I feel that Will Lakemans exhibition represents the theme of Nostalgia As he explained that when he was creating the images he made them from his memory and his senses. He said that he had a conative issue described synaesthesia (a perceptual phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway.) this makes him get his senses mixed up when he gets over stimulated due to him having autism, This can be seen in his images as they are very bright and unrealistic compared to other photographers. He did this by using Artificial intelligence to give them more of an imaginative and surreal look to them. His AI images are repsentative of dreams as they don’t make much sense to the naked eye without the context behind them. Will talked about how he always wanted to turn his dreams into a visual experience for his audience, as he didn’t like listening to other peoples dreams due to them not making much sense and being boring.

The image above is created by Wills memory of there being a small and dirty pool that customers had to step in to clean their feet before they went into the pool. He created this by using AI to get a realistic look into what he remembered. I thought this image really linked back to his them of nostalgia as he described to us that when he talked to other people about this small pool they remembered it to be brown due to all of the dirt that people bring in with their feet, While having this knowledge Will still decided to give the pool a purple tint to it in this image as he wanted to recreate the way that he remembered it.

Over all I enjoyed his exhibition as I haven’t seen many pictures created by AI. I also Liked how they all where made from his memory even though they are not all repsentative of what Fort regent was actually like when he was younger but yet gives him a nostalgic feeling.

In my own understanding right now of Nostalgia, it is a happy/good sensation that is felt because of memories remembered from in the past, this is sometimes triggered or randomly occur. For example you could be at any beach, and it could remind you of when you went to the same beach or a better beach in the past with all your friends, and you had a really good time there. Most of the time you remembers these nostalgic memories from a very long time ago, years in fact.

Nostalgia relates to, missing something in the past, which could associate with a person, personalities, things, or even how it used to feel. Nostalgia is closely related to how it used to make you feel, and can be seen through a relation of other people feelings, for example watching your or another kid be exited about something, could cause a nostalgic feeling/memory of when you used to do the same thing. People usually phrase it to be a “good time”, or “the good old days”, and can be experienced through everything like music, games, or even places.

Personally if something is nostalgic it is normally a good feeling due to the processing of stimuli, and something that you do want to remember again. Not something that reminds you of a bad experience.

This exhibition was based on Will Lakeman’s memories and dreams of how he remembers Fort Regent from his childhood. In the 1990’s fort regent was nothing like how it was today, there was an aquarium, funfair, mini golf, concerts and many more.

During the exhibition, Will was very open and honest about his Autism and how many people who are autistic become fixated with things like birds or trains, however, he has an intense attachment to Fort Regent and although he hates crowds and unexpected noises, he loves swimming pools, funfairs and leisure centres.

Lakeman further played on nostalgia by placing different scents throughout the gallery. With one end of the exhibition having a outdoor woodland diffuser to re create the smell of the outdoor gardens and the other with a chlorine like smell to recreate the smell of the swimming pool. I believe this is a creative way to add onto nostalgia as many scents hold memories.

Throughout the exhibition, the photos show not just what the fort was like, it captures how Will remembers it in his dreams and hallucinations. Due to his synaesthesia, which is when one sense triggers another sense for example, associating different sounds with colours, or someone may see/ picture colours more vibrant than they actually are.

The image above was created using AI (artificial intelligence), however is based on a memory of fort regents swimming pool, as you had to walk in a foot bath before entering the pool and he remembers it as a vivid purple colour however, it was far from that. Not every image that is put into AI comes out perfect which makes unique, for example, one of the feet above has seven toes.

By using Artificial Intelligence Will has managed to turn a regular photo of how many people may see it and ‘recreate it to the way my mind jumbles things together to create memories’.

Before going to this exhibition, I wasn’t too sure on how AI could be used in photography as it is automatically programmed. However, hearing how Will uses it to adapt and enhance his images made me think differently. When I first initially viewed the exhibition I didn’t particularly like how AI was used as i thought it took away from the reality and truth behind each image. However, after reading and hearing about Will’s reasoning behind using artificial intelligence and how it is personalised to himself and how he remembers Fort Regent made me shift my opinion.

Overall, I really enjoyed the exhibition as I have never seen anything like it and i enjoyed how every image had its own memory and story behind it. I also thought it was very interesting to learn about the history of fort regent as it is a place where almost everyone on the island has been to however, it is no where near as exciting as it was back in the 90’s.

