Assignment 09

Final Project!

Your final project is open-ended. You are asked to create a small (small!) project which reflects your own imagination, curiosity, research agenda, problem-solving passion, critical perspective, and/or desire for technical skill-building.

Small!

Here are some recommendations:

  • Give some consideration beforehand to your goals: do you wish to make something provocative, useful, poetic, whimsical? In what way can your project allow you to follow your curiosity?
  • You may use any combination of Processing, Arduino, IFTTT, and/or other arts-engineering tools. You don’t have to use any specific one of these tools, but, at a minimum, your project should involve some sort of coding and/or circuit-building to make new culture.
  • You are encouraged (but not required) to control motion, e.g. with motors, muscle wire, steppers, servos, etc. If you wish, you may revisit an earlier project (e.g. augmented projection, simulation, etc.).
  • You are mildly discouraged (but not prohibited) from working in pairs. Really, it’s okay if you want to.
  • You can explore a theme we haven’t had time to address in class. Game design! Artificial intelligence and machine learning! Wearable technology! Etcetera.

Milestones and deadlines:

On Thursday 11/21/2013, you will meet in small groups at the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry in order to discuss and refine your ideas. Before class, you should complete a blog post in which you present a “Looking Outwards” assignment of three inspirational things (which could be artworks, technologies, electronic components, news items, etc.) and two project ideas. (One is a backup.) For each of your project ideas, include a sketch and a text description. You will discuss these project ideas with your peers. Categorize your blog post with Assignment-09-Sketches.

Tuesday 11/26/2013 is a crucial “hard part over” check-in. Your objective is to have overcome an important technical hurdle by this date. This might mean: getting Thing A to talk to Thing B; parsing a data file; successfully reading values from a sensor, etcetera. In an optional blog entry: throw up a photo, screenshot or a casually-recorded video illustrating your progress. You can categorize this blog post with Assignment-09-Progress if you want. Don’t fuss on the blog post.

Thursday 11/28/2013 is Thanksgiving. Have a nice meal!

Thursday 12/5/2013 is your due date. You will present your projects at a critique in the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry. Be prepared to make a 5-minute presentation about your project, from a public lectern. There may be guest critics present. You are asked to present your project from a special blog post that documents your project, in the form of a kindof-slideshow-presentation (i.e., a sequence of images and/or videos). If you wish, you may embed a Prezi in a WordPress post. Categorize this blog post with Assignment-09-Slides.

Friday, December 13th is when all documentation for the project is due. Your final documentation should be a blog post as follows:

  • A blog post, categorized with Assignment-09-Documentation;
  • It should have an abstract or introductory overview sentence that tersely describes your project, ideally under 140 characters;
  • It should have an overview image which is the “press picture” that best (visually) explains what you made;
  • A narrative which describes what your project is, in 150-250 words. Consider breaking your narrative into four paragraphs (Overview, Inspiration, Technical Aspects, Critical Reflection). In other words, include some information about the genesis of your concept, the iterations or evolution of the project, the technical hurdles you had to solve, and an honest self-assessment/self-critique of your results.
  • A video embedded from YouTube or Vimeo which documents your project, ideally in 60-120 seconds. Keep it simple, but consider using narration and/or subtitles to call out key explanations.
  • Include additional sketches, photographs, embedded code, as appropriate.

Good luck! <3