This unit uses the web as a carrier to provide a background view of art and design in relation to computational technology. With this unit you will learn the history of the internet as it relates to art and design as well as practical skills to create computational art of your own using web technologies.
For the first few sessions, you will need a computer with a modern web browser. We will also be taking one step at a time to setup a comprehensive development environment that will aid you in creating a final website which will form the final outcome of this unit.
Each week, you will be given a task related to the session's theme. It can be creating a simple web element to researching about a particular topic. These tasks will form the backbone of your understanding of the overall landscape of web development and software development which will aid you in creating the final outcome.
As part of this unit you will be exposed to:
- History of art and design in the realm of digital technology
- Existing ideas and tools behind creating work on the internet
- Best practice when developing software
- Ways to experiment with software
On completion of this unit you will be able to:
- LO1 Demonstrate an ability to produce computational practice (Experimentation)
- LO2 Demonstrate an ability to evaluate your computational practice (Personal and Professional Development)
- LO3 Demonstrate an ability to situate your computational practice amongst the work of others (Communication and Presentation)
This sesion we will be introducing the overall unit including the structure and expectation of the unit. We will also begin looking at computational practice skills starting with p5.js.
The basic building blocks of websites are no doubt HTML, CSS and, Javascript. In this session we start by looking at HTML, what it is and what it isn't. You will also be writing your own basic HTML pages from scratch.
With the knowledge of writing HTML markup, we can use CSS to take our plain HTML pages further. Along with CSS, we can also use Javascript to create in browser interactions. We will see how modern web pages are made and practice some of it ourselves using CSS and Javascript through p5.js.
So far we have been using the p5.js web editor exclusively to create our web pages, however, as a project gets larger and more complicated, developing locally becomes more and more convenient. In this session we shall setup a local development environment while at the same time, take a peek into the world of backend development with node.js
We had an overview as well as some hands on of node.js so far, this week we shall look closer at node.js and create our first web server. We will also get an understanding of how the server client structure works on the web.
Almost no one writes large software applications from scratch, almost no one should.
We have used p5.js quite extensively throughout the unit, but what goes on underneath? What can we learn from the source code of p5.js that can be applied to our own practice? We will also begin looking at git and github.
Handlebars, LESS, Parcel, etc.
This session should give you the basics to start a medium to large size web development project. You can use it as a starting point for your final project.
You are to prepare a 10 minute presentation about a proposed website that you will make as a final outcome.
We will run an interim crit to look at your progress so far and provide suggestions on your designs. You will also be working in class towards your final outcome.
We will run an interim crit to look at your progress so far and provide suggestions on the techincalities of your project. You will also be working in class towards your final outcome.
React
Typescript
Django
Laravel
Facebook
Microsoft
Google
Alibaba
D3
Tencent