On your web site, make sure that the following are visible:
an image, video or other deliverable of your final product
documentation of your design process
a 3-5 minute video (or slide deck with embedded audio) of your design analysis
On Ed:
make sure your video is posted to the Showcase discussion
Using this collection as your inspiration, design and make a tangible physical artifact that exhibits Cellular Automata computation.
Some ideas
a textile (such as a bag, scarf, shirt or skirt) using embroidery to exhibit the computation
a laser cut object that exhibits the computation
a stamped work, where the stamp itself and the larger pattern exhibit the computation
We estimate that this project should take you ~12-16 hours. You will submit everything through your portfolio web site, including:
written documentation of your process (40%)
articulate your goal(s)
record your approach
lots of notes/photos/videos, especially when things don't go as planned!
your code (or a link to your code) for the p5js sketch(es) that you produced
your final product (photos and video of the artifact) (10%)
a slide deck that presents your project (20%)
This should include:
your goal and inspiration
your final product and how it exhibits cellular automata computation
highlights of your design/build process, including 1-2 examples of key moments (e.g., a failure point and how you recovered, an unexpected success)
a 3-5 minute video presentation of (1) your project and (2) analysis of your problem-solving process (30%)
(1) You should use your slide deck for presenting your project.
(2) You may find the following prompts helpful in organizing the analysis of your problem-solving process. Be as specific as possible, while also recognizing the limitations of the time constraint. You will not be able to walk through everything you did, but will need to nominate takeaways and important points.
How did you go about this project?
What parts did you find straightforward?
What was challenging?
What supported your understanding?
Were there embodied elements that helped you? Could you think of others?
What part of the process is a black box to you?
For example: You may have found code online that implements a cellular automaton and you used that to generate your creation. You may have altered the starting generation and associated drawing code. Perhaps how the automaton produces the next generation is a "black box" -- you know what to give it and what it outputs, but you do not know how the algorithm works. Or you may have an intuitive idea of how it works, but wouldn't be ready to implement it from scratch.
You will be evaluated on the clarity of your communication and the depth of your analysis.
Using Lab 1 as your starting point and this collection from the Art Museum as your inspiration, create a p5js sketch that exhibits Cellular Automata computation.
You might
restrict to elementary cellular automata and combine rules and (re)starting generations to achieve your final pattern
alter the model of computation
for example, instead of looking at adjacent neighbors, look at neighbors one cell further
expand to a 2D grid (this site uses animation to show each generation)
be thoughtful that expansion this way will introduce a new challenge around how to capture this in a tangible artifact
instead of a square grid, choose a different tiling of the plane (you may draw inspiration from here)
This milestone is a starting draft for your final product -- you might decide to alter it after seeing the tools in Fimbel!
For this homework, you may use any resources you'd like. You must cite them appropriately (e.g., I talked with a peer about my pattern or I adapted this GitHub repo or I gave Gemini this set of prompts).
To be clear, this includes usage of AI tools, as long as you are:
appropriately documentating and citing your interaction, which should include the platform, prompt and screenshots/links of sample parts of the interaction
analyzing how the usage of the tool(s) helped or hindered your design process
NOTE: MHC's access to Google Gemini provides certain protections of your data.
Post to Ed please, as you're probably not the only one!
Ed supports anonymous posting.