Digital Artifacts

Seminar - BSc./MSc.


Class

Digital Artifacts is a creative-coding seminar that investigates emerging and behavioral systems as a design strategy in architecture. The seminar seeks to establish an interactive link in the thick of virtual code and its physical environment, enabling a symbiotic design approach between software and human through physical computing. Participants will study the implied material substance produced by repetition, opacity, color, and line-weight in algorithmic drawing processes and their potential transformation from code into digital and/or physical artifacts in the form of interactive drawings and possibly 3D-printed models.

At the core of the seminar, students will be introduced to the open-source software Processing and learn how to use programming and algorithmic procedures as a design tool. Attendees will master the basic concepts of programming like variables, conditional statements, loops, and arrays; moving forward to more advanced topics such as object-oriented programming, particle systems, and flocking behaviors. A key component of the seminar is the transformation of code into digital and/or physical artifacts. Hand in hand with transforming code into form comes the question of authorship and meaning, context and place. Not unlike an archaeological artifact, the output of digital processes is partially removed from its creator; however, traces of the tool’s authorship persist. The course will investigate this ambivalence and the meaning it produces, building a theoretical vocabulary alongside a practical set of tools.

Software:

Processing, Rhinoceros 3D, Grasshopper & Illustrator
For students with no prior Rhino/Grasshopper experience, it is recommended to participate in the dMA Rhino/Grasshopper skill drills 22.-25.3.2021.

Remarks:

Online-Lehre via. StudIP / Big Blue Button
The seminar will be held in English

Info

Modules:

  • BSc. Architektur:
    Seminar:  Parametrisches Entwerfen
  • MSc. Architektur und Städtebau:
    Seminar: Physical Computing

Lecturer:

  • Johannes Beck

Schedule:

  • First Class: Tuesday 13.04.2021
    12:00 - 14:00 Big Blue Button
  • Colloquium: Tuesday 01.06.21, 12:00 - 15:00
  • Final Presentation: Tuesday 13.07.2021, 12:00 - 15:00

Prerequisites:

  • dMA Rhino/Grasshopper Skill Drills    

Further info on stud.ip