Iterating, revising and pruning

Lab Tasks

This lab is all about looking critically at your major project work so far and thinking about how to rethink, revise, and refine your interactive artwork to make it really good.

For the rest of the lab you will have time to discuss your major project work-in-progress with your colleagues. The idea is to clarify your thoughts and plans so that you address the major project specification really well and create an engaging and satisfying piece of interactive art.

This lab is about ideas, not code, but you still need to submit something. You will find markdown files for each lab task in this week’s folder in your lab repository. As you are completing your lab tasks, make sure that you actually write down your ideas and put them in these files to complete the lab.

Form a group of three or four. You’ll discuss things with them throughout this lab.

Task 0: making the cut

Creating an interactive artwork obviously involves a lot of designing and implementing different ideas; but it also involves refinement. Good artists and designers are always ready to remove ideas that don’t contribute enough to their artistic vision, that are not feasible to implement, or that just don’t work for whatever reason.

For this task, it’s time for you to consider those ideas that didn’t work out, had to be removed, or were just plain bad.

Think about one idea that you have decided to ignore, abandon or delete from your major project. Create and show a simple mock-up that illustrates your abandoned idea and explain what the idea was and why you aren’t including it in your major project.

Task 1: Questions about your artwork

Now that you’ve sketched part of your major project. Let’s ask a few more questions about your artwork.

Write a sentence to explain each of the following and share with the group:

Think of a good comment about your major-project-in-progress. What do you think went well or what are you proud of about it?
How does your sketch communicate the project theme?
How does your sketch fit in to your artwork’s interaction?
How will your sketch be engaging?
Imagine a viewer doesn’t interact with your artwork. Will your sketch still be engaging?

Now that you have another artist’s sketch it’s time to think about how it might be used in a different artwork.

Imagine another way that this sketch could be used in an interactive artwork. Write down answers to the following questions:

What would the sketch communicate in the new artwork?
How would the new artwork be interactive?
How would the new artwork be engaging?

Share your answers with the group. Discuss with the group and the original sketch author about how your ideas are different to their major project concept. Your tutor will join the group to find out how different your new ideas were from the original sketch author’s.

Task 3: Take something away…

One problem with any big project is that we often feel that we must continue on any idea that we have spent time on. This is called the “sunk cost fallacy”. It can be that the best way to improve a project is to stop working on some aspects, and focus only on the bits that are really good and contributing to the overall work.

In the pre-lab task you already considered ideas that you might have ignored, abandoned, or deleted, from your major project. Now it’s time to discuss this theme with your group and to be brutal about the ideas that are working, and those that aren’t.

Come up with one aspect of your artwork-in-progress that isn’t working, maybe it doesn’t fit in, is too complex, or is a “major project pitfall” (see next task…). What could you do insteaad of that idea?

Explain to your group why this particular idea isn’t working and what you could do instead. In the discussion, once a not-so-good idea has been identified, make positive suggestions only: instead of “this is so bad” say “you could change it in this way to make it better”.

N.B.: This exercise doesn’t mean you must delete something from your project, just to consider what could happen if you did and avoid the sunk cost fallacy. If you really like all your ideas, then keep them (it’s your project after all…)

N.B.B.: If you do really like all your ideas, have a look at the “major project pitfalls” below and reflect on whether you might be in one of these pits (and still digging). There’s plenty of time to make substantial changes in the direction of your work if you start today.

Task 4: Avoiding Major Project Pitfalls

Time to look again at some major project pitfalls. Read the following bits of advice and think about whether any apply to your project plan and the sketch you have made so far. Discuss with your group and tutor about how you can avoid these problems in your work.

(PS: If you haven’t read the major project FAQ, now is a good time!)

N.B: These “pitfalls” come from our experience marking thousands of major projects and assignments. If you think we’re not serious that these are a bad idea, think again. (We are serious.)

Don’t make a game

You’re required to make an artwork, not a game. If you start explaining your project by saying “my project will be a role-playing game” then you are on the wrong track. There’s more discussion on this point here.

Don’t make a powerpoint presentation

If your “interaction” is limited to clicking the mouse to advance through a number of scenes with text explaining what is happening, you’re on the wrong track. There’s more discussion on this point here.

Don’t overuse assets/code from the internet

As always, you’re totally allowed to use assets/code from the internet as long as it is available under a license for your use (preferably creative commons). But using too many assets from the web is likely to hold back your project significantly by overwhelming your original contribution.

If you are tempted to use lots of image assets from the web in your work think about what you are actually adding to the experience. It’s usually better to simplify your idea and communicate the same concepts using simpler drawings in p5.

Think outside the box

Students often come to us with ideas that are really hard to implement (e.g., drawing/animating a whole lot of characters). We haven’t taught you to draw in this course, so unless you have lots of drawing experience this will be very tough to do well.

Rather than feeling overwhelmed about making complicated drawings, think about how to simplify your ideas.

People are hard to draw — why not draw bugs, or robots, or cloud beings, etc etc. You could also communicate your ideas with an abstract p5 artwork; this can sometimes be even more engaging and clever than an artwork that looks like a movie.

Focus on what you can do

Think about what we’ve taught you in this course. Drawing in p5, designing interactions, using sound, using colour. Take this opportunity to take these skills to the next level. Don’t get hung up on things we haven’t discussed (e.g., game design).

Show your friends

Test your major project on your friends or on others in the forum. It’s easy to create an interactive work where the viewer isn’t sure what to do. The best way to solve this is by testing on other people before the due date.

Read the specification

You must read the major project spec and make sure you are following it. Most importantly make sure you are making an “interactive p5 artwork for a new-media art exhibition”. Not a game, not a video, not a movie, not a powerpoint presentation—an interactive artwork.

Following the spec often makes your life easier not harder. Games are hard to make; interactive artworks can be much simpler and still be very engaging and appealing.

N.B.: this task doesn’t have a text file, but make sure you read the pitfalls and understand the danger they present.