Auto Destruct projects and a series of topics:

As often happens by this point in the term – students that have realized they can use the projects to challenge themselves do so, and students that realize I am not rejecting or dismissing any projects often don’t challenge themselves as much. One question that was posed is what would I accept or not accept as a project. I realized early on teaching this way that in order for students to be free to experiment and to “fail” that I had to remove judgement from the answers to the prompts. The example I often give is when Bob King and I were first teaching Generative Art and a student showed up with what looked like a box of junk. We couldn’t quite figure out how this was an answer to our question, but asking the student to discuss the process revealed a great deal. It was something he wrestled with and tinkered with until it sort of just fell apart. The box of junk was nowhere near as interesting as the story of the process. So, particularly with the destruction project I need students to describe process. Most of the answers were just wonderful – thoughtful, creative, clever. There does seem to be a good strong connection between what students learned from the project and how much they challenged themselves. It was nice to hear one of the students describe this class as the “fuck around and see what happens” class – ‘casue that is basically what it is. I did feel that, unlike the sound machine project, it was the second section that gelled on this one. Which is about as far as I could take them this term. Most of the major pieces are over, save one last project for the final, and we have established most of the main ideas – terms and techniques – for the course. The next few weeks just sort of add to this information. The rhythm shifts at this point to be more about information than projects. My hope is to offer a number of interesting avenues that can be explored in the final projects. Glitch, Afrofuturism, Performance Art, and Glitch Feminism – or how the digital environment can be fucked with. With each of these topics the main question is: how are they using what we have already discussed? And, do they offer anything new to the conversation. The last week of class is given over to spending time on the final projects.