Jake's Brief: 

Synchronous Synergy is an art piece that prompts the viewer to think about how AI and robotics could help the healthcare industry in the future, Synchronous Synergy also prompts the reader to think about the drawbacks of the future of technology in healthcare. Humans and robots learn from each other and they could in the future rely on one another. The ouroboros (A snake that is eating its own tale) is a symbol of this feedback loop. This inspired the design of a robot arm and a human arm creating a loop or a circle with their arms. 

Researchers say that will AI and robotics will only be readily available to the rich. For that reason, the box the arm is coming out of is made of gold. This will show the wealth of the users. But at the same time, the gold will be cracking to show how while society is so concerned about preserving life society is not concerned about the quality of the life we live.

Ollie's Brief:

Synchronous Synergy is a sculpture that explores the concept of humans and robots coming together as one with an emphasis on the medical field. Robotics is coming a long way and one of the ways that robots have greatly improved the quality of life is that they are capable of performing complex surgeries with more precision than any human. Synchronous Synergy is a way to commemorate how far humans and robots have evolved together. The sculpture is also meant to portray an optimistic view of what is to come with these new advancements in technology. The piece takes inspiration from the Ooroborus (A snake that is eating its own tale) to represent the feedback loop created between humans and robots, but instead of a snake, it uses a robotic arm and a human arm coming together to create the loop.

When I first entered the studio I had no idea what to expect. I had never done AI art or any type of AI-generated stuff. I learned a lot over the course of the studio about how these different programs work. I still don't fully understand how they work but I have a much bigger understanding. I went into the studio having seen some of this AI art on different social media platforms. I had no idea that it could be as free and creative as it was. I developed my skill of prompting the AI to get “better” images. I say “better” in the sense of the image is more to my liking and more specific. My opinion of this kind of art has not really changed that much. I still think it is super cool and creative, although now I do have an understanding of how it could take away some people's jobs. It has the potential to make designers obsolete in a way. They will still be needed in some fields but all of their creative work could be done by AI. I also think that this AI for some people is doing all the work. For my project, I still needed to make the sculpture and things like that but for other projects, the AI could just design the entire project for them. It is a super useful and new tool, but I do think that it can be abused. 

For my project, I used AI to help come up with some more stylistic choices. For example, for the robot arm, I asked the AI to design a medial robot arm. This helped me create the arm. Although the project was an art piece I did end up using Chat GPT just as much as Midjoney. The programs both helped influence my project, Chat GPT came up with the name and helped me focus on what field of AI and robotics I wanted to focus on. Midjorney helped make creative design-based choices. It surprised me how well these programs could basically read my mind. It felt weird to see how well these programs could recreate what I was thinking about, or the opposite. Make ideas that I would never have thought about. It was annoying to not get what you wanted out of Midjorney. Sometimes the AI would come up with something completely different than what I was thinking, in a bad way. I think that integrating AI into my project helped me develop many ideas. It also made me think twice about many different aspects of my project. 

I don't think I will use these tools too much in the future. I may use them to come up with titles for essays or to make images for different presentations. The reason for this is that I don't think I will find it that helpful. I think that I can come up with and develop most of the ideas I will need in life. Being able to develop those ideas is also a necessary skill in life. Not being able to come up with ideas renders you effectively useless. If you ever have a problem then how are you going to fix it? You would need to come up with an idea. I think that it is not worth losing a skill to make life a little bit easier. The more work you put into life the better your results will be. 

When I first entered the studio, I had not been exposed to how powerful AI could be. I knew that AI had been growing at an astronomical rate and was becoming a more mainstream idea, but I was yet to explore it myself. I had always believed that AI could be used as a tool to help kick-start the creative process because it could generate ideas quickly and accurately. One could use those AI-generated ideas to add to their overall project idea and aid the iterative process.

When starting our process, we used an AI image generator named Midjourney to get basic ideas on how we would tackle the project and how we would combine the two ideas of robotics and humans. Midjourney could give us interpretations of a human with a robot arm, but we then realized that that idea needed to be more complex for what we were going for in our project. We then started researching how robotics could help in the medical field, which ended up sparking a flame in our design process. After shifting our focus to medical robotics, we input a prompt into Midjourney to help kick-start our designs of medical-looking robot arms. After looking at what Midjourney had come up with when it came to medical robots, I started to design a robot arm of my own in rhino 3d. The main programs that Jake and I utilized in this project were Midjourney and chatgpt. They both helped maximize our time in the day by helping us do simple tasks like finding a name for the sculpture and giving us creative direction. When I first got onto chatgpt, I was astonished at how fast the program worked and with incredible accuracy. I felt the same way with Midjourney because the program seems impossible. AI tools should be an option in school to help kids save time and create better products.

AI has come a long way and has become a useful tool for people in the design space. I could definitely see myself using these tools in the future, not just at Nuvu but also at beaver when I need some inspiration or to help me dive into a project when I have no ideas flowing in my head. Being in a situation where you want to get started on an idea but are faced with some mental roadblocks is very aggravating, and these AI tools could help clear those. AI has become so powerful that I could not imagine not taking advantage of all it has to offer.