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Computational Arts

Session 1: Meeting Diane, Jayson and Jules, references we discussed and things to work on

Last week I did my first session as part of my new lectureship at Goldsmiths as part of the MFA Computational Arts course. After enrolling at the university with the help of Dr. Rose Hepworth, I sat down with my students: Diane Edwards, Jayson Haebich and Julianne Rahimi to discuss their work and plans for the rest of this year, working towards their final show.

After we introduced ourselves, we started by discussing their individual projects for the recent group show, Metasis:

We began by watching and discussing the following references:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xPvvPTQaMI

agnes-martin

Agnes Martin: “To progress in life you must give up the things you do not like. Give up doing the things that you do not like to do. You must find the things that you do like. The things that are acceptable to your mind.”

That two of the most interesting things about computers were their ability to use (pseudo)randomness and their realtime interaction capability.

Two books by Lawrence Weschler:

CS183, the startup course taught by the (in)famous Peter Thiel at Stanford.

Loren Carpenter‘s interaction experiment at SIGGRAPH ‘91 and the work of Adam Curtis.

The Californian Ideology by Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron from August 1995.

Things to be worked on:

  1. Describe how to go deeper in your chosen area of practise. Beyond the surface. How can you make new human contact in your area?
  2. Make a paper-based mockup of your project if you had $1 Billion in funding.
  3. A person who is alive now who could be your hero/heroine within your chosen area of practise.

Finally, I showed the following image for what my reaction to their graduating shows should be:

Neil Armstrong immediately post moonwalk.
Neil Armstrong immediately post moonwalk.