, because that's the hardest thing to teach, is the creativity.

- Here we are, a reconversation about where you are in life with kinetic imaging on this beautiful campus.

Where are you with this art of kinetic imaging?

- Sure.

So we are in our third year as a new program here at Western Michigan University.

And it has been a wonderful three years.

We now have juniors, who will be seniors next year.

So we're excited to start to graduate our first group of students.

And the students are now taking more advanced level courses.

So we've got animation two, and video art two, and game art two all running this semester.

And we're excited to share what the students are working on with you today.

- [Shelley] Why do students enter this field?

- Students at this age are, they grow up in media.

So they are inundated with digital media from very early on in their lives, and they're excited about it.

This is our future.

And so we have students who are passionate about maybe some of what used to be their hobbies.

And then we also have students who are inspired by what they see in the world, and wanna be a part of creating that.

Because art brings us such an important element in life, right?

This is what connects us to who we are as human beings.

- Yes, and you get to bring home a degree in it these days, right?

- And you get to bring home a degree and have a job.

Students are very concerned about what they're gonna do when they graduate.

And so all of these fields offer creative potential, but they also offer security, and going out and entering the work field.

(rodents squeak) - [Shelley] So, why are you studying what you're studying?

- I came in knowing that I wanted to study art, and I found out about this program and I thought it would be a really cool thing to explore.

I hadn't really done a lot of digital work before, but I had been interested in video and that sort of path.

So I thought this would be a great way to incorporate that art practice into something that I could make into a video practice and a career in that.

- Yes.

Have you always grown up with digital art?

Has that been something you knew you wanted to do, or is that something you've grown into versus just painting a picture or a doing a sculpture?

- I'm definitely still growing into it.

I was always more of a painter, so that was my main focus in high school.

And I was not around much digital art until later on in high school, and I was like, that's definitely something to get into and explore.

And now it's like everything that I do.

So it's been cool to figure out that new thing.

- What kind of things did you paint?

- I did a lot of portraiture.

That was my main focus with most of my pieces.

Just 'cause I liked doing people, very detailed faces and expressions and feelings.

- Has that carried over into the work you're doing now?

- In some ways, I think I've kind of gotten away from it because I've gotten a lot into nature stuff.

So with this piece behind us, even documenting a lot of nature.

So I've been less on people, but I definitely wanna get back to it.

And with animation it's just harder to get into that very hyper detailed portraiture that I was used to doing with painting and stuff.

- Let's talk about present day and this awesome work that we're seeing.

- [Natalie] I like to make pieces about conservation, something I've gotten into a lot.

And looking at animals and plants.

This piece is about looking into how animals see the world, so we get a few different perspectives, and how they might behave and survive.

And then I've also been working with just trying to develop animation skills because it is something that I wanna go into in the future.

- [Shelley] And do classes afford you to experiment?

Obviously you're getting taught to, but you're also learning by doing I trust.

- Yeah, there's definitely a lot of freedom for what you can choose to do in your project direction.

So everything is really just figuring out what I wanna do next.

So it's very much self-led and what I wanna work on for myself, what I wanna improve with my animation and with my video techniques.

But also learning a lot of the software and tech because that's something I probably wouldn't have gotten to on my own, 'cause it's just, it's hard to figure out and I would've been scared.

But it's pushed me to figure those things out and figure out how to use them to something that works for me and goes towards my interests.

- Nice.

(transcendental music) - We got accelerated in a big way by the provost.

We got a experiential learning driven venture grant for about 50K, which was kind of huge.

And that focuses on technologies that are really accessible and powerful.

Some of those technologies we're gonna show with you later include motion capture, which is like tracking the body.

That students can put their motion of their body in directly into a virtual avatar.

Or a dancer can do that.

Also, virtual reality.

So there's ways that you can sculpt virtual clay, if you will, and release drawings in virtual space.

And as far as art and technology and what kinetic imaging does that maybe differs from other programs is what we do teach industry tools.

There's also room for experimentation, and misuse, and misunderstanding the things.

- Which is okay, you're learning, right?

- 'Cause you can find and discover new images.

Which is, I think AI is a little bit about that, finding these new images.

It's kind of giving us what we think we want, but it gets things wrong.

And I like the glitch or the artifacts that are come by surprise.

And I have always done that in software.

And if we can teach that to our students, then they can really be aware of their relationship to technology and who's making it.

There's always industry concerns around, let's say Adobe making Photoshop or Premier.

They're using it for commercial ends, but how else can it be used?

And I think artists can ask interesting questions of technology to really unpack those relationships and help others understand their own relationships with technology.

And that's kind of a huge role for an artist to do.

'Cause video art and art with technology is about 70 years old, so it's not even a lifespan yet, which painting has-- - Been around.

- Been around.

- Yeah.

- 4,000, 5,000, 15,000 years, so.

