CSC151 2010S, Class 40: On Design

Overview:
* Elements and Principles of Two-Dimensional 
  Design.
* Some Definitions.

Admin:
* Marshmallows!
* Prospies!
* Reading for Monday: Analyzing Procedures.
* We'll talk about the fractals on Monday.
* I anticipate this this afternoon I will distribute hints on how to use turtles to select regions and on resizing images.
* EC for Collegium Musicum, Sebring-Lewis, Sunday, 2:00-3:30.
* EC for Math Seminar, Noyce 2517, Monday, Noon.
* EC for Tennis Team this weekend 
* EC for Track
* EC for Erotic Deception but DRINK RESPONSIBLY! (which includes Don't Drink at All)
* EC for today's Art panel at 4:30 today
* EC for Alex Dyuba on April 29
  * getlofi.com
* CS Table today: Revenge of the Nerds
* Take a look at numeral.com and iclock.com,
  two of John F. Simon, Jr.'s collections of
  works

What do we do in this class? (for prospies)
* Procedural: Sam talks, Students work in groups on problems
  * Read, Hear, Practice Practice Practice
* Goal in which we learn "programming" (how to think algorithmically) in the context of the domain of "making images"

Q: What makes an image cool or not so cool?
* In random image generation, some of the images
  looked nice, and some looked not so nice.
* Parroting: "Cats and Horizons"
* We're going to be working two dimensionally

Observation: We need to think about a number of
principles that allow us to activate the picture
plane - two dimensional surface on which shapes
are organized.

Sample images: You get squares, circles, and
black and white.  Your goal is to engage the
entire frame.  

Looknig at negative space and positive shape
* Positive shape: Something distinguished from background (also figure)
* Negative space: Stuff left over (also ground)
* So we can call this the figure-ground relationship

Lines
* The normal thing: Connection between two points
* An implied connection between two points

[Sam can't keep up with Matt's description of
terms.]

* In the image, a small half-circle helps
  "activate" the large amount of negative 
  space.

Don't expect to master all of these: The Studio
class works through them througout a semester.

Image: Two rows of boxes, slightly above the
middle of the image, with one box dropped out.
The dropped out box makes you pause on the image,
so that the viewer doesn't just read it and move on.

Image: Five sets of "two squares/two circles"
One is rotated a bit.

Image: A grid of 100 boxes, which are then
rotated in a variety of ways:
* Sam's question: Would you be better off making
  this by hand, or by writing a program to
  make it?

Image: Organic flow of circles and ellipses with
a few squares that interrupt the organicness.

Image of bubble-like things that have a 
counterpoint at the bottom

Image: A visual sense of gravity

Image: An interesting play between negative
space and positive shape 

[Sam continues to have trouble keeping up with
descritions of the images]

Image: A sense of texture is acheived by changing the scale of shapes

Question from class: How are we using the terms "organic" and "rigid"?
* We use the term "organic" to imply something that flows and seems a bit more akin to nature.

Note that repetition of a shape can create a form of texture.

Some playing with transparency (something that we haven't really supported in MediaScript).

[Lots of images that Sam is not recording.]

An intent: Make a point, but don't hit someone
over the head with it.  (E.g., playing with
the idea that we're artificially creating
something that we call "organic".)