Lab 22: Final Project Ideation

Outline

In this lab you will:

1. Read and understand the requirements for the Final Project
2. Develop your ideas for a project aligned with the theme “Other Minds”
3. Write down your ideation and brainstorming ideas
4. Save, stage, commit and push this ideation to GitLab

Introduction

Welcome to the final sprint! This week you will start your Final Projects.

It is time to…

do: …fork and then clone the Final Project Template Repo and open it in VSCode.

Final Project

do: Read the instructions and assessment criteria for the Final Project. Check out the FAQ. Ask Questions!

The project theme for your Final Project is Other Minds. This is inspired by the book “Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness” by Peter Godfrey-Smith.

You are not expected to make a work about Octopuses! You are expected to engage with ideas that all living beings have minds – minds which are different to yours.

You may wish to consider ideas around cognition, consciousness, free will, intelligence, agency (to act) and autonomy (to act). It is especially about cognitive complexity of beings other than yourself. It is about seeing the world through different eyes, ears, and unimaginable sense organs.

This can possibly link to your Mini Project – as an extension, branching, or re-imagining of the concept of “More Than Human”.

Ideation / Brainstorming

1. Write down some ideas about your interpretation of the theme for the project.
2. Discuss, with one or two others, your project concept. Listen to their ideas. Provide, and receive, constructive feedback.
3. Identify any sources of inspiration you want to include. Include the name of the artist/musician/writer and the name of their work (if you can find it).
4. Discuss, with one or two others, how the works you’ve found evolve over time. What do you find interesting and why? Do the works make you feel a certain way and why?
5. How might you incorporate some ideas from the works you identified when building your project artefact?
6. Document this journey in portfolio/portfolio-entry-1.md or portfolio/portfolio.pptx, or in any other document format of your choice (save as PDF so that I can read it ;-) )

do: Once you’ve finished with your documentation for today, I respectfully ask that you save your work, stage the changes, commit the changes and push your work to gitlab so that its safe and sound on the ANU servers. You should be stage→commit→push regularly – to get in the habit – to ensure that you do not lose work – and to demonstrate that you are making constant progress towards your project goal.

Start Coding

Is it too soon to start experimenting with code ideas?

I don’t think so! But this is entirely optional. You can start implementing your ideas – experimenting and sketching with code!

If you do start sketching, remember to stage, commit and push your changes.

Summary

Congratulations! In this lab you:

1. Explored the requirements for the Final Project
2. Developed initial ideas for a project aligned with the theme “Other Minds”
3. Conducted some ideation and brainstorming about “Other Minds”
4. Saved, staged, committed and pushed your documentation to GitLab