In the Fall of 2019, I was invited to lead a three week project for the Surface Research art foundation class at Virginia Commenwealth University in Qatar. The project was a playful and experimental introduction to Creative Coding + Generative Art.

Three Phases of the Project:
> Phase One: Deconstruct + Understand Commands with Paper: They were asked to write one-to-two word commands onto post-it notes to create a chain of commands that would recreate a grid of circles.
> Phase Two: Explore/Play with Code + Generate Emergent Animated Forms: They were provided with a library of exisiting code sketches , and they had to experiment, explore, and iterate to fork the sketches and make them their own.
> Phase Three: Print/Scan Riso* Frames + Assemble Digitally into an Animated Loop

In the end, the class had a library of digital loops from code + physical manifestations of those loops in an analog format of RISO* frames + digital GIFs of the RISO* prints!

The project was inspired by Kelli Anderson’s amazing RISO Animations!

Surface Research is run by Prof. Nathan Ross Davis, with TA Sara Alafifi, and this is the class’s instagram page.

*The Risograph brokedown a day before our printing day - so we had to *fake riso* the frames by printing each color layer, on a different print run, on a normal laser printer - to emulate the misalignment of the riso.