Deliverables 01

This set of Deliverables has 4 parts:

  1. Administrative Items (due ASAP)
  2. Looking Outwards #01 (due 2/8)
  3. Instructional Drawing (NOTE: due 2/3 and 2/8)
  4. Combinatoric Drawing (due 2/8)

For some examples of the kind of projects I’m looking for, look here.

1. Administrative Items.

  • If you haven’t already, please finish reading and carefully reviewing the course Syllabus.
  • Review our course Calendar and add, copy, or connect it to your own calendar.
  • If you haven’t already, be sure you have downloaded and installed Discord.
  • Log into our class Discord using the invitation sent to you by email.
  • Create an account for yourself at OpenProcessing.org. It is recommended that you choose an anonymous public identifier for yourself.
  • Optionally, create an account for yourself at Editor.p5js.org. It is recommended that you choose an anonymous public identifier for yourself.

2. Looking Outwards #01.

Topic: Some Technological Art or Design that has Inspired You.

This deliverable is your first Looking Outwards report. (As a reminder about what a “Looking Outwards” report means, refer to this document.) I thought it would be ideal, at this early stage, if you could briefly share a project that uses code, and which speaks to you.

Think about an interactive and/or computational project (from anywhere, by anyone except yourself) that you knew about before starting this course, and which you find intriguing or inspirational. It should be something that someone made with code—at least in part. Now:

  • Create a Discord post in the #Looking-Outwards-01 channel. You are asked to write ~100-200 words. In this post, address the requests below.
  • Please discuss the project. What do you admire about it, and why do you admire these aspects of it?
  • Roughly how many people were involved in making it, and how did they organize themselves to achieve it? (Any idea how long it took them to create it?)
  • To the best of your knowledge, did creating this project require the development of custom software/scripts, or did the authors create the project using “off-the-shelf” (commercial) software? Or some combination of these approaches?
  • What prior works might the project’s creators have been inspired by?
  • To what opportunities or futures does the project point, if any?
  • Provide a link (if possible) to the artwork, remembering to list the full author and title.
  • Embed an image and a YouTube/Vimeo video of the project (if available).

This first Looking Outwards is unusual, in that you are asked to report on something you already know about. The remaining LO’s this semester will ask you to report on projects that are as yet unknown to you.

3. Conditional Design System (Instructional Drawing)

NOTE: This assignment has two deadlines, 2/3 and 2/8. 

Take a look at the videos and the materials on the Conditional Design website by Luna Maurer et al. Don’t forget to click on their Older Projects (the link is at the bottom of each page). Also, please read their brief Conditional Design Manifesto.

  1. Create a set of simple instructions able to generate an infinite set of different drawings with a pencil on paper. A nice constraint would be that your instructions fit within 280 characters (the length of a Tweet), but your instructions should be absolutely no longer than 100 words. You may achieve better results with instructions that involve elementary graphical primitives (e.g. circles, lines) and geometric relationships.
  2. You will be provided with the names of two classmates. Before class on Wednesday 2/3, privately transmit (via Discord message) your instructions to these two classmates. Do not show them or publicly share your own experiments or previous results! Furthermore, you are not allowed to answer any questions.
  3. You will receive instructions from two classmates. Before class on Monday 2/8, execute their drawing instructions. Photograph your results and send them back to the person who gave you the instructions. (If you’re down to the wire and running late, post them to the Discord channel, #01-instructional-drawing, and be sure to indicate whose prompts you’re responding to.)
  4. Before class on Monday 2/8, Write a post in the Discord channel #01-instructional-drawing that includes the following:
    • The actual instructions you provided to your classmates
    • Copies of the images of the results produced by your classmates
    • A picture of your own execution of your instructions
    • An evaluation of your “instructions”, in retrospect, after assessing the results produced by your classmates. What surprised you? What did you get right? What would you tinker with?

Requirements:

  • The drawing surface is assumed to to be a standard letter sheet (8.5 by 11 inches).
  • The drawing tool should be a standard #2 (HB) pencil.
  • Your instructions should be as unambiguous as possible.  
  • Your rules must contain an element of iteration or repetition. You may have to devise an ending condition (“do something until“). For example, you could verbally stop the execution, set up a timer, or prescribe a certain number of iterations.
  • Regardless of your iteration requirements, your drawing instructions must take no more than 10 minutes to execute.  Likewise, if you are executing someone else’s drawing, you may stop after 10 minutes, even if you’re not “done”.

4. Minimum Inventory, Maximum Diversity System (Combinatoric Drawing)

Carefully review this page about “Minimum Inventory, Maximum Diversity” systems, in which drawings are generated through exhaustive combinatorics.  Now, before class on Monday 2/8 :

  • Devise your own such combinatoric visual system. Your system’s title and ruleset must take the following form: “All ____ such that ____“. Be careful about combinatoric explosion!
    • If you end up with more than ~500 elements, you will (probably) need to scale down your rules!
    • It’s also OK to have a ruleset that doesn’t have many combinations!
  • “Execute” (draw) your system with a #2 pencil on a sheet of standard 8.5×11″ white paper. [Try your best to] Make sure that you’ve got all of the possibilities.
  • Photograph your drawing/diagram.
  • Post your drawing to the Discord channel, #01-combinatoric-drawing, along with the text that defines your system.
  • Feel free to also post documentation of intermediate results that you discarded.