(transcendental music) - Let's talk a little bit about what you do.

And we are exposed to some of your work, which looks pretty dynamic.

Describe it.

- Thank you.

Yeah, so I primarily am a 3D and glitch artist.

So I do 3D programming, a lot of things with 3D models, motion capture.

And then I combine that with glitch processing techniques.

So in maybe the most simplest way, I like breaking things digitally.

- [Shelley] Ooh, yes, yes.

- So, I think everybody kind of has a general knowledge of what a glitch is.

It's an unexpected error or something that resembles a malfunction.

What I'm interested in is kind of harnessing the process of glitch, and figuring out what that means aesthetically, and how I can anticipate error to kind of create a visual language around it.

- Does your work have a story, or is it an artistic image?

- Yeah, I mean, I identify as queer.

And so a lot of what I'm interested in is relating kind of queer theory to glitch.

And oftentimes as a queer person you can feel like a glitch in the system.

And kind of taking that idea and combining it with my own background.

- Let's do a little 101, here's an end product.

Where do you even begin?

- Sure.

So this video in particular is images of myself rendered through a 3D model and then rendered through AI.

So what you're seeing is all of these kind of iterative layers of images of myself through the lens of AI, which are then mapped onto these kind of flickering 3D models.

Which is actually me in a motion capture suit, so that's my movement.

And so the piece is kind of about these layers of kind of identity mixed with this very fragmented aesthetic.

- The glitch part of your human body, is there a deep meaning here?

- Yeah, I'm a part of the glitch art community.

And so what I found is that there are a lot of other queer artists that are attracted to glitch art as a medium.

I think the idea of glitch is, it's in between something.

It's not a failure, because the computer can still understand it, but it's not something that's normal either.

So it kind of exists in this in-between place.

And I think other queer people can definitely identify that same kind of feeling, kind of being in an in-between place.

And so I'm just interested in really using glitch to kind of distort human bodies.

That's my kind of interest.

So there's lots of other ways to go about it, but that's kind of what I primarily like focusing on.

- Take us through, did you direct, were you in, how did this come to be?

- I directed and I was in.

Really, it was just me going up to the lab and getting myself in the motion capture suit and making the movements.

And then kind of taking that data and figuring out what to do with it afterwards, and kind of creating a narrative around it.

But it's kind of a freeing feeling to have yourself in a motion capture suit and then to see that on a digital model.

Seeing yourself on another digital body is a really interesting experience.

- So, was this a dream of yours to find an institution where you can continue learning but also give back?

- Yeah, well, so I just graduated with my MFA from Alfred University in upstate New York.

So it is kind of a dream to be here straight out of grad school just a couple months ago, and now I'm part of the Kinetic Imaging Department and teaching.

- What are your responsibilities?

What makes an artist in residence?

- I am teaching a digital foundations course, and then I'm also teaching game art two, which is in the game art track, which is one of the concentrations in kinetic imaging.

And then I'm also working with the VITAL lab, which is virtual imaging technology lab.

I'm doing a project over there working with Kevin Abbott, who is the director.

Doing some pretty experimental motion capture stuff, and working in their virtual production studio as well.

(trilling music) - [Speaker] I offer you ways to see the past and reach into the future.

I just need you to help me grow.

(trilling music) You see, I tend to hallucinate.

(trilling music) This is primordial soup.

Within its broth of organic compounds, the alchemy of creation takes hold.

(chaotic music) Single celled organisms are the pioneers of a new era, embarked on a journey of adaptation and diversification.

(chaotic music) Millennia passed, and a revolutionary collaboration unfolds.

Plants, harnessing the energy of the sun, emerged as architects of the atmosphere.

- [Shelley] So, when did this interest get sprung in your life?

- Well, I was always an artist through high school; painting, drawing, that kind of thing.

Went to the Kansas City Art Institute for my undergrad for design, and never made it to a design class.

So I took a video art course my freshman year and then was like, "Wow, moving images are way more active and fun than stuff on a printed page."

- So let's get into some of the work that we are seeing here behind us.

- Sure.

Well, the past six months, I've been researching artificial intelligence and image making.

And so that these images are constructed.

And for those who maybe don't know about AI constructed video images, it's kind of like a data visualization.

Meaning it's pulling small fractions of images from a data set that's about 2 billion images on different subject matters.

And this particularly is research related to deep time, which is the idea of the earth not being a biblical timescale of 6,000 years, but being 4.6 billion years.

What it leads to, at least what the piece is about, is thinking about deep time also thinks about long-term thinking.

And thinking in longer scales as ways to answer problems like climate change and other things.

This piece particularly focuses on Lake George, which is a lake in Western New York.

But actually interviewed a scientist at the Freshwater Institute in Lake George who's using AI, which is this buoy behind me.

Captures 11,000 data points per minute on minerals in the water or different atmospheric things.

