Ruby Begay

Artist Statement:

Ruby Begay is a musician, writer, and multimedia artist based in Boulder, Colorado whose work focuses on the intersection of technology, science, mysticism, and storytelling. She explores themes of belonging, connectivity, self definitions, and what it means to be human in this unprecedented time in history.

Through examining the relationships between natural and human systems, she invites audiences into a space of introspection where the boundaries between the invisible and the tangible, the human and the non-human, the mundane and the sublime, the earthly and the spiritual blur, and may at times even vanish.

In recognizing that many divisions are constructs, Begay challenges notions of separateness, otherness, and individualism in her work by inviting us to expand our definitions of self to include the other than human. In its essence, her work is an invitation to remembrance. 

Project Description:

This semester I focused on creating a teaser trailer for one of my unreleased songs: Whispered Light. My intentions for the project were to become versed in video creation by utilizing AI generated videos and learning animation softwares. The main desire with this was to be able to make video content for social media and longform music videos as well. I had never worked with either, so I was excited to explore to see what I could create.

My process started out with a lot of experimenting with the tools until I found visuals I liked. I started out thinking I would make an entire video, but given how long my song is and how extensive learning animation is, I scaled it back to a teaser trailer. The main tools I worked with were Leonardo AI, Kaiber,  Adobe Animate, Adobe Fresco, and Procreate.

Leonardo AI gave me some beautiful still images to gain inspiration for the vibe and style of my videos. 

Kaiber turned out to be one of the main tools I used for AI video creation. I experimented a lot with different prompts, styles, lengths, and presets within the site. 

The first video created with Kaiber using one of the Leonardo AI images and the same song lyrics.

Learning Adobe Animate was empowering because I felt daunted by it, but thanks to many YouTube tutorials I found my way with it. There is still so much to learn with that software, but I feel more confident now. Adobe Fresco and Procreate for iPad are similar to each other, but I ended up working more with Procreate. I learned a basic animation technique for creating animated GIFs and experimented with hand drawing a simple (but time consuming) animation. I loved the process of hand drawing animations, and I’m sure with practice I’ll get quicker at it.

My first hand drawn animation using Procreate:

Being in this class allowed me to look through the lens of performance and challenged me to think about media in expanded ways. For instance, I have hopes that some of the videos that I/AI created can be projected behind me as I perform to add more dimensionality and life to the music in a live setting. Also, on a more meta level, I see how the videos for this class are digital performances of my creative process, even if I am not physically in them. Especially since this class was so process oriented, it was a performance to share the iterative process to the class every couple of weeks. Animating also feels performative to me because it makes my drawings come to life. I’ve never had the experience of seeing my drawings animated. It is an odd feeling, not quite as vulnerable as singing in front of a crowd or watching a video of myself, but it has a similar quality of being on display. This experience was pronounced when sharing the hand drawn animation, but not as much with the Kaiber generated animations, which makes sense given that Kaiber generated videos are more the AI’s ingenuity  than my own. Though, admittedly, it was vulnerable to share my lyrics, which I used as prompts for the Kaiber videos.

I ended up with a few final products that can be used as song trailer videos. I also plan to edit together the Kaiber videos with the animation videos to create the whole video. As I continue forward, I plan to keep experimenting as this is all still new to me.

Successes & Failures:

Overall, I loved this process and the art I ended up with. To be in the iterative process of learning and exploring felt like a success in itself, especially since it yielded satisfying fruit. I’d been so curious about AI video generation after seeing some inspiring AI videos on social media. I was particularly excited about the morphing quality I’d seen and I had no idea how to find it or if it was easy to do. Needless to say, after a few Google searches, I was excited to discover Kaiber. The possibilities are so exciting. I definitely prompted some weird and unusable videos, but the ones that worked well are stunning. 

Playing with Kaiber styles:

One of the creepier video generations:

One challenge I had was for a while I was stuck in my Kaiber video creation because I wasn’t sure what prompts to use. This stopped me in my tracks for a while because I wasn’t sure what I wanted the story to be. Some solid journaling time opened up ideas for a storyline. Armed with a newfound sense of direction, I was able to write prompts again with more confidence. Another thing that helped unfreeze me was looking at other Kaiber creators and seeing what prompts they used. I found the style that ultimately excited me, which made the prompting much easier.  

Something else that was helpful that didn’t occur to me until I had a little bit of experience with animating, was that I could edit together Kaiber videos and self animated videos or even animate on top of Kaiber videos. This hadn’t occurred to me and once it did, it opened up so many possibilities. Knowing this, I feel a direction moving forward for completing the whole video. This class gave me some solid music teaser trailer videos to work with for social media when I decide to release the song.

Final song trailer 1 in the style of “cosmic trippy nostalgic” using the lyrics:

we go like a raindrop riding slow

upon the weight of gravitational pull

to the root of the mountain down below

where all things of beauty are bound to go

and we are things of beauty so we must go

Final song trailer 2 in the style of “cosmic trippy nostalgic” using the prompt:

root of the mountain, raindrops, Life on earth, in utero, beginning of life, neurons, colors bursting open

I loved being able to share with the class and get feedback on both the music production side of things as well as the video side. Some pieces of advice that stand out to me from the final presentation are to 1. Make sure that the social media content I create loops well by either fading to black or having a GIF that loops seamlessly 2. Editing the animation and the Kaiber videos together in Premier. It was also validating to hear from everyone that the videos are enticing and made people want more of them. Also, it was good to hear that the visuals fit the vibe of the song. I will definitely continue working on this project and will likely utilize the tools I learned for future projects as well. Overall, this semester has been empowering and expansive in nature and I am grateful.