Professor Christopher Andrews
Office 634 McCardell Bicentennial Hall
Email candrews@middlebury.edu
Course Website http://www.cs.middlebury.edu/~candrews/classes/genart or go/genart/
Lectures MTWTh 10:30a-12:30p, MBH 505
Discussion forum https://piazza.com/middlebury/winter2014/cs1003/home
Textbook Generative Art: A Practical Guide Using Processing, Matt Pearson [Website]
Office Hours
M 3:00p-4:00p
W 4:00p-6:00p
Th 4:00p 6:00p
or by appointment
| Assignments | 60% |
| Final Project | 20% |
| Quizzes | 10% |
| Attendance / participation | 10% |
There will be daily assignments. These will typically be short, with longer assignments over the long weekend. No late assignments will be accepted without prior authorization or extenuating circumstances (as judged by me).
There will be daily quizzes, typically one to two questions. There will be no makeup quizzes. I will drop the lowest quiz grade.
You are expected to attend class. We will be moving fast, and a good portion of each class time will be devoted to actually working on projects.
Good artists copy, great artists steal.
- Pablo Picasso (or T.S. Elliot or Steve Jobs… its been stolen a few times)
We are working within two disciplines that have this ethos at their core. Appropriating techniques, methodologies, perspectives, and subject matter has long been the way that visual artists develop their works. No art exists in a vacuum. Similarly, in computer science, we build on the work of developers before us. Most of us learned to code by copying code and finding ways to tweak it to do what we want. Almost no computer programs are built without building on the work of others, either in the form of algorithms, libraries, or even just short snippets of code.
On the other hand, there are questions of intellectual property and academic integrity. These are considerably murkier waters than you may face, for example, writing a history paper, or doing a problem set in math. Even in the visual arts, “stealing” a technique usually requires the artist to develop the skill to do so. With code, you can “accomplish” spectacular things by copying the right chunks of code without ever knowing how it works.
For the most part, navigating these waters is on your head. I encourage you to seek out inspiration. I encourage you to seek out new techniques that we don’t talk about in class. I encourage you to help classmates to debug misbehaving code. I encourage you to post questions (and answers!) on Piazza. But you need to do so in a way that respects other people’s work and in a way that contributes to your intellectual development rather than hindering it (or trying to mask your lack of it). This is not a race to get a good grade. The grade is at best a carrot to “trick” you into doing the work required to become better educated. As such, don’t just go looking for code that you can turn in to satisfy an assignment. You can probably find some, but it won’t help you much, and I’ll probably be able to tell (you will also get on my bad side very quickly, because grading work that wasn’t done by someone in the class is a waste of my limited time).
So, as for actual policies? Do not work collaboratively unless indicated by the assignment. You can help one another, but I do not want to see identical assignments that differ only in the name at the top. Attribute any ideas, code, etc, that you pick up (this goes for classmates, books, online resources, etc). Be explicit. Tell me where you got the idea, approach, technique, etc. Explain what your contribution was. Make sure that your contribution demonstrates that you understand what was not your work alone. Finally, if you have any doubts, just ask me first.
Students who need test or classroom accommodations due to a disability must be registered in advance with Student Accessibility Services. Please contact Jodi Litchfield (litchfie@middlebury.edu or 802.443.5936) for more information. Students who may need disability-related accommodations are encouraged to make an appointment with me as soon as possible. All discussions will remain confidential.