The Electronics and Sculpture class I taught this semester wrapped up a few weeks ago and my students showed their final projects at Arts+Tech Night in May. I’ve included a few photos in this post, but each student also posted their project online, so check below for more links.
The class was structured around five projects in total, with three being smaller projects focusing on digital input/output, analog sensors controlling 2-3 digital things, and the third using analog input/output. The last two projects were larger, one being the mid-term project and the other being the final project, which was then shown to the public during Arts+Tech Night, and treated as an installation for the event.
The books we used for the course were Make: Electronics: Learning Through Discovery by Charles Platt and Programming Arduino Getting Started with Sketches by Simon Monk. I think the amount of reading was fairly minimal, but needed up front for a lot of the things we did later in the semester.
Much of the first half of the semester was spent going through some of the basics of electrical circuits and getting up to speed with the Arduino, learning how to wire things up, write code, and use libraries. Some students had never written code before, while others had never really built physical things before. Some students were more versed in the digital arts while others were more skilled in creating sculptural things. Students who had access to the DCRL had an advantage due to the tools and equipment they had access to (and the fact that they studied with Frankie.)
As part of the class, each student had to post their work on a public web site. Some students had blogs or portfolio sites, and some created new sites. Here’s the list of students and their web sites:
Not every student managed to write up their project, which caused me much sadness, but many did a great job of documenting their work and process.
I’ll be teaching Electronics and Sculpture 318 and 418 again in the fall, and it looks like 6 of my 318 students are returning for 418 (the advanced class) so I can’t wait to see what they come up with next time!