OK, week seven and we finally had a chance to see what everyone has been working on for the last few weeks.  The results? Kind of stunning, actually; I ran out of superlatives pretty early in the class.

For your edification (look it up!), I have included four basically random photos of projects. Can you guess what they are?

For a lot more photos of the twenty-or-so projects that were submitted, check the various individual blogs, where students document their builds, ideas, drawings, photos and other aspects of their work. These are linked to this page primariy as comments to the last week's entries, and as linkbacks. I will work to get these more organized in the near future to make finding this material a bit easier. In the meantime, though, check them out; some of the projects were too complex to prototype in this class, but the creativity, "failed" attempts, drawings, plans and explanations are amazing in many cases.

We are now on a well-deserved hiatus for a week, and then back at it. For this next part of the course, we will be looking at computation, simulations, games and systems. Hang on - this could get bumpy!

Week 6

Today was "work on your Tool / Toy project" day in the lab, and while the atmosphere was pretty relaxed and fun, people were WORKING, and I mean seriously, on getting their piece designed, documented and (somewhat) built.  The level of concentration in many instances was amazing.

This is really turning out to be an interesting project. Next week we will see the outcomes (both the builds and the documentation).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Week 5!

We started with everyone taking turns talking a bit about what they were working on for the "Tool / Toy" assignment that's due in two weeks.  This is a terrifyingly creative class, and the projects exceeded even my most inflated expectations.

Most people talked about their "problem finding", that is, what area(s) they were looking at to try to improve, or what problems they wanted to solve. Most were well onto the solution stage, talking about what they were making. Some discussed implementation issues like how to actually build their device or product, a few others wanted help choosing which of several projects they would pursue.

I emphasized the importance of perception in the creative process, and specifically how re-framing problems / challenges can lead to a lot of additional avenues to explore before deciding on the one best way to define the problem in any given situation. It is also critical to generate a lot of solutions to your problem before deciding on one to go with; generally, the more ideas you have, the better the final outcome.

Next, we turned to today's build - creating hanging sculptures / lamps. Specifically, your assignment, should you choose to accept it (and most of you did)  was to take some old coat hangers,  leotards, and LEDs, and turn these into pairs of simple, elegant shapes that glow in the dark and could eventually be hung from the ceiling in an installation later in the term. As usual, you came, you saw,  and you conquered.  A few of you will continue your builds for part of next class.

And you know what else I am going to talk about, right? Yes, coat hangers!  I mean, what could possibly go wrong with a bunch of people cutting, bending and generally playing with straightened, springy pieces of sharp metal in the close confines of a computer lab? So I spent the entire build saying "please put on your eye protection" about 500 times. And how was YOUR day?

Week 4: A relatively quiet day, with the emphasis on "relatively".  No physical builds, but exploration of the role of perception in creativity, some field work on "problem finding",  and some conceptual / design exercises involving new life forms and voice-activated, haptic and implantable computing. We took a closer look at the next assignment (Tool / Toy) , and starting collecting material for our next build, where we will be using leotards, coat hangers and ...?  Next week, a quick look at Tool/Toy proposals and then we get back to the serious business of making stuff.

Week Three - Vibrobot Challenge

Ah, week three and already we are constructing some beautiful, strange objects. This was more of a "process class"; the challenge was: (1) to create a novel object that could move primarily through the vibration of a small electric motor, and (2)   to document the process on one of the team's blogs. As the blogs, photos and videos below indicate, there were A LOT of interesting approaches (scroll down to the botton of the photos, then click on "links to this post" to see them). Each team immediately grasped the nature of the challenge and -- once again - dramatically exceeded my expectations. Have a look (and we are REALLY sorry about the mess) ...

Welcome to the CMA "Explorations in Creativity and (In)tangible Media" blog. This is intended primarily for students presently in the course, but others are welcome to have a look around and watch some videos of students' work.

Working individually and in teams, students in this course build physical and virtual objects that use various digital and analog technologies to solve a series of creative challenges or artistic provocations. Initial builds will take place during class workshops, and students will soon start to work independently on larger individual and paired projects. Materials so far have included fabric, metal, wood, electric motors, and various other recycled electronic cast-offs. We will soon be working with electromagnets and microcontrollers. We are exploring robotics, soft and physical computing, tangible media, and perhaps some kinetic sculpture.

Students can explore and combine their interests in a variety of areas. While they learn some basic design and technical concepts in order to build their pieces, the emphasis here is squarely on creativity and self-expression; the underlying technologies themselves are considered important only to the extent that they allow us to create interesting works.

More formally, this course is constructivist in its approach; for the most part, students will be working with both tangible objects and modelling software (Starlogo TNG) in iterative cycles designed to engender deeper understanding of core course concepts and phenomena. In particular, this course is intended to move CALL students beyond works whose final form is screen-based, non-interactive linear image streams (such as film and video) and conventional desktop interaction (such as traditional web design). Key concepts are creativity, design, systems thinking, modelling, simulation and game design.