Machine Imaginaire
I ran my spring-term workshop at LCC introducing creative coding and computational thinking. I usually begin with a conditional drawing ritual to make computational thinking tangible. It is a practical entry point to thinking in rules, accepting constraints and noticing how small tweaks to the logic produce entirely different outcomes.
We then translated those ideas into small programs and prepped them as outputs for a pen plotter. We tested different pens, papers and substrates, experimenting with rules to create a variety of drawings. I have found this to be a good way to understand materiality and the physicality of computation. Students quickly see that physical output can always deviate from digital intention, and working with a drawing machine means embracing these deviations rather than resisting them.
