came my way

When I teach, I jump from YouTube to Delicious to Google docs on the classroom screen. I allow—even encourage—my students to use laptops in class, and I don’t worry if they’ve got Facebook in one tab while the day’s assigned reading is in another. They’re the ones getting graded, so I let them own the direction and degree of their attention along with the consequences. I let them work the way I work, or find their own way of working, without pretending these tools don’t exist. So it isn’t their use of Facebook that concerns me as much who they’re using it with, and I don’t mean the predators and creeps and assorted bogeyfolk 20/20 warns us about every sweeps week. To the contrary, I worry the web might be keeping them safe but stunted, because it’s so easy to continue the relationships and conversations they had in high school and carry along to college an entrenched identity built when they were younger. As I told my student, what concerns me about her peers and herself being online is the loss of isolation, of separation, of the ability for 18 year olds to live in their heads for a while. Or at least to own their own minds.

Steve Himmer, "The importance of unwritten postcards," posted at The Millions, 17 May 2011
via The Chocolate Chip Waffle

p.s.

panel reviews Monday evening, schedule in previous post.

the semester's work concludes with a process book that documents how the work has evolved, and your thoughts about same.
 

memoria

Memory is a poet, not an historian.
Marie Howe

source
 

panel reviews, Monday 10 December

We'll start at 6:00pm, in 30-minute sessions:
6:00 Nicole
6:30 Tim
7:00 Lauren
7:30 Alexa

reviewers are John Colan, Mary Bucci McCoy, Justin Gagne, Jesse Kahn, Sarah Smith (and for at least one session, Brian Savignano)
 

for tim

the list

1. project on building/screen
2. project on building/screen, with person/figure between projector and screen, and seen from projector side
3. project on screen, with person/figure between projector and screen, and seen from behind screen
4. project into space (no reflective surface), person/figure moves across — creates a kind of traveling static, in otherwise empty space.
5. set agent/worm to navigate across noise
6. double projection, e.g., noise + I Love Lucy, or noise + agent/worm

more

1. be familiar with wayang kulit / shadow puppetry
2. what can be done, metaphorically, with the static / noise / clouds / snow / passing ghosts?

see also this image of Dance by Toby Old.

readings, upcomings

We've got Nicole's reading (Thoreau) and the reading pertaining to Lauren's work (articles from recent "memory" issue New Scientist). We'll clarify tomorrow (Wednesday) which will be discussed when, but it would be good to start reading these.

Also, next Wednesday we'll be joined by Jan Moscowitz, a smart and stylish graphic designer who'll be talking about her work and life, including a crisis-design project relating to Sandy.

generative art (and design)

Monday 5 November —
A reminder that Tim will lead us through a discussion of
Philip Galanter, "What is Generative Art? Complexity Theory as a Context for Art Theory," which seems to have appeared ca 2002. The PDF can be accessed via the author's resources page.

Worth exploring is Hartmut Bohnacker, Benedikt Groß, Julia Laub, and Claudius Lazzeroni (editor), Generative Design: Visualize, Program, and Create with Processing (2012). The book has a web component for tools, code examples, etc., here (click on EN for English language).

Will bring in the book on Monday. It has been pointed out* that a good start in this book is the "Reflections" (pp460-465).

for the record —
See entry on Francis Galton's use of a "chain signal code," described here. This seems to be a special case of, or at least akin to, a "chain code" described by wikipedia.
 

halloween special

Just a reminder that we're invited to join Mary Bucci McCoy's GD1 class tomorrow morning. There'll be Halloween donuts, coffee, cider, fruit.

You get to talk about/show what's up with your projects. A laptop will be attached to their large monitor, if that will help.

You might think about what you wish you'd known, heard, etc., back when you were a freshman in GD1!

After that, we'll return to Seminar Room, pick up wherever we left off or wherever needs more attention. Also, we'll discuss what you'd like us to be reading, relating to your work, in seminar. If necessary, I'll try to help choose something.

Please be on time tomorrow, so we don't keep those guys waiting. Bring your appetite, too.

design as conversation

 
"We might even go beyond communication... and focus on conversation (interactions that converge on understanding, agreement, and action). We might frame design as conversation—with a goal of designing for conversation."

— Hugh Dubberly, Input for updating the ICOGRADA Design Education Manifesto (2011), available here.

Interesting discussion on "design's relation to code."

Original (2000) and updated (2011) ICOGRADA Design Education manifestos available at ICOGRADA.

We'll be reading some of this.

straight lines, circles; busy or idle

And having heard, or more probably read somewhere, in the days when I thought I would be well advised to educate myself, or amuse myself, or stupefy myself, or kill time, that when a man in a forest thinks he is going forward in a straight line, in reality he is going in a circle. I did my best to go in a circle, hoping in this way to go in a straight line…

Samuel Becket, Molloy ( here )
via invisiblestories.tumblr

 
If any of us knew what we were doing, or where we are going, then when we think we best know! We do not know today whether we are busy or idle! In times when we thought ourselves indolent, we have afterwards discovered, that much was accomplished, and much was begun in us.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Experience, 2nd series" (1844, here and many elsewheres )

design is a machine

that transfers and perhaps transforms energy from one state to another.

Shown above, detail of a periodic table of mechanical movements, from Augustin de Béthencourt y Molina and José María de Lanz, their Essai sur la composition des machines, 2nd edition (Paris: Bachelier, Paris, 1819) — go to page 194, and following pages, if link doesn't lead directly there.

Something similar is Henry T. Brown, his Five Hundred and Seven Mechanical Movements, Embracing All Those which are Most Important in Dynamics, Hydraulics, Hydrostatics, Pneumatics, Steam Engines, Mill and Other Gearing, Presses, Horology, and Miscellaneous Machinery; and Including Many Movements Never Before Published... Henry T. Brown. 13th edn, 1881) (here).

For Wednesday next, read:

Vílem Flusser, "About the Word Design," from his The Shape of Things: A Philosophy of Design (London: Reaktion, 1999 — downloadable here), and

Norman Potter, "What is a designer?" from his What is a designer : things . places . messages, 4th edition (London: Hyphen, 2002, downloadable here).

Think about where design can be found in your work.

panel review 1

Our first round of panel reviews is Wednesday, 10 October 2012.

Tentative schedule:
6:00     Tim
6:30     Nicole
7:00     Lauren
7:30     Alexa

Reviewers: Blunt, Bucci McCoy, Colan, Gagne, McVey, Savignano.

I have updated some of the seminar proposals (see students' respective "pages") at upper right; please send me more current versions where appropriate.

 
To venture causes anxiety, but not to venture is to lose oneself.
Kierkegaard

Nothing is a mistake.

 

 
via SFMOMA tumblr, from the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, and all over the place.

preface

Content previously on this page, is now at the "about the course" page.

In advance of Wednesday 5 September, the instructor should receive (1) title; (2) tweet-length summary; and (3) a revised thesis statement reflecting current position. I will post all of these on the students' respective pages.