Digital Storytelling: AI for good FINAL PROJECT - Snigdha

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  final project

Inspiration

My general prompt was: “Lady Justice as a classical Indian dancer in a nebula space explosion with emphasized balances and sword, digital art”. I decided to create my final project on a huge part of my identity – dance. I’ve been professionally dancing classical Indian dance for 13 years and therefore, it showcases me as a person as well as my background, culture, and identity.

The nebula explosion was included to show my religious beliefs and faith in the universe. Although I am Hindu, I believe I’m more spiritual than religious.

I wanted to incorporate law into my final project because I am an aspiring corporate lawyer and consider law to be a significant part of my life.

As the theme is sustainability, I wanted to represent cultural and ethical sustainability through my final piece. The classical Indian dance forms are in threat of being forgotten and ruined with fewer people learning it (especially the less common and popular ones – Odissi & Sattriya, for example). Ethical sustainability is essential for us to co-exist in a cohesive society and uphold our values and beliefs.

I eventually decided to merge two of my images to show the dancer transforming into Lady justice. Merging allows the audience to see and both forms as well as showcases the moral compass within all of us.

The mid transformation look is for ‘realism’ and an acceptance of flaws & imperfections.

How I built it + challenges

I personally liked the images generated by DALL-E the most compared to the ones created by Blue Willow and. I used MidJourney as a tool in order to enhance the image rather than create original images.

Canva was a bit too cartoonish in my opinion which I didn’t want to go for, and Blue Willow was too hyper-realistic (so was MidJourney). Fotor’s color palette was beyond this world (literally), but I didn’t love their portrayal of the dancer. I’d say the only thing Open AI’s DALL-E lacked was quality of the image, but I wasn’t looking for a high-quality image anyway – I was going for a semi-faded, grainy impression to effectively create a piece that would reflect the theme of sustainability (will make more sense later).

I wanted to incorporate elements of all the DALL-E images and still make it look abstract and vague, so it was open to interpretation, and not completely obvious in order to allow more inclusion and creativity in my final piece.

The biggest challenge was cultural accuracy as the images provided weren't always accurate.

Resources used

AI generation-wise, these are the following resources I used:

DALL-E Blue Willow Canva Fotor Mid Journey (editing + enhancing) PowerPoint Picture Format (editing + enhancing)

However, I recognize that there are other resources that I used that contributed to the creation of my final project:

MacBook Air 13-inch (MacOS Big Sur ver. 11.6.7) Sunlight Electricity (light, internet, battery/charge) Energy consumed (food + drink) Storage (laptop) – png, 5 mb used

Ethics

The generated AI images weren’t fully ethical. In most of the creations, the dancer has ‘unrealistic’ bodies which may trigger or lead to body dysmorphia and eating disorders in some audience.

Additionally, some of the images generated tend to oversexualize the dancer and don’t give her proper clothes (rather just cover her chest area with stars or studs) which can be viewed negatively and inappropriately.

Moreover, in some of the creations (by Blue Willow), the dancer has a blue skin tone/color. This could be seen as cultural appropriation, but I’d say it’s more misinformation and ignorance. Blue tones are often used for Hindu deities and the prompt solely said, ‘classical Indian dancer.’

Built With

• bluewillow
• canva
• dall-e
• fotor
• macbook
• midjourney
• openai
• powerpoint