Assignments

Assignment sheets with the brief, grading criteria, deliverables and due dates will be released when the assignment is issued in class. Each will be assessed according to quality of concept and research, visual design, technical competence and documentation.

Each assignment is to be submitted in a post to this site. The post should include the writing deliverable, one or more screenshots and a link to the code. (Also if you are looking for the weekly homework form to submit the problems sets, its over here).

0: Coding from Life (5%)

Art made from life is about learning to see in new ways. Code, like drawing can be a process of paying attention to these ways of seeing. Code one of the still life scenes shared in the classwork channel of the discord.

Due: Thursday September 9th in class.

1: Lost and Found Assignment (5%)

Interview one of your classmates about an object that they lost and recreate this object in code. Project brief.

Due: Thursday September 16th in class.

2: Generative Thing (10%)

Take either the object you produced in assignment 1 or represent something new such as a face, a postage stamp, a teapot etc. and use code to create a generator for this thing. Produce at least 9 different things with your generator and present them as a grid for printing. Project brief.

Due: October 5th in class.

3: The Clock (15%)

Create a non conventional representation of the time. Project brief.

Due: Tuesday, November 2nd in class.

4: Classify This! (5%)

Exploring interaction with machine learning. Project brief.

5: Final (20%)

Develop a self devised computational art project. Project brief.

 

 

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Research Posts:

  1. Research Post 1: Eyeo is an art and design festival held every year with a fantastic archive (you should have watched the Jenny Odell talk this week). Choose another Eyeo talk from the vimeo channel and watch it. Research the artist/designer and their work and make a research post (300 words in length) to this blog about what you find out. What questions are they exploring in their work? What form does their work take? Include a screen shot or two, and any relevant links. The talks are 30-40 minutes long, so I recommend finding out a bit about the person first. I recommend talks by: Brian House, Nicholas Felton, Mimi Onuoha, Lauren Lee Mccarthy,  Ben Fry,  Ron Morrison.  Due Date: September 23rd.
  2. Research Post 2: Information Visualization. Select a project in which an artist, designer or other researcher has created custom software in order to collect and/or visualize a dataset. I particularly recommend the work of Aaron Koblin, Mimi Onouha, Amanda Cox, Ben Fry & Fathom, Fernanda Viegas, Giorgia Lupi, Ingrid Burrington, Jen Lowe, Jer Thorp, Jonathan Harris, Kim Rees, Lev Manovich, Lisa Jevbratt, Marcos Weskamp, Martin Wattenberg, Moritz Stefaner, Nicholas Felton, Rachel Binx, Stamen Design, Santiago Ortiz, Stephan Thiel & Nand.io, Stephanie Posavec, Wes Grubbs, or others. (Many of these people also have given lecture presentations at the Eyeo Festival, which are available online.)There are also a number of prominent blogs specifically devoted to documenting computational and interactive information visualization, including:

    Identify a particular project or work which you find intriguing or inspirational. In a blog post of about 100-200 words,

    • Please discuss the project. What do you admire about it, and why do you admire these aspects of it?
    • What do you know (or what do you suppose) about the algorithms that generated the work?
    • It what ways are the creator’s artistic sensibilities manifest in the final form?
    • Link (if possible) to the work. To the best of your abilities, be sure to provide the creator’s name, title of the work, and year of creation.
    • Embed an image and/or a YouTube/Vimeo video of the project (if available).
    • Label your blog post with the Category
    • Due Date: October 14th.

3. Research Post 3: Image Analysis and Face Recognition

Please watch/read the following media on image analysis ad . This should take under an hour: 

Then (~15 minutes):

    • In a blog post, please jot down two ideas, facts, claims, or images that you came across in the above media that struck you. Briefly write a sentence about why you found each of them interesting. (Be prepared to discuss them in class.)
  2. Research Post 4:
  • Write a blog post of 200-300 words describing 3 inspirational references, projects or readings relevant to your final project. Describe these references, why you found them inspiring, interesting or compelling and how they have shaped your thinking for your final project. These materials could be artistic works, design projects, products, articles, maps, visualizations, games, readings etc. Include screenshots and links to the materials.
  • Due date: Thursday December 9th.