Introduction To Computational Form
Yale graduate graphic design lecture, 2005
The Yale University course 'An introduction to computational form' is essentially geared towards different ways of thinking about how to use the computer to produce graphic design. It covers such aspects as scripting, decompiling and recompiling after adjustments, recycling dynamic templates, DHTML etc. I was working for Music Choice as a Creative Director at the time, but increasingly working on personal projects, including this one with friend from The Jan van Eyck Akademie, Paul Elliman.
The 'Change of Speed' lecture (the title comes from the Joy Division song 'New Dawn Fades') described a number of past and present Algorithm projects, contextualized some influential figures, and presented the Algorithm approach by way of some historical comparisons. The lecture primarily consisted of a small slide show (these images appear on this page), and also some gaming examples, including Emulation project Manic Miner, the Myst Portfolio project, Emulator, and the working version of the Algorithm Riven Portfolio project. The 4 hour session ended with some question and answer rounds, and then one on one tutorials with the students on applicable projects.
After initially showing some current commercial based work, the main body of the lecture centered around the three influential figures of Hans Namuth, Matthew Barney and Peter Saville. Each of these figures has particular resonance, primarily based not on output (although the work is beautiful), but on process and the means and methods by which they work.
Where Namuth held the mirror up to the creative process itself (his is best known for his photographic portraits of Jackson Pollock painting), Barney creates entire worlds with deep narratives and an incredibly complex process resulted in the Cremaster series of films. Saville on the other hand, is notorious for his nocturnal working methods, contrary to those of traditional (read 'commercial') graphic design, often delivering work late, but great. The famous illustration of this is his poster design for the opening night of The Factory nightclub in Manchester (Saville was a partner in Factory Records), where he arrived the night of the show with the posters advertising the event.
The description and demonstration of the gaming projects consisted of a detailed walkthrough of the process involved in working with open source software, how to adjust and recompile graphics resources and how to deal with the project constantly in a state where it doesn’t work. The working methods involved in producing the Emulator project, using Bungie software's Forge and Anvil products was explained at length, including how to light a 3D room, how texture mapping worked, and how to adjust physics models and how it subsequently affects gameplay. Online gaming was also briefly covered in the context of the community of level creators and those who download teams and 'skins' for their players.
A small number of Algorithm projects were then described in the context of the three main influential figures, before outlining some current projects and some future plans. The students were engaged in a project to redesign the homepage of The New York Times (I would work on this for real 10 years later), and discussion was held as to the nature of effective information design, what makes a good news site, how to maintain and design an ever changing piece of content, and essentially how to tackle such a project.
