Altered Images

Altered Images was a two week solo Digital Media & Interaction Design brief run by Hellicar&Lewis for Stage 1 BA students of Graphic Design at Central Saint Martins, London in 2014. There were four days of lectures and workshops spread over the two weeks – the idea was to make progress between the first three lecture/workshop days, culminating in a final presentation of all work at the end of the fourth and final day.

Notes and example code from Lesson 1 of Block 8 are available here.

Homework due at 1030 on Thursday 15th May 2014, Lesson 2:

  1. Read and comment all your code from Lesson 1. Every line!
  2. Read and do the exercises from the following Processing Tutorials: Hello Processing, Getting Started, Overview, Coordinate System and Shapes, Color, Objects and finally Two Dimensional Arrays.

Notes and example code from Lesson 2 of Block 8 are available here.

Pete’s presentation about working with coders is available here.

Homework due at 1030 on Tuesday 20th May 2014, Lesson 3:

  1. Read and comment all your code from Lesson 2. Every line!
  2. Read and do the exercises from the following Processing Tutorials: Hello Processing, Getting Started, Overview, Coordinate System and Shapes, Color, Objects, Two Dimensional Arrays and finally Pixels.
  3. Look at the program AlteredImages_07_Convolution in the zip file above and find an interesting convolution. Change the values in the 3×3 2D array and see what happens. You will have read about Convolution in the Pixels tutorial.
  4. Read up to the end of Chapter 9 of “Learning Processing” – there may be some mistakes in the book, so check the errata if there are problems with your code.
  5. Find an example from the examples inside the Processing application that you like. You can find the examples by going to the File menu and then selecting Examples. Double click to choose one and click Play to see what it does.

Notes and example code from Lesson 3 of Block 8 are available here.

Homework due at 1030 on Thursday 22th May 2014, Lesson 4:

  1. Read and comment all your code from Lesson 3. Every line!
  2. Create a program that loads in an image, then displays four variants of the image on screen at the same time, sign the images and save them out when the user presses s on the keyboard. Look up the Transparency Example in Processing Examples (File Menu -> Examples -> Basic) to see how to do Transparency for your signature. You’ll need to make four new PImages, and then affect them in some way.
  3. Install and review the examples of the following libraries: Gif-animation and controlP5. Contributed Libraries must be downloaded individually. Select “Add Library…” from the “Import Library…” submenu within the Sketch menu. Look in the Documents/Processing/Libraries folder for examples for Gif Animation and Control P5. Try a few of them out!
  4. Think about how you are going to make your Animated GIF Loader and Saver. It will be due at the end of the day.

We will investigate several computer based methods for generating graphical imagery over time from other imagery over the first three lecture/workshop days:

1. Colour – sampling directly from images. Thinking about pixels, grids and different ways of measuring colour. How to achieve many variations in palette of a single image. How can a change in colour transform what an image means to people?
2. Pattern  – repeating elements within images to make new images. Working on the same image at different scales and resolutions. How to arrange repeated elements. What does repetition mean conceptually?
3. Rhythm – images changing over time in patterns. How can images change over time? What does it mean? How does it feel? What kind of beat is the best?

Second Block: Block 8: Tuesday 13th May 2014 – Thursday 22nd May 2014

  1. Tuesday 13th May 2014 – Colour
  2. Thursday 15th May 2014 – Pattern
  3. Tuesday 20th May 2014 – Rhythm
  4. Thursday 22nd May 2014 – Final Presentation

The daily hours will be 10.30 to 13.00 and 14.00 to 16.30.

We will be giving you pre-made tools, but we expect you to create your own, and acknowledge where you have used others. We will introduce you to technical methods, but we expect you to produce creative results using code. The ultimate aim is to perform the results of your work – credit will be given for both creative and technical execution.

We will be using Processing to create with. Please familiarise yourself with Processing before the first day of teaching. The Tutorials section of the Processing.org website is a perfect start.

Daniel Shiffman‘s Nature of Code is a great reference, as well as Learning Processing.