A2: workstation

In this assignment you will create an interactive workstation in p5.

The world is full of workstations. These can be real (your messy desktop), imagined (spaceship control panels), fun (baby activity centres), serious (air traffic control), creative (painter’s studio), or boring (checkout cash register). All of these workstations have a variety of objects that humans interact with to accomplish some kind of task.

You goal in this assignment is to create some kind of interactive workstation in p5 that’s engaging, coherent, and rewarding to use. The objects in your workstation should fit together in some kind of clear theme. There should be interactive elements in your workstation so that clicking or moving the mouse causes a response in your sketch. You will need to carefully design your interactions and the responses to create an artwork that engages the viewer in interaction and rewards their attention with a deeper understanding or enjoyment.

Outline

• Due: 04 September 2023, 9:00 pm
• Assignment template: available on GitLab (link)
• Specification: keep reading 🙂
• Weighting: 20%
• Marked out of: _ / 20
• Submission: submit your assignment through Gitlab (full instructions below)
• Policies: no late submissions accepted; this is an individual assessment
• Rubric: Please see the relevant assessment task on the class summary for your course:
  • COMP1720
  • COMP6720

Requirements

Your workstation submission must:

• be a workstation: it can be real, imagined, electronic, natural, mechanical, fun, serious, creative, or anything else as long as it’s a collection of objects that an entity interacts with to accomplish a task
• be interactive: the viewer should be able ot interact with the workstation using the keyboard and mouse, this could mean triggering animations, changes in the workstation or “doing” the work task the work task
• be engaging and coherent: use what you know about drawing and interaction in p5 to make your workstation an artwork that grabs the viewer’s attention and demands exploration
• be rewarding: exploring and interactive with your artwork should be a rewarding experience for the viewer who should gain a deeper understanding of your workstation through interaction
• be an 1280x800 p5.js sketch
• include a thumbnail.png file (a static image of your workstation)
• include the code in the usual sketch.js file
• include an artist statement (max 200 words) describing your artwork (see below)
• include a references.md file with at least two references
  • these can be from classmates, artworks, books, online sources, any reference is fine as long as there are two (or more) of them.
  • anything that is not your own work must be included in the references.md file

And a few “must nots”:

• must not use image: again, we want you to focus on p5’s drawing functions, not using images. Do not use loadImage or image() in your assignment.
• must not use sound: we haven’t studied sound and music computing yet, wait until we have taught you the basics before trying to use sound.
• must not use camera, microphone or other sensors for interaction, just the keyboard and mouse.
• must not be a game: the specification is for an interactive workstation artwork, not a “workstation-themed game”. If your artwork involves a “score” or a concept of winning or losing, you may actually be making a game.

The artist statement

Your submission must include a short (max 200 words) artist statement. This is a short document, written in the first person, which explains:

• What your artwork is.
• How your artwork is rewarding to the viewer.

The artist statement is your chance to tell us what is interesting and artistic about your submission—don’t assume that we can guess. It’s you chance to explain how and why your work is engaging, coherent, and rewarding.

You won’t receive a separate mark for the artist statement, but it will be used to judge how successful your submission is as a work of art and your abilty to design and construct a computer-based artwork.

Getting started

Here’s the process for working on the assignment:

1. fork & clone the assignment repo

2. add whatever code you like to make a cool/interesting workstation

3. when you run the sketch, hitting spacebar will save a still image of the sketch (as a thumbnail.png file in your Downloads folder)

4. when you’re happy with your thumbnail.png, copy it into your assignment folder (this will overwrite the previous version) and commit the new version to the repo (and push it up to the GitLab server)

If you’re new to Git and you’d like a helping hand, there are some git help videos (from 2018, but still pretty spot-on) on the resources page.

Submission process

1. fork the assignment template repository from the Gitlab server

2. clone¹ & work on your fork of the assignment 1 repo, regularly committing & pushing your changes to the GitLab server

3. at the submission deadline, the latest commit² pushed to the GitLab server (not on your local machine!) will count as your submission

One thing to note is that there are some “checks” which the GitLab server runs to help you out. So if you get a pipeline failed email, then have a look at the FAQ.

Submission checklist

1. my project satisfies the requirements

2. my completed assignment has been pushed to the GitLab server, and all the required files (your versions of artist-statement.md, references.md, thumbnail.png and sketch.js) have made it to the server

3. my references.md file includes at least two references, and everything not mentioned in there is my own work

4. i have viewed and tested my submission on the test URL and it displays / works correctly

FAQ

Can I change the size of the canvas?

No, you need to use a rectangular 1280 x 800 canvas as set up by the template: createCanvas(1280, 800)

Can I use images or sounds from the internet?

No.

Can I use insert advanced p5 feature here?

Yes, as long as it doesn’t involve using images (see above). We may not be able to help with some advanced p5 and JavaScript that isn’t included in the course so far.

How do I submit my references & artist statement?

The template repo contains “starter” files for both of these. You should change these files to put your own content in there, and commit & push the files up with the rest of your submission.

Basically, everything you need to submit is in that Git repository—as long as you make the changes in there, commit them and push them up to the GitLab server then you’re all good.