Lab 23: revisiting interpretation

Outline

In this lab you will:

revisit interpretation in Creative Code
reflect on the implications of interpretation for your final project
discuss your progress towards your final project with your instructor

Introduction

Welcome to your 23nd Creative Code workshop. This week, we are going to revisit a concept we covered in Week 2; Interpretation. Hopefully this will give you some fresh ideas as you refine your final project.

No time to waste, let’s get straight into it.

We will use the Lab 23 Repo. If you haven’t already, fork and clone your lab 23 template repo

Part 1: Interpretation

Certain instructions or ideas are open to interpretation. You may have found while working on your Mini Project that a single idea can be implemented in more than one way. This begs the question, “what is the ‘right’ way to implement an idea?”.

In this exercise, you will explore an instruction which has some nuance. This instruction can be interpreted and therefore implemented in more than one way. Your task is to implement the instruction below in as many ways as you can during the first half of this lab.

Your Final Project template repo includes the markdown files portfolio-entry-1.md and portfolio-entry-2.md. These files are there for you to document all of your implementations/variations. Remember that you can edit the markdown file in the same way you edit your sketch.js file within Visual Studio Code. For each of your interpretations of the instruction below, we want you to write a brief description of this interpretation in either the portfolio-entry-1.md file or the portfolio-entry-2.md as appropriate. It’s a good idea to write down at least three ideas before you start implementing them. That way, in case you run out of time, you will have captured at least three possible interpretations which you can return to and implement at a later date.

For each interpretation that you implement, you can take a screen shot (or several, if the sketch changes over time) and add your images to the \assets subfolder in your template repo.

If you want to import this image into your markdown file, copy and paste the line below into your markdown file. You will need to replace my-image.png with the name of your image.

![my image name](assets/my-image.png)

Your instruction is to implement as many interpretations as you can of “Three interacting circles”

The instruction above is vague. Naturally, you might have some “follow-up” questions which might influence your implementation. Below are some prompting questions of our own to stimulate your thinking. Feel free to refer to them if you need more ideas for interpretations.

Do the circles need to move to interact?
Do the circles interact with each other, a human, or something else?
Are their interactions “human-like” and if so, what are the various forms of interaction that can be depicted?
Can your interactions subvert the expectations of the person looking at your sketch?
Are their interactions with each other or with other things?
Do it’s interactions change depending on what it interacts with?

While you are completing this exercise, think about what makes a certain interpretation of the instruction powerful and document your thoughts in the appropriate markdown file.

We will be using the notes you take in the markdown files as discussion points for Part 2 of this workshop.

When you have completed Part 1, commit and push your code to git.

Part 2: Final Project Discussion

At some point during this lab, your instructors will talk to you one-on-one. We will be discussing your reflections from your Mini Project, from Interaction Design, from Interpretation, and how you think they might apply to your final project. You can also use this time to discuss any questions you have for the final project and establish a plan for what you will work on for your final project before we reconvene next week.