This one-unit pass/fail introductory workshop class is designed for students who are new to working with code and electronics, giving them the technical background necessary to feel comfortable in digital studio classes such as Embodied Interfaces (162), Drawing with Code (163), Making it With Arduino (130), and other Emerging Media courses. By teaching introductory electronics and programming concepts specifically to be used in creative practice, this workshop class will be an accessible introduction to using electronics in students' own artistic endeavors. Students will learn to use code as a creative material, investigating digital interaction, data, and design with art. Through in-class discussions and guided independent work, students will learn an actionable toolbox for creative practice with software interfaces, with a focus on building skills students can use in their own work and in future classes.
Due to the now online nature of the class, meeting times will be shortened to ~20min to focus on a short discussion of reading and a presentation of students' work so far. Therefore, most of the work will be up to you to complete whenever you'd like. The projects are designed to be very open-ended prompts to guide your exploration.
Through the week, support will be given in two ways. First, there is a large bank of resources, tutorials, and examples already on this site. If you're looking for ideas or looking for ways to extend your code, this is a good place to start. Second, we'll have a class Slack where everyone can post questions, which you should receive an invite to on the first day of class. Before asking a question, be sure to check if your question has already been asked!
If you have question you'd like to ask individually, you can always message me on Slack or send me an email.
We'll be meeting on Zoom - the link is in both Canvas and the Class Slack. (and in the first email)
Project 1 – Introduction to Processing
Project 3 – Final Project
Every week students will post a work update to (very) briefly discuss in the Class Slide Deck. In addition, there will be weekly reading assignments, usually with a small prompt to guide your thinking and a short required response (no more than a few sentences). To submit the reading response, just paste it as a note in your Slide on the class slide deck
Get the Readings Here (Requires @stanford.edu email)
Class Slide Deck Here (Requires @stanford.edu email)
Week 2
- Bring in one piece of art which you would call "Digital" Or "Electronic". Write a small (small!) paragraph on why you would and why this piece is interesting, engaging, or important (you'll deliver this in class out loud). To prompt our discussion, think about what digital art is and what it encompasses: is digital art different than other kinds of art? What does it mean to work with digital or electronic materials? What are those materials?
Slides:Add a photograph or video of your piece to the slidedeck before class.
Week 3
- Abstracting Craft: The Practiced Digital Hand -- Malcom McCullough - Read up to "Appreciation", I've left the rest of the chapter in case you're interested.
Prompt: "Acute knowledge of a medium's structure comes not by theory but through involvement." Look at Table 7.2 of "Continuous Operations". Let's add one more line: Programming- what is the "Continuous Process" at work here? How many different ways can you describe the involvement at play in programming as a creative medium? Two to Five Sentences.
Slides:Project 1 Due + Reading Response
Week 4
- Olivia Jack Livecoding
- Check out her performance too
Prompt: Jack presents Hydra as a digital art medium in a different paradigm to Processing. Summarize her point in one or two sentences, and then muse about the paradigm Processsing finds itself in: what kinds of assumptions does it make about who is making art and how they're making it? For what purpose? How is this different than the livecoding she presents? For ideas, take a look at her performance video and compare her experience of making art to yours in Processing.
Slides:Project 2 Update + Reading Response
Week 5
- What's the Use, Sarah Ahmed, 21-26
Prompt: Sarah Ahmed presents many ways in which use can operate in our lives. If we view interactive art as art about how people use computers, what does Ahmed help us see about how computers can, should, or ought to be used? Pick one facet of use Ahmed describes and think about how it might apply to computers. Two to Five sentences.
Slides:Project 2 Update + Reading Response
Week 6
-
The Design of Everyday Things, Don Norman, 10-19
Prompt: Art made with computers necessarily includes a background of design: norms and paradigms of how, where, and why we should interact with computers. What happens when we use Norman's language of affordances and signifiers to make art? How can the language of design be repurposed or investigated with digital art? Two to Five sentences.
Slides:Project 2 Due + Reading Response
Week 7
- Interactive Art and Embodiment, Nathaniel Stern, Excerpt (4 Pages)
Prompt: This is a shorter but more difficult reading, so to help guide your understanding please summarize the reading in a short paragraph. What is being argued here, and why does it matter?
Slides:Final Project Update + Reading Response
Week 8
- Trevor Paglen - Six Landscapes
Watch the first 20min (although the whole talk is great!).
Prompt: At first glance this might be a weird introduction to "Data", but Paglen is dealing with many kinds of data as a medium. How is data playing a role in his work? What are the political/artistic consequences of that data in his art? Two to Five Sentences.
Slides:Final Project Update + Reading Response
Week 9
- Optional Reading: Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences, Geoffrey Bowker and Susan Star, 33-40
Prompt: This reading discusses the many ways in which infrastructure operates to invisibly sustain norms. Give an example of how computers or digital infrastructure operates in such a way in your life. How could digital art be used to reveal or investigate that operation? Three to Five sentences.
Slides:Final Project Due + Reading Response