Computing for Creative Practice
Intro to Computing for Creative Practice 15-104
Professor: Roger Dannenberg | Fall 2015
This was an introductory coding course for people typically from the creative and artistic side of Carnegie Mellon University whom did not have prior coding knowledge. It also served as the portal course for CMU's Interdisciplinary department known as IDeATe (Integrative Design, Arts, and Technology).
The course was taught using p5.js (a javascript library) with weekly Looking Outwards (writing assignments that encouraged us to look into what was being created right now by new media artists and creators through coding, technology, and new forms of fabrication), homework assignments that were to be replicated which taught us how to problem solve and code in javascript, and projects that tested our creativity in new ways by making us juggle our aesthetic tastes while demonstrating the new skills we'd acquired that week.
For this project we were assigned to create an abstract clock using the functions hour(), minute(), and second(). Based off a cute snack I was having at the time, I decided to replicate a strawberry.
The leaves correspond to the current hour using the 12 hour system, the bands of blue and purple showing the seconds leading up to a minute where the bands start in the other direction, and the minutes shown by the clock hand.
Originally the seeds of the clock were meant to show the minutes but, due to logistical issues, had to compromise with the traditional minute hand.
Curves
This project started from using the Mathworld Daisy Spiral chosen out of a number of base codes and was used to make the spirals unroll/roll up depending on the position of the mouse. I chose colors that were aesthetically pleasing and a composition that seemed fun to me. I received the staff pick of the week for this project.
For this project, I incorporated a picture of me posted online on IMGUR that, through the mouse placement, would slowly form a pixelated picture of me composed of colored circles that adopted the color value of the spot they appeared on.
To avoid waiting, click here to see photos of the process.
Based off the old nursery rhyme "London Bridge is falling down," I decided to alter source code of the Big Square Mesh springs so the bridge can be dragged with the click of a mouse. When you get tired of old London Bridge, you can make it disappear by pressing any of the keys. There's also a nice little message at the end.
For my final project, I worked with Ramya Chinta to make a generative landscape with cars, clouds, and a bridge that passes by. The user controls the UFO by moving the mouse and the objective is to abduct all the cars by clicking above them until there are none left.