WHAT INTERESTS ME ABOUT COMPUTATION AND HOW MIGHT I APPLY IT
Having explored the world of Design for a year, I have always been interested in the backend of building a website. I have built numerous User Interfaces but always felt a lack of control over them, like I can’t go beyond my Figma templates. Computational Media would help me to bridge that gap and take complete charge of my work. Not only that but it would also allow me to go one step further and explore storytelling since it would allow me to take charge of my workflow and how I would want my data to flow.
The Projects I would like to explore:
As an artist and a Designer, I would love to explore building short narratives using P5.js. I look forward to building pictorial stories kind of like a flip picture book and later incorporate that in website building. I love non-fiction books which focus on the human mind and our collective condition so I would live to tell empowering stories through the same and later convert them into a website. I have always dwelled on the idea of writing an interactive book and would use P5.js to explore just that to begin with. I am open to learning new possibilities as I progress in ICM and explore outcomes which I never thought were possible.
A few Screens from one of my Design Grad Projects.
MY FIRST EXPERIENCE WITH P5.JS - SELF PORTRAIT
I do not have a coding background and no experience too so the language itself has been a challenge. It took me quite some time and a lot of help from the ICM residents to figure how to go about this assignment. While the Interface of P5.js is very smooth and easy, JavaScript itself is what I was struggling with, trying to figure out the syntaxes and the language. That being said, the help session with the residents really helped me kickstart the assignment and find more efficient ways to do it. I have experience with Figma so I first built my portrait there to have a clear vision of where I want to go. That helped me to breakdown the elements and figure some of the functions that I might need to replicate the portrait.
Rough Sketch on Figma
Struggling with the triangle function
The one function I struggled with was triangle. No matter how hard I tried, I could not get the triangle to be of my prefered size or be placed at the location of my preference. It was either one or the other and it made me realise that it is one function that I would need practice with a little more in the coming weeks.
After I figured what functions I might need, I went about adding in those function on P5.js and used trial and error to reach the exact locations of where I wanted certain objects to be.
I have red hair and I love sunset colours so I chose to opt for that colour scheme for my portrait. I chose to keep my face quite simple to depict my lack of expertise in the subject and my openness to learn the same.
I did not have much difficulty with colours and shapes once I started taking help of the P5.js reference page. On the contrary, it boosted my confidence and made me believe that I would get good at this in time.
I started with the background and then built each layer on top. Hair, Face, Eyes, mouth, neck and body. Staring from the bottommost layer and coming to the top made my work easier and smoother.
Overall, working with P5.js for the very first time was a fun experience and I look forward to see what more does it have in store for me.
My Experience with GitHub was quite smooth too. It did take me a few minutes to figure thing out but it was easy from there. I will have to explore it a lot more to get the best usage out of it though. But so far, it has helped me in gaining confidence with code and I believe I will get better at it as time goes by.
My final portrait on P5.js