The students are taught that programming is a medium to be used for expression. A series of personal work is pursued and utilized as a vehicle to motivate interactive art and game design majors to think more critically and creatively as they gain technical skills.
Students need a firm grasp of the basics of computer programming utilizing the C# language before attempting to learn a specific language. This class will help students who have no previous programming experience to understand the basics of computer programming. The concepts, techniques and syntax taught in this class are applicable to all computer languages, and will assist in student success in other, more advanced programming classes such as OOP, JavaScript and C++.
This course is recommended for students in their 2nd semester, Freshman year, or for students outside of the major with very little or no programming experience.
Course Description/Rational: This course provides fundamental introduction to computer programming theory and concepts to students with little or no previous experience. Students learn structure, syntax, logic, and the difference between object-oriented and procedural systems
- Learn the terminology, syntax and concepts of computer programming in a non-language specific way through pseudocode and flow-charting.
- Use algorithms and flowcharts to develop the instructions in the solution of a problem
- Become familiar with computer coding techniques and logic structures to develop solutions to problems.
- Understand the difference between a procedural solution and an object-oriented solution.
- Use object-oriented concepts in the design of a solution to a problem.
- Learn problem-solving skills by mapping out simple programs
Assignments
First work of art: Create a piece about cause and effect.
Tyler Kendrick
Jamie Sacks
Homework:Write a mini-saga; a story that is 50 words or less with a beginning, middle, and end.
Second work of art based on your minisaga: Simple IO/Console application. Create your second flowchart and your first pseudocode. This piece will utilize cause/effect with either/or or multiple results. The branching strategies you may use are:
Chris Stockbridge
His breath condenses on the ice-cold shard of ice. As he wipes away the moisture his fate unfolds across its crystalline structure. He will not die on this journey, but persevere. He thinks that only those with the courage to defy their destiny can ever truly conquer it.
Erika Galvez
I can barely move. I am weak with hunger, for I haven’t eaten in months. What was once a blanket of ice thriving with baby seals and fish is now an empty and cold lifeless sea. Global warming has taken my home and my only source of survival: the Artic.
Homework: A picture is worth a thousand words but a metaphor is worth a thousand pictures. Write down every metaphor you hear this week.
Third work of art: Using your metaphor log and one of the types of looping (do, while, for) create your third piece. Create a class library and move your processing code to a method. Call your method from your console application.
Michael Mroz
Michael was interested in making work about sports since it is his ambition to design sports games. He focused on the equal and opposite forces found by the opponents of the participants of sports. This piece does nothing because he coded the program to have equal strength in running and stopping the program. He saw this as a metaphor for life.
John Oh
Metaphor: "Life is a war."
Rudolf Alexander Schultz
Rudy was interested in conveying the amount of effort it takes to become a successful musician. In his piece "Are You Willing to Put Forth the Effort" he engages his viewer in what seems to be an infinite loop in order to communicate his message viscerally. He was completely aware of the limitation of the integer datatype and choose to ignore it to get his point across.
Homework: collect 3 cartoons and erase the captions, print them out and bring to class next time; we will use them in class.
Fourth work of art: using a cartoon as a starting point for a concept,create your fourth piece. Flowcharting and using an array or a collection are required. You can choose console, forms or webpage application.
Jim Hall
Fifth work of art: use what you learned this semester and create whatever piece you would like. You must write a 3 sentence artist statement and create a flowchart for it.
Yatasha
In her piece "Future Happiness" Yatashah makes the point that personal happiness comes from within. No external devices will change the amount of happiness you experience. The program predicts future happiness as determined by your original choice.
http://futurehappiness.programmingisamedium.com/
Alex seeks nirvana. Is it possible he asks?
http://nirvana.programmingisamedium.com/
Corrine
The Cradle Project is an Art Activist site dedicated to ancreasing awareness about orphans in Sub-Saharan Africa. The site attempts to put abstract issues of human experience into perspective by juxtaposing equivalent statistics from The US and Sub-Saharan Africa.
http://CradleProject.programmingisamedium.com/
DeAndre
Lost in a world of dreams. DeAndre seeks to understand loss and those around him.
http://dreams.programmingisamedium.com/
Sam
I made a website about greed using satire as my subject material. I hope to make the general public more aware of how much the rich spend on unnecessary products and the relation to what people in lower-tax brackets spend on what’s necessary.
http://greed.programmingisamedium.com/