by Larissa Petryca, on 31 August 2021 10:00:33 CEST
Update, June 2022: After her internship with Seyhan Lee in Boston, USA, Suzanne was offered a full-time position as their Digital Designer. She now works remotely from Europe and will take her first trip to meet her colleagues in person, in September. Congratulations Suzanne!
Suzanne is half way through her Master’s in Future Design. As part of the programme students undertake advanced practice at a company or institution. This helps develops professional and research skills and broadens their professional network, leading to opportunities after graduation.
In this article, Suzanne shares her internship experience and how it’s helped shape her future plans and final project work.
My Internship at an AI Motion Graphic Studio
Since the beginning of the summer, I’ve worked a remote internship with AI motion graphics studio Seyhan Lee in Boston, USA. I work three days a week from Prague, or from the library in my home town of Zutphen in The Netherlands.
As a designer, I have always enjoyed playing around the edge of traditional art and technology. During my Bachelor’s in Multimedia Design, I created immersive experiences to provoke feelings or behaviours using Virtual Reality, Arduino prototype platforms, smart glasses and other technologies. It wasn’t until I started at PCU that I first came in contact with artificial intelligence (AI) and generative art.
This exposure led me to seek an internship at a studio that works with AI. Seyhan Lee studio has given me a lot of freedom to experiment with generating visuals and videos using AI. Next to that, I get the opportunity to work with other artists and filmmakers on, for example, video clips for musicians and a pitch for an American chips company. I’m now working on an NFT (non-fungible token) for a charity project saving animals from the fires in Turkey. The owners of Seyhan Lee are super inspiring, ambitious and supportive.
Discovering AI
As I mentioned before, I first came into contact with artificial intelligence (AI) and generative art at PCU. During my first semester, I created a Deep Fake, imagery edited using an algorithm to replace the person in the original video with someone else. I enjoyed this process a lot. It fascinates me how well a computer can help us create visuals that otherwise would seem impossible to come up with. Since then, I made AI my main subject. I picked up coding again and dived deep into the theory.
What’s next?
I’ve become much more confident about my skills than ever before, and I feel like I can really use creative coding and AI as an extension of my imagination. Over the summer I’ve been in touch with artists worldwide that are on the front-line of technology and innovation. I now have the skills to influence processes and results and use them within other media.
It is a great source of inspiration and in a very new field where there are still so many discoveries to be made and implementations to be thought of. I wish I would have learnt about generative art earlier, so I am thinking about sharing my experience and organising workshops for PCU design students. I would like to pass on my excitement and share how artificial intelligence can add value to their work!
Soon I will be starting my graduation project, and I am excited to extend my research and create something innovative, futuristic and inspiring. My Master’s studies along with the advanced practice internship, have really helped me find my direction and personal style as an artist and designer.
If you are interested in following my project’s progress please follow my deepdesign.ai Instagram account.
