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.
