Schedule & Deliverables

Week 1 – August 31st
Week 2 – 7th Sept
Week 3 – 14th Sept
Week 4 – 21st Sept
Week 5 – 28th Sept
Week 6 – 5th Oct
Week 7 – 12th Oct
Week 8 – 19th Oct
Week 9 – 26th Oct
Week 10 – 29th Oct
Week 11 – 2nd Nov
Week 12 – 9th Nov

1 – August 31st: Introductions

  • Introduction to course
  • What does it mean to program creatively?
  • Processing file structure and management
  • Drawing basics

To do for next week:

  • Read the Learning to Learn post with the lessons for students from John Cage and the text from the link by Zach Lieberman. 
  • Review all the materials on this site.
  • Download slack and sign up and login to the class Slack: https://suny2016.slack.com/
  • Sign up and login to this blog. Find an artwork that was made using processing and post it to the blog with a short, 3 sentence description of who the artists is.
  • Order the textbook and get your class notebook.
  • Download Processing to whatever computer you will be doing course work on.
  • Complete class survey here.
  • Draw a self portrait on paper and bring it to class.

READING:  Petzold, Charles (2009). Code, the hidden language of computer software. O’Reilly Media, Inc. Preface and chapter 1. And if you’re into it, continue with chapter 2.

2 – 7th Sept: Code fundamentals

  • Introduction to code and drawing

NEW MEDIA LECTURE SERIES: EKENE IJOMA, NEUBERGER 6.30-8.30PM

Tutorial:

  • More on processing/file structure/IDE examples.
  • Color spaces, variables and variability in code, interactivity.
  • Drawing your face

To do for next week:

  • READING Watching for this week: Artist Ramsey Nasser speaking at Eyeo: https://vimeo.com/134734733
  • After you have watched this talk, make a research post on a programming language of your choosing. Write 200-300 words on the language. You might include details like who made the language, why, what it was first used for and what some of its strengths and weaknesses are. If you need a start on what language to choose, here is a ginormous chart with many language on it for you to choose from.
  • Read through chapters 1-3 in Learning processing (this revises much of what we did in class)
    • Do the following exercises from the book and do the following exercises, writing them in your notebook or in Processing as you need to: 1.4, 1.5, 1.6, 2.6, 3.3 3.4, 3.7. If you don’t have the book yet, the first few chapters are on the class Moodle. For the exercises you do on the computer, save these in a folder at the end of the week, zip up and submit to the Moodle drop box for this week.
  • As per part 1 of assignment 1, take your hand drawn portrait and recreate it in code. Your code can be an interpretation of your face drawing, simplifying or adjusting it as necessary. Post a screen shot of the result on this blog.

3 – 14th Sept: Generative processes: Faces

  • What is generative art and design? Face as interface.
  • Generative face assignment
  • Time to work on your generative face.

Tutorial

  • Variables
  • Pseudo-coding

To do for next week:

  • Review the new functions introduced this week – as listed here (20min)
  • Read Chapter 4 of the Learning Processing Book. And do the exercises up to 4.7. Then recode your face in terms of variables. Make it so that your eyes change color randomly. (2 hours)
  • If you want some more review of variables let me introduce you to Dan Shiffman – here is his video tutorial on variables. (20min)
  • Complete Assignment 1 Part 1 and Part 2 as two separate Processing sketches and submit code to the Moodle and to the blog as instructed in the assignment brief. (3-4 hours)
  • Download the LiceCap software that will allow you generate a GIF from your screen. Once you have finished your generative face, run it and make a gif showing at least 3 face variations. Post you gif to the blog with a few sentences describing your project.

4 – 21st Sept: Generative processes in art and design

  • Generative faces due. Presentation and crit in class
  • Lecture: Generative processes

Tutorial

  • Conditionals
  • Booleans

To do for next week:

  • Read chapter 5 of Learning Processing, do all the exercises.
  • Then return to the button exercises from class and finishe them and put in homework box for this week on Moodle.
  • Reading: 10 questions for Generative Art
  • Refine, improve and iterate on your Face Assignment Part 2. Make a detailed sketch on paper to first to figure out the coordinates for everything. Look at these examples of past student work for inspiration. Your project should be unrecognizable from the template!!  It is not good enough to make simple change the colors of the template – you will get a bad grade if you do.  You will likely need custom shapes, also look at how you can vary the transparency of fill and stroke (you add a 4th argument like (fill(255,0,0,200);). Consider, line, color, stroke weight, transparency. Be ruthless, make something you are proud of. Watch this Ira Glass interview. Also see how to post a GIF so that it animates properly.

