Topics
Again during the winter semester 2003/2004 students of the basic class for designing with digital media at the University of Arts Berlin realized four short projects of two weeks duration each. In addition to the four new topics we suggested the use of Processing as the primary working environment to point out alternatives to GUI-approaches of common authoring systems based on animation. The purely text-based development process lead us to different design solutions. From a technical point of view Processing makes the transition to more powerful computer languages like for instance Java easier.
Mathematics
If we do not see mathematics as a strict given set of rules which we only have to learn, but understand it as an interpretation of our environment then we might recognize a parallel to art and design. Mathematics is a cultural phenomenon. We use numbers in various forms of depiction every day. Roman ciphers accompany chapter headlines, "arabic" numbers faciliate arithmetic calculation and sometimes lines are sufficient to count objects like for instance empty beer glasses. And last but not least our fingers are perfectly suitable to express numbers between one and ten without words. It is important to choose the representation which meets the respective requirements best. The computer is a calculator, design tool and medium in one. Not only does it execute arithmetic operations with a comparatively high speed, it also provides us with the ability to show the results in dynamic, interactive and multimedia representations. These visualizations may range from clear information design to poetic interpretations.
Emergence and Synergy
Complex systems usually consist of a multitude of units each of which follows rules that are fairly easy to describe. The interaction between these unities often generates surprisingly complex and sometimes chaotic behaviour which is hard to predict or unpredictable at all. The characteristic of an ant colony is far different from the one of a single ant. Our brain is also an example of emergence because its amazing efficiency derives from the interactions of numerous neurons. Social networks live on the interaction of their participants. Computers are like hardly any other medium suitable to create, explore and explain models of such networks. Besides, with most computers participating in a global network themselves they play an increasingly important role in web of human relations.
Non-linearity
Telling a story one would rarely reproduce the events in the same period time in which it could have taken place. The narrator will reduce the story to important key scenes and might even stretch, squash or rearrange them. With the medium computer being characterized by process opportunities of how to deal with time have been extended. The command "undo" is a perfect example to illustrate that. Using a computer we are not limited to just arrange a sequence of events just once but have the possibility to permanently direct the process into different directions. Because computer applications are non-linear we are able to interactively engage in the events, we get something like an outside view of time. Enriched by the dimension of interactivity we can also explore new ways of looking at time. A clock is not necessarily round, a calender does not by all means have to consist of pages, the difference between the two is only a matter of scale anyway.
Interaction
The term "interaction" actually originates from social psychology
and signifies any form of reciprocal reference of two or more persons. We
also call the relations between humans and machines as "interaction".
Creating digital applications we are able to plan scenarios of interaction
in advance. We allow the audience to personalize their situation. If a user
interacts with a software the opportunities of interaction are restricted
by the technology and the author of the computer program. One might easily
be tempted to rate the degree of interactivity on how complex and extensive
this field of interaction opportunities is. But we should not ignore the
fact that the computer, like any other medium plays a mediating role between
humans. How interactive an application should be called does not only depend
on its complexity but also on the way it mediates between people.
Images
Links
http://grundlagen.digital.udk-berlin.de/ws03_04/index_en.html
Faculty
Ralph Ammer
Students
Cristiane Egger
Frédéric Eyl
Soo-Hee Kim-Uszkoreit
Jens Lembke
Akitoshi Mizutani
Erik Scholz
Jakob Uszkoreit
Björn Wiede