Thank you everyone for a great semester! As we wind things down, please take note of a few end-of-year things:
All public computers and server spaces will be wiped the week after final exams (DAI lab servers, New Genres tower, etc). Be sure to back up your files before then!
All remaining prints, objects, and tools left after exam week will be “assimilated” into the New Genres collection – if you want it, take it with you.
Your NCard access will also end after exam week, so be sure to retrieve any items before then.
Lastly, if you are graduating: congratulations! If not, rest up for next year and have a fantastic summer!
Our final project performances will be the evening of Thursday, May 2 at 7pm in the Digital Arts Lab (Richards Hall room 17). We’ll have a setup and rehearsal starting at 5pm. Please let your friends/family know – anyone is welcome to attend!
To Do:
Create a Facebook event for the performance
Hang posters
Finish your projects and practice your performances!
For your final project, you will build an instrument, capable of generating or controlling sound, video, or both. This project will culminate in a live performance using your instrument. Building on all the technical and conceptual ideas from this semester, along with tutorials over the next few weeks in sound and video generation, your task is to create a new, exciting instrument capable of expressive control. Your instrument should be aesthetically interesting not just in the sounds/visuals it creates but as an object on stage.
The addition of a live performance is not trivial: I would like you to think about your performance as a finished work. Consider how it should start and end, how you will act on stage, and what experience you want your audience to have.
The format, style – really every aspect of the piece – is up to you. The only stipulation is that you do not re-create an existing instrument but instead invent something new. Think about scale, point of view, and how the object will translate to experience for the audience when interacted with on stage.
Finally, you are welcome to collaborate if you would like, either with other members of the class or outside makers.
In 2010, Google estimated that their search index holds 100 million gigabytes of data. Every minute, 48 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube, we send over 100,000 Tweets, Flirckr users add 3,125 new photographs, and more than 570 new websites are created (source: http://mashable.com/2012/06/22/data-created-every-minute). To say we are surrounded by data, new and remixed, is a complete understatement.
One of the challenges for designers working with data is to help sort through that material and find meaningful, insightful, surprising, and new ways of looking at data. This has been our call this semester, and for our final project we expand our view to “big data”, a term used to describe data sets that are so large that no person could understand them directly.
Your assignment is simple: create some kind of data representation, using any tools you like, that works with a data set of at least 10,000 data points (rather small by big data standards). The source, motivations, and output format are completely up to you.
Starting with a list of things you are excited about, we will develop prototypes, hunt for data, and iterate your projects towards a finished data visualization. Think about what you’re excited about – why spend the next month making something that you’re not procrastinating your other projects to work on?
For your final project you are being given complete freedom to create an artistic work of your choosing that:
Engages at least one technology used in the class (video, sound, handmade film, 3d modeling and/or printing, or programming)
The choice of subject matter, approach, use of technology, and output is up to you. Consider alternatives to a simple videos or images – installations, performances, video/sound as part of a larger artwork, etc. are all possibilities.
The ideas, process, and presentation format are up to you, but should show substantial effort, time, and consideration. This should be at least equivalent to any class project we’ve done thus far.
This project makes up 15% of your final grade and is intended as a culmination of everything you have learned in this class. Most of this project will be created outside of class, so be sure to budget your time accordingly.
MOST IMPORTANTLY
This is your chance to really get after something big! This project, while using skills you’ve learned in class – is really about opening up to your grand ideas – take this opportunity to deeply explore something you’re interested in, something you care about!
Digital imagery has a history dating back far before the complex number-crunching machines we now use to produce everything from elaborate audio and video to websites populated by Photoshopped cheese-head people. Geometric and pixelated patterning not at all unlike early computer graphics can be found in Muslim tile-work, quilt patterns, and Native American weaving just to name a few. Lets consider just weaving for a moment – complex patterns had been created by loom workers following stepped instructions for centuries before the advent of the Jacquard loom in 1801. In a relationship directly seen in early digital computing, the Jacquard loom used punched cards to specify a machine to carry out these specifically ordered instructions, while being assisted by an operator. This allowed for the use of a single machine to create many different extremely complex designs without having to be mechanically altered – a huge step, to say the least!
