Software art and design: computational thinking through programming

practice and critical code theory

Winnie Soon @ ISEA 2016 Aarhus University

Background

•  Aarhus University > Digital Design > Year 1 > second semester

Aesthetic Programming • 20 ECTS • Practice-

oriented

Software Studies • 10 ECTS • Theory-

oriented

Aesthetic Programming

It is designed to complement the parallel course in SOFTWARE STUDIES where further critical work will be developed and expanded but without losing sight of programming as critical work in itself.

Structure

Face-to-Face time: – Weekly lecture - AP (3 hours) –  Smaller tutorial group sessions (2 hours) – Weekly lecture – SS (3 hours)

AP weekly lecture (3 hrs): – Discussion – Group tutoring –  Lecture – Code tinkering – Artwork introduction

Deliverable

•  Weekly group tutoring •  Weekly mini-exercises + peer feedback •  Final portfolio project (group work) – Readme – Runme

•  Oral exam (half an hour)

#example 1: throbber

Seminar session in SS: Temporalities - real-time, machine time and just-in-time (live) coding

–  Wilfried Hou Je Bek, "Loop", in Fuller, op. cit., pp. 179-183.

–  Shintaro Miyazaki, “Algorhythmics: Understanding Micro-Temporality in Computational Cultures”, in Computational Culture, issue 2,

–  David Berry, “Real-time Streams”, in Berry, op. cit., pp. 142-171.

–  Geoff Cox, “Real-time for Pirate Cinema”, 2015

Throbber design

Weekly mini ex : Explore a new syntax and re-design a throbber. Think about what is a throbber? How might we think about the relationship between technical objects and cultural objects?

Students work

What did they say?

“I remember really well the talk we had about throbbers and the aesthetic part of them” “I remember that a throbber is not just a throbber. That if you study what a throbber does you can change it do something different.” “The throbber. I liked having a known concept but a free approach.“

#example 2: Data Processing

Seminar session in SS:

The new software interface: Predictors, big data and the datafication of everything, including yourself 

–  Philip, Agre, “Surveillance and Capture: Two Models of Privacy”, The Information Society, 10(2), 1994

–  Richard Wright, "Data Visualisation", in Fuller, op. cit., pp.

78-87.

–  Kenneth Neil Cukier & Viktor Mayer-Schoenberger, “The Rise of Big Data: How It's Changing the Way We Think About the World”, Foreign Affairs, May/June 2013,

Data processing: API/JSON

Group tutoring: API, JSON, Text parsing Weekly mini ex : Find any data source on the Internet, and then try to base on it and produce a sketch/visualization in Processing. (Data source can be a text file, open data, feeds, RSS, html pages etc) Thinking line: what is text parsing and information processing?

#example 3: Final Portfolio

Final portfolio

•  Social Profiler (Valur, Ida, Lukas and Camilla)

Final portfolio: Confession Bot

•  Confession Bot by Ida, Maja, Steffen and Ann

•  https://twitter.com/ConfessionB0t

When we say we 'share' something on a social networking site, for example, we mean we provide information about ourselves, or someone passes on information about us, typically personal information.

(Sützl, 2015)

Overall comments: “I liked making the exercises and I have some favorites among the ones that I have made. This was also what taught me to think critically of code and analyze my work.” “The whole thing about how objects in OOP are reflections of the real world. I found it interesting to see how man and machine finds a common ground, a common language, in which human words are used as technical functions, that would otherwise be machine language.” “Finally getting aesthetics as more than just the traditional sense of the word”

Challenges “I found the classes about API very interesting, but rather hard and confusing as well.” “whenever we did the mini exercises alone I often had a hard time knowing where to start and generally get help. Also when we did the final project it was difficult for all of us to work on the program, and felt left out because I knew less about programming than the others.” “More use of the groups, using them to articulate the aesthetics of code and critical thinking, which is very hard to learn individually.”

Thank you wsoon@cc.au.dk

Final portfolio

•  Safe zone (Fannie, Hannah, Daniel, Anders and Sebastian)