Photos included in the exhibition

Task

Wed: ANALYSIS > review the exhibition and write 500 words incorporating knowledge and understanding from talk by Will Lakeman > 1 blogpost

Writing frame: How does the exhibition make you consider the theme of Nostalgia? How has childhood memories inspired the imagery? Describe photographic techniques used, including AI in the image-making process. In what way are AI images a representation of dreams? Choose one image and analyse in more detail, considering form, concept and aesthetics. Make a final value added judgement on the exhibition as a whole, ie. do you like/ dislike it – provide examples for or against. Would you recommend it to others? If so, why? Include illustration such as installation images from the exhibition. Include also at least one quote from Will Lakeman’s talk or associated publicity material and provide a comment.

Essay

Will Lakeman’s ‘playtime’ project is heavily based around the theme of nostalgia that he felt when visiting Fort Regent as a kid, since it use to be his favourite place on the island. Lakeman’s images try to recreate the emotions and visions he had of the fort as a child, attempting to bring the now run down and abandoned areas of the fort back to the bustling, full of life place he loved. He succeeds at this goal through the help of artificial intelligence and adjusting his images on Photoshop until the image coheres with how he remembers.  

The playtime exhibition makes me consider the theme of nostalgia, since some of the images Lakeman has created make me feel a sense of nostalgia too from spending a lot of time in fort regent when I was younger. For me, I feel as though I relate more to the images of swimming pools or water the most, again mainly due to me swimming often as a young child. For Lakeman, the images he created were all in some way inspired by how he viewed the fort as a child, even stating that one such image was created as a reminder from a time when he had begun to hallucinate by the swimming pool.  

The process Lakeman used to create these images, was to take the photographs in person using his camera and then alter them using ai and prompting the photo to be how he wants it to be. If the images were not going in the way that he wanted, he would edit them in photoshop, enhancing or changing areas before putting it back into the ai. I think that the ai images created feel almost dreamlike, in a sense they’re not realistic but also not too unrealistic. While most images created by ai are colourful and dreamlike as depicted in Lakeman’s project, some ai generated images have the ability to feel almost uncanny in a way. 

Overall, I really like the playtime project since I think the whole idea of introducing ai into our own images is really interesting since it means we can create anything we want in the image. I also think that using ai to recreate past emotions and feelings from childhood is a really unique way to use ai and is something that I would like to see more often. 

Analysis of image: 

This image emits the feeling of being in a galaxy, surrounded by stars with areas of bright colours contrasting against the darkness. I really like this photo, as you can see the resemblance to its real-life counterpart through the lighthouse. The picture also looks more like a painting than a photograph due to the ai altering it, however I still really like everything about it, and I think the painting look just adds texture. I also really like how many details are in the photo, from what looks to be satellites in the top right corner of the image, linking back to the space theme, to the implications of waves at the bottom of the picture using brush strokes. 

Will Lakeman is a Local artist who grew up in Jersey his exhibition which he had created was based on Fort Regent and how he visioned it when he was little, when we went on a class trip to go see it Will explained to us that Fort Regent was a place he went to, to spend time with his brother. Lakeman is a photographer who has nurtured an obsessive interest in ‘the Fort’, and has spent his adult life revisiting weird dreams of this iconic building and its heyday in the early 1990s. It was interesting hearing about how the Fort was when it had things to do and was busy as now more and more things have been taken out of it and each year it is becoming more derelict and is hardly used. He mentioned that part of his attachment to Fort Regent was due to his autism he was fascinated by the pools and funfairs which were there even though he was intimidated and didn’t like the floods of people which the Fort held as it could be a sensory overload he found his passion for the place. The nostalgia which Lakeman experienced whilst making this project bought him comfort as he was able to create the illusion of how amazing he found the Fort even though other other people may have thought he had exaggerated it but that didn’t matter because it was how he saw it.

The images were an attempt to recreate his childhood memories and how he envisioned it, and whilst creating the images the nostalgia came flooding back of his childhood memories, the images are fascinating to look at as they are vibrant and look really realistic.

These photos were created by ai, for the past 3 years Lakeman was working on ai to create these photos he said he liked creating these images however it took him years to master the techniques and he is still learning, Lakeman also used a light-box to frame his images to enhance the vibrance of the colours to resemble how he saw them the ones in the light-box are printed on a special film in order for it to more effective.

I really enjoyed visiting this exhibition as it was something i haven’t seen before and was a different medium of photography and i found that fascinating i loved how vibrant the images were.

