All students should have the opportunity to be creative with code
This is a useful initiative, despite its narrow focus on engineering and science. It would be great to see the companion film which profiles creative arts and design professionals who regularly use programming as part of their practice/work.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Syllabus for Information Aesthetics at UIC School of Art and Design
"This studio course investigates the database as cultural form (Manovich, 2001), in the context of data visualization, digital fabrication, and computational aesthetics. Traditionally viewed as a tool for scientific reasoning and data exploration, information visualization has emerged as an artistic practice, propelled by the democratization of data sources and the advancement of computer graphics. The massive amount of data collected and disseminated online constitutes the basis for this course. Participants will be introduced to the basic skills for developing creative projects in two-, three-, and four dimensions, such as indexes, graphs, prints, digitally fabricated objects and maps. Students will also become familiar with the a basic vocabulary to co-create and collaborate with professionals in future contexts.
The course focuses on current standards for web development and mobile applications, including HTML5, CSS3, jQuery, PHP, MySQL, and Processing(.js). Fundamentals in XHTML, Cascading Style Sheets, and programming are beneficial, but not required. Throughout the course, students are asked to utilize the class blog to collect and share resources, collaboratively collecting interesting data sources towards a final project. A series of presentations, screenings, readings, and discussions will expose students to creative projects and artworks in the context of information visualization. Each student selects a research topic followed by an in-class research presentation (see schedule). Participants will also present their work during class critiques and interdisciplinary workshops to receive qualitative feedback from the instructor(s) and the class."
(Daniel Sauter, University of Illinois at Chicago, School of Art and Design, Fall 2011)
Fig.1 Matt Wizinsky (2011). "Chicago unDensity", University of Illinois at Chicago.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Nina Wenhart's blog on the prehysteries of new media
"this blog is nina wenhart's collection of resources on the various histories of new media art. it consists mainly of non or very little edited material i found flaneuring on the net, sometimes with my own annotations and comments, sometimes it's also textparts i retyped from books that are out of print.
it is also meant to be an additional resource of information and recommended reading for my students of the prehystories of new media class that i teach at the school of the art institute of chicago in fall 2008.
the focus is on the time period from the beginning of the 20th century up to today."
(Nina Wenhart, 26/06/2008)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Flash web application prototypes
I created a series of Flash web application prototypes between 2002 and 2003. I did so as part of my design experimentation and growing interest in software design. As a result the prototypes were very limited in their scope as they tended to focus on particular concepts or techniques. For example I created my Kiwifruit prototype to explore an approach to updating database records which removed the need for users to make explicit update/submit decisions; I created my Rhizome prototype to explore approaches to contextual grouping and association; and I created my in-flight meal booking prototype to test some ideas I had about interactive information design. I developed the applications using a combination of Macromedia (Adobe) Flash, PHP, XML and MySQL. The prototypes now stand as a useful reminder of the promise that Flash offered in the early part of this century - before HTML5, the iPad and responsive layout etc.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
The jQuery Project
"jQuery is a fast and concise JavaScript Library that simplifies HTML document traversing, event handling, animating, and Ajax interactions for rapid web development. jQuery is designed to change the way that you write JavaScript.
jQuery UI provides abstractions for low-level interaction and animation, advanced effects and high-level, themeable widgets, built on top of the jQuery JavaScript Library, that you can use to build highly interactive web applications."
(John Resig)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