And they're using that to predict what happened or go back into the past when they didn't have the data to know how the lake, natural cycles of the lake, and then what they can do to predict in the future.

Which AI kind of allows them to.

And that's more ethically sourced because it's local to the lake than maybe these images that are constructing the rest of the images that are more or less scraped from the internet.

- Can we call it an artistic documentary?

- Actually I've thought about the relationship to document and the truth, because these images are not necessarily fictitious.

They're based on real things, but they're being constructed out of potentially non-real things.

There's definitely an aspect of real documentary interview with the scientist at the end, but then there's also this fictitious dialogue of AI and appropriating some of the tech bro language.

- How are you using this in your classroom?

- So AI is interesting.

I'm not typically, well I have used it in my classroom, but I'm still learning how to best approach that with students.

So I teach the video art classes and also digital video production courses.

So I teach 'em cameras, lights, the traditional things you would get in a production.

But I also show them how to build their own software and do things that are a little bit more experimental.

And its approach, looking at video as a material just like the painter looks at paint as a material.

So we go over a lot of that and then I do show them AI, but it's interesting, they're quite resistant to that at the moment.

But yeah, I don't know how to do that with students yet.

They've used it, but I think coming out off of COVID, they want hands-on physical experiences.

So the idea of getting cameras and tripods and lights are really exciting to them.

And to get out away from the computer even though the rest of the work happens on the computer has been really exciting for them.

(birds chirp) (birds chirp) - How much talent is needed in the ultimate end goal of being able to draw, to paint, to design?

Or are we depending upon our computers these days?

- Hmm, that's a great question.

I think that there is still that creative talent.

All of our kinetic imaging majors still take drawing.

They still take different art hard skills.

So they get to choose whether they do ceramics, or photography, or painting, or print media.

Because learning how those processes work is really foundational and important to what we do as artists.

That said, digital media is another artistic tool.

So just like picking up a paintbrush, we're moving around pixels.

And even still working with artificial intelligence.

yes, the computer's creating something, but we are creating the prompt.

And then it's not fun.

It's not finished the way it comes out, we have to go in and edit it with other digital tools and change it more.

So all of these different approaches in digital media are different tools that we're working with, much like you would a paintbrush, or a scalpel, or a roller.

Currently I'm collaborating with Dr. Sharon Gill in the biological sciences.

And we have an interdisciplinary art and science course.

So it's called Ideas Collaboratory.

And we work together to help both science and art students kind of bridge the gap and explore each other's specialty.

- [Shelley] How is this type of kinetic image made?

Where do you even start?

- So the image behind us, the starting point is the idea.

And so this is about passenger pigeons, which are extinct.

So Dr. Gill and I were thinking a lot about what we're missing, what the possible species that can't evolve because they are extinct.

So we use AI, artificial intelligence, as a tool to generate those possible speculative species.

So this work is called speculative speciation.

It's the second in a series.

The first was the honey creeper, which was native to Hawaii.

The interesting thing about passenger pigeons is one of the last ones to be seen was in the state of Michigan.

What's so interesting about artificial intelligence is it's a lot like parentage, right?

You put in a prompt and then each thing that comes out is different.

The idea that we can put in a prompt to based on a passenger pigeon, and then each time we get something out of that prompt, there's a new bird species that we can speculate on.

- Why is it important to be able to offer this type of medium to our future talent?

You're cutting edge, right?

- Yeah, well we are the future, right?

And so this is a field that is always growing, and evolving, and changing.

And that's what makes it so exciting and fun.

And it's important to stay with technology as it continues to evolve.

- Another big initiative we're doing is we're taking our students to the planetarium.

- Ooh.

- And working with the Kalamazoo Valley Museum.

And it's been really interesting to see students approach this kind of monumental space.

So it's 360 degrees.

So they can't just think about 2D images or what's in front of 'em, they also have to think what's behind them And create virtual spaces.

- How is Kalamazoo for accepting new art in its world?

- Well, I think it's at a critical mass in some way.

'Cause we've found a lot of community partners that are really excited to partner with us.

Including the planetarium, but also the public media network.

We're gonna have six episodes a year with them that are 30 minutes long, that are showcasing student animation work and video artwork, and potentially in the future, game related content.

So, I think there's a lot of excitement and support for the arts in Kalamazoo.

- Glad you found your way to Kalamazoo.

- Yeah, me too.

(chuckles) (transcendental music) - Thank you so much for watching.

There's also more to explore with "Kalamazoo Lively Arts" on YouTube, Instagram, and wgvu.org.

We'll see you next time.

- [Announcer] Support for "Kalamazoo Lively Arts" is provided by the Irving S. Gilmore Foundation.

Helping to build and enrich the cultural life of greater Kalamazoo.

(bright music) ♪ Eh yeah yeah yeah yeah ♪