The idea of this exhibition was to photograph his childhood and Will Lakeman spent a lot of time at fort regent when he was a kid and when he went there, there was a swimming pool and the photo above this text sort of shows a swimming pool with bright colours and weird shapes and sun glare, I believe that this is what Lakeman saw or remembers what his childhood was like bright colours and weird shapes nothing to make him sad. This photo which is AI generated encapsulates what it was like for Lakeman as a child, Although some things in this image don’t make sense its still a great image but AI has a long way to go to start to make more sharper and refined images. I would say I like this photo however what I would do differently I would make the pool more clear and make the image more defined. how this photo was framed was in frame with lights in the inside to make the photo glow. When Lakeman was making this photo I believe the base of the photo was made by AI and didn’t take any inspiration from real life photos when Lakeman started to edit the photo he probably just sharpened it up adjusted the brightness and probably added more colour and maybe more shapes.

His fascination with Fort Regent

Throughout his childhood, Lakeman had a fascination with the structure that we call Fort Regent. Fort Regent used to be a lot more interesting than it is now, being a sort of theme park, with different shows and concerts constantly being situated there. It was a place that was very special to young Lakeman, a place were he often went with his brother for entertainment. Lakeman took notice of every change that happened to the fort, the entertainment being shut down and many areas (like the swimming pool) being completely abandoned and left to rot, contrasting with the once crowded Fort Regent. Lakeman’s fascination continued into his adulthood, and he decided to create AI generated images that were a portrayal of not only the fort in the past, but also how he saw it as a child, enhancing the colours and making the place look more exciting and almost dream-like.

The work displayed at the exhibition

The exhibition was created in a very interesting way, including other senses like sound and smells to recreate Lakeman’s childhood memories of Fort Regent. I think it presented his work in a very effective way, causing it to more of an experience than a exhibition.

Lakeman talked about the many techniques he used, using a range of platforms to create his art. He mentioned how he wrote lots ‘prompts’, causing the AI to develop images that portrayed his childhood.

Review

Throughout the entire exhibition there was an obvious theme of nostalgia, each scene or memory being illustrated in a colour way. Lakeman talked about how Fort Regent nowadays is not even close to how it was when he was young, and each photo includes a portrayal for his longing of how the fort was before. I think it is interesting how Lakeman based the pictures on purely his memories, adding bright colours and soft shapes which represent how he saw the fort as a child. Moreover, the inclusion of props (like the lifeguard chair), smells (like the scent of buttery popcorn in one of the corners of the room) and sounds (like the sound of crowds) made the nostalgia even more present. It was interesting to see just how many details were included, and how they each contributed to the nostalgic feel of the exhibition. Despite not experiencing the fort in its full glory in person, the exhibition still had a very nostalgic feeling. As someone with autism, Lakeman mentioned that it is part of the reason for his ‘obsession with the fort’ and that he is ‘autistic for Fort Regent’, his fixation being still as strong now as it was when he was a child.

Before attending the exhibition, I didn’t truly believe that AI generated pictures count as a type of photography. The talk from Will Lakeman completely changed my view of this however, as learning about the amount of time and work that went into creating these pieces of art. Lakeman talked about how initially around 800 AI generated images were created by prompts that described a singular scene he remembered, from which he took 40 of the most ideal/ accurate images and stitched them together in photoshop. He also used many of his own images of Fort Regent currently, transforming them into the way he saw them as a child. Lakeman mentioned how he wanted to portray the memories he has of the fort ‘in the strange ways they appear in dreams and hallucinations’ and I think this created a much more effectives collection of images, with a much more unique and personal appearance.

I enjoyed this exhibition as it was almost a generated experience of Fort Regent in the past, utilising AI in ways that I haven’t even considered before. Despite the images being very interesting, the way in which they were displayed enhanced the effectiveness of the exhibition and I believe this is the reason I liked it so much. This is something I would recommend to others since it is a perfect example of the constantly developing technology around us as well as a unique experience of another person’s nostalgia.

This was one of the photos that were displayed at the exhibition, and I think it was one of the ones that were the most interesting. This AI generated image doesn’t have as much detail as the other pictures, it mostly being a mosaic of yellow and blue tiles that create a depiction of a swimming pool. Lakeman explained how this image was based on a specific day at the pool from when he was a child, when the hot weather made his vision blurred and combined the sun blazing through the windows and the iridescent gleam of the water to cast this weird mix of colours everywhere. Despite the wild colouring of the image, there is still a sense of depth and we can clearly tell that the picture is of a swimming pool. I think the concept of this piece is very interesting, the photo portraying a memory in a dream- like way. The aspect of nostalgia is clearly intertwined with the image, the specific colours and shapes showing the artist’s personal experiences. Moreover, the colours cause there to be a theme, sky blue and bright yellow commonly being associated with bright sunny days, like the day it is based on.