Major Project 1 (getting started again)

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"Vintage block" Collaboration with Deepart (J.Hewitt 2018)

It has been very difficult to get back to thinking about the major project after the excitement of the group project and the epic construction task in the pattern processes
module. Although everything is interconnected, and many sections of the research and development of the other modules will impact on this final piece, I fear I rather suffered from cognitive overload and found getting intensly involved in several projects at once (to say nothing of working and selling my house) very draining.

I really don't want to end up just creating a fashion collection based on Deepart AI drawings... the literary research I am doing on neural systems and machine learning is just so fascinating, I want to do justice to the big concepts involved. I accept this is probably just my own personal desire to do something new and meaningful, but as I am reading more of Margaret Bodens work and becoming aware of H creativity and P creativity, so my overwhelming desire to do something both totally new AND meaningful in a big historic way - (demonstrating my personal creativity) rather than just a new-to-me-technique (demonstrating a skill) comes out in force.

Apart from not having an entirely clear idea of exactly what my finished pieces will be, the limitations are mainly time and my inability to code an AI to truly work with/for me on specific goals.

Pattern cutting is a process that does rather need a plan. Just draping fabric on the stand and "seeing what happens" is not an efficient use of time or materials though it may lead to interesting random experimental shapes developing, that approach is more akin to just throwing paint at a canvas and seeing what sticks... it is a perfectly valid approach for a result of Novelty, but not one of Creativity. Having at least a design to start working towards is the beginning of the step towards a final creative piece... 

"Just seeing what happens" doesn't allow for interpretation of rules or ideas within computational creativity either. As Boden suggests, Rules, steps, heuristics and instructions are a necessary part of the creative (and any other) process, they can be changed or broken or ignored, but ultimately they need to be decided first, otherwise there can be only "novelty" not "creativity".

Pattern cutting is very much a "skill" anyway... in some ways it feels a bit odd academicising it at this level (though I am not complaining) it is a creative skill obviously, but it consists of a series of quite specific physical techniques that can be learned, rather than an mental philosophy. I am trying to straddle boundaries between several subject area spheres, I know intuitively it is a meaningful place to be. But I'm having trouble expressing in a "final garment" exactly how my thoughts and others work and research in an entirely different medium (that of coding) are made meaningful, without it being drastically oversimplified "code-themed-fashion."




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