Syllabus

Schedule: Tues 10.00-11.50 && Thurs 10.00-11.50

Professor: Prof. Tega Brain

Class location: Online. See the NYU Brightspace page for links to the Discord channel.

Homework submission form: TBA

In this course you will learn how to develop and apply software as a means of creative inquiry. We will be exploring poetic and creative computation using open-source programming environments like Processing and P5.js. We will be learning fundamental programming concepts, we will explore what it means to use computation as a medium for art and design and we will research a range of artists and designers who work in this area. You will be experimenting with a range of different techniques to realize creative projects which will be documented online. Topics will include programming interactivity, generativity and the aesthetics and politics of data.

The official syllabus can be found here.

Class Deliverables:

There are three kinds of deliverables in this class:

Assignments: These tasks range from 1-3 weeks and are where you will develop and execute creative projects in response to a brief. (See the assignments tab).
Weekly problem sets: You will be issued topic focused problem sets every week or two. These are short technical problems to help you hone your coding skills that will be completed in and after class. Please submit your work or your attempts even if you were not able to get a solution for every problem. Submission is through the homework form. I will post solutions after each due date.
Research and reflection posts: You will be asked to submit 4 research and reflections posts to this blog over the semester. You will post these to this site. This task asks you to look outwards at practitioners, practices and issues in the fields of computational art and design. Come to class ready to discuss your work.

Creative Projects Grading Rubric**

The creative projects will be evaluated according to the following considerations:

Curiosity: Are you asking questions as you work?
Tenacity: Are you forging through difficult problems without giving up?
Execution: Are you crafting with purpose, precision, and attention?
Inventiveness: Are you discovering/exploring methods outside the obvious and predictable?
Fulfillment: Did you meet all of the requested supporting criteria (such as providing scans of sketches, categorizing your blog post correctly, documenting your process, etc.)?

With Projects, it may not matter how much time a student spent making it. You may sometimes observe a very quickly-executed solution which succeeds because of its strong concept. Usually, however, the quality of a project is rewarded by extra attention to its craft.

Projects always have a list of supporting requirements. These are straightforward to fulfill, but if you fail to meet these, you will have points deducted. Nearly every Project assignment will ask you to:

Create a unique blog post for your project, on our course website.
Make sure your blog post is titled and categorized as requested.
Embed your interactive project into the post, if this is technologically possible.
Include a static documentation image of your project, such as a screenshot or photograph.
Include scans or photos of any notebook sketches, if you have them.
In the case of dynamic work, include dynamic documentation too: embed a YouTube, Vimeo demonstrating your project. Often, an animated GIF will be required.
Write 100-200 words about your project, describing its development process.
In your writing, include some critical reflection and analysis of your project:
In what ways did you succeed, and in what ways could it be better?
Embed or link to your code, if appropriate.

Related to our course policies on Academic Integrity, you must also:

Name any other students from whom you received advice or help.
If you had collaborators, explain how the work was distributed among the collaborators.
Cite and link to the sources for any code, external libraries, or other media (e.g.
photographs, soundtracks, source images) which you used in your Project. Citing your sources is super important, folks. Err on the side of generosity.

Projects will be graded with scores of A,B,C,D, or F:

A (Excellent): You made something notable
B (Good): You made something that fulfills all requirements
C (Needs Improvement): You produced a response but your program has issues or your concept or aesthetic is unresolved or incomplete.
D (Unacceptable): You didn’t even try.
F (Zero credit): You didn’t even show up or didn’t submit.

** Thank you Golan Levin for much of the description in this grading rubric