5 – 28th Sept: Marking Time

  • Local and global variables
  • Loops
  • Functions (void and return functions, how to pass arguments)

Tutorial

  • Group programming exercise.
  • Loops exercises
  • Time functions

To do for next week:

  • Catch up if you are behind.
  • Read Chapters 6 from 6.4 onwards. We are not covering WHILE loops so ignore them! Do exercises (6.2, 6.3, 6.4, 6.5). (1-2 hours) Video tutorials on loops are listed here in tutorial post if you need revision.
  • Read chapter  7 (do 7.4, 7.5, 7.6,7.7) (1-2 hours) Video tutorials are listed here in tutorial post if you need revision.
  • Finish loop exercises from class. (1 hour or none if you worked in class)
  • Do the readings from the clock assignment brief and review the examples in this post. Brainstorm 3 concepts for a non-traditional clock documenting them in sketches in your notebooks. Come to class ready to discuss. (1-many hours)

6 – 5th Oct: Media and Transformations

  • Transformations
  • Assignment 2

NEW MEDIA LECTURE SERIES: FIONA RABY. NEUBERGER 6.30PM

Tutorials:

  • Transformation and time exercises
  • Clock assignment concept sketches, plan and prototype coding.

To do for next week:

  • Reading: Chapter on time functions, transformations and trigonometry.
  • Choose one concept for your clock, develop a series of at least 3 sketches on paper showing how it changes through time. Take a photo of these sketches and post to the blog. Come ready to discuss with the class.
  • Write the series of steps, describing what needs to occur as your clock program runs. These should include for example: 1) Set up variables for coordinates for ellipse. Set up variable for the ellipse radius. 2) Draw a series of ellipses. 3) Change radius value based on seconds passed using the map function. 3) Replace background 4) Draw new ellipse. 5)Change radius value again. etc. etc. You may need to break your clock plan into separate problems and build a separate program for each one, combining at the end
  • Being coding the parts of your clock. Bring code to class next week for further development.
  • Find out what the map function does and try it out!
  • Do tutorial exercises from class – in the tutorial posts.

7 – 12th Oct: Arrays

  • Clock assignment progress checkin
  • Objects

Tutorial

  • Objects
  • distance(); contrain(); nf(); map();

To do for next week:

  • Reading: Choose one Eyeo video, watch it and write a post about the artist and their work. Note what kind of work they make, installation, data visualisation, web based work. What is the person’s background? What sort of questions do they address in their work? You might want to choose from the following (as they are all great talks):Allison Parish, Zach Lieberman, Rachel Binx, Jenny Odell, Josh Begley, Ben Fry,

Darius Kazemi.

  • Bring your clock assignment to show in class.
  • Read the objects chapter in the text book.
  • Clock assignment

8 – 19th Oct: Off the screen

  • Reviewing clocks!!
  • Objects tutorial
  • Revision

Tutorial
To do for next week:

9 – 26th Oct – sound sound sound

  • Sound library
  • Other libraries
  • Examples folder

Tutorial:

  • Rain Game

To do for next week:

  • Sound instrument development – ready to show progress in class next week
  • Reading: Chapter 10 and Chapter 11.

10 – 29th October – Field trip

Luke Debois at Bitforms Gallery and ICP exhibition.

11 – 2nd Nov – Image processing

  • Lecture: Video as data.
  • Tutorial: Pixels, video library, capture class. Code examples here and on Moodle.
  • Reading for next week: This post on slit scanning. Also see a version of this technique in Processing. In the files menu, go to examples>>Video>>Capture>>SlitScan for an example of slitcanning. Supplementary reading: Jenny Odell talk here.

NEW MEDIA LECTURE SERIES: JULIE MARTIN. NEUBERGER 6.30PM

To do for next week:

  • Finish software instrument (due in class next week)
  • Develop project pitch for your final project. This should include a 100 word description. Citing 2 research references for your work (1 of these should be an artist whose work you have found to be inspiring) and sketches of your project. Put this information on 3 slides and come ready to do a 5 min presentation of your idea for next week.

11 – 9th Nov: Networks

  • Software instruments due.
  • Final project proposal presentations (5 min per student).

16th Nov – No class

Thanksgiving – 23rd Nov – No class

13 – 30th Nov

  • No lecture.
  • Final project progress presentations and crits.
  • Final project class studio time.
  • Final project work

14 – 7th December

  • Final projects due in class.
  • Documentation session.

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