I’m Anu! I research, make, craft, code, and sometimes, hack things.
Kolam As An Ecofeminist Computational Art Practice ⌘🤖️
ACM Creativity & Cognition 2022
Gopinaath Kannabiran and Anuradha Venugopal Reddy. 2022. Exploring Kolam As An Ecofeminist Computational Art Practice. In Creativity and Cognition (C&C '22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 336–349. https://doi.org/10.1145/3527927.3531452
You can find the PDF here
Family resemblances between Cross-stitch and AI ❎🤖
Abstract
Human history provides countless examples of visual languages representing knowledge in non-linear, patterned, symbolic formats, i.e., beyond linear rule-based scripts such as Latin. Across millennia, cultural custodians pass down crucial knowledge by documenting their lives, values, beliefs, and myths in embodied, coded, crafted form. In comparison, modern neural networks such as DALL-E generate supposedly ‘new’ visual languages using only text prompts – translating linear rule-based scripts to propose non-linear and non-sensical ways of ‘reading’ things. In this article, I describe my experiments with DALL-E’s interpretation of cross-stitch patterns. Deviating from natural language use, I analyse twelve AI-generated variations of cross-stitch by referring to them as Family Resemblances, inspired by the philosophical concept of Wittgenstein. This theoretical lens allows cross-referencing DALL-E’s cross-stitch variations with cultural visual patterns from human history that make non-linear, non-scripted ways of reading possible. This inquiry is aligned with the methodological tradition of Critical Making, which makes room for craft perspectives to challenge dominant computational paradigms. Reading anew what AI generates from craft perspectives allows us to appreciate better non-scripted and embodied forms of communication that still exist today. I argue that AI does not produce newness but rather ‘newly’ suggests how craftspeople are (and have always been) creative agents for shaping the future of culturally and visually-informed algorithmic systems.
Keywords: Craft, Cross-stitch, AI, Critical Making, Open Source
Click here to read magazine article.
Artificial Everyday Creativity: Creative Leaps with AI through Critical Making 🧶🤖️
Journal of Digital Creativity - Taylor & Francis OPEN ACCESS
Anuradha Reddy (2022) Artificial everyday creativity: creative leaps with AI through critical making, Digital Creativity, DOI: 10.1080/14626268.2022.2138452
To read, click here.
Drawing Conversations Mediated by AI 🎨
ACM Creativity & Cognition 2022
Paulina Yurman and Anuradha Venugopal Reddy. 2022. Drawing Conversations Mediated by AI. In Creativity and Cognition (C&C '22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 56–70. https://doi.org/10.1145/3527927.3531448
You can find the PDF here
Venetian Drawing Conversations 🎭️🎨
ACM Creativity & Cognition 2022
Paulina Yurman, Marie Louise Juul Søndergaard, James Pierce, Nadia Campo Woytuk, Anuradha Venugopal Reddy, and Matt Malpass. 2022. Venetian Drawing Conversations. In Creativity and Cognition (C&C '22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 457–461. https://doi.org/10.1145/3527927.3531207
Workshop Abstract
This one-day workshop invites designers, researchers and practitioners whose work might involve design, to collectively speculate about designed artefacts and technologies through the creation of drawing conversations: visual dialogues resulting from the merging of drawings created by different people. The workshop aims to use drawing as an activity for collaborative engagement with ambiguity, interpretation and mutual learning. Through drawing activities, we aim to join in Venice's rich creative traditions, and develop speculative visualisations in order to find common grounds between the diverse research interests of our organisers and participants.
Workshop Website & Gallery: https://drawing-conversations-2022.com/Gallery-1
