I find this all fascinating to think about...
I to was schooled in the US and with US methods. It was a private education (Jesuit) but subjects seldom crossed disciplinary borders.
I was always interested in computers and art but never really saw (or was educated in) how connections could be made between the two..
Art was painting and drawing...
Math art was cheesy fractals...
Math itself was boring as hell...
I've been struggling these past few years trying to catch up on my education by educating myself in math so that i CAN do interactive arts. It is a major struggle and I feel no natural ability in it - only sore eyes..
I have been using pd for several years (mostly using other peoples patches to manipulate audio - gran synth etc) but have lately been creating my own patch/programs (just got pd compiled and running on linux!!)..
I am wondering about resources for artists that are for 'post-mfa' artists who what to educate themselves in the multimedia arts - artists who (unfortunately) were taught the traditions of art (painting, drawing sculpture) but yearn for something more contemporary...
What the hell is a 'float' anyway? Can the definition be summed up in a concise paragraph in laymen terminology rather that computer/math academically wrapped lingo?
BTW Are there math classes using pd to teach math and bridge math and the arts in high-schools? it would be an interesting research study for an educational researcher no?
Sorry for the ramble I am just very interested in the discussion...
cheers mark
--- David Powers cyborgk@gmail.com wrote:
I agree that you will have to explain the difference to them at some point if they really try and do any serious project with Processing, and furthermore: if you want to learn basic programming, there's some minimum level of math that you need, or you just aren't going to succeed. Learning the difference between an integer and a float is precisely the kind of thing an introductory program SHOULD teach. I believe it is introduced on the first day of most any programming class, like "intro to java" or "intro to C++".
I guess the problem is more, that many artists hate math and never thought they would need it. And in the US, that's in many cases the fault of a horrible public school system. Even I, though I have reasonable mathematical skills, stopped doing math way too early (at beginning calculus) - because back then (12 years ago) I never knew I'd be doing digital audio that required more advanced math stuff. No math teacher ever mentioned that there might be direct musical applications for math, and besides, I was a jazz piano player back then.
It would be interesting to use PD to teach some math stuff actually - I'd like to see some kind of basic fft tutorial so I can explain Mathieu's posts on doing fft in PD, for instance! ;-)
~David
On 10/13/06, Mathieu Bouchard matju@artengine.ca wrote:
On Thu, 12 Oct 2006, Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:
Also, I think they should have used a Number
object instead of ints and
floats, since its meant for people to learn
programming. Explaining
what a float is to someone who barely does math
is a pain in the ass.
Eventually, even if you force people to use only
floats, you still have to
explain how they work. It's just that at the level
of teaching that you
do, you are able to sweep the topic under the
carpet, and the carpet is
thick enough that you can pretend that there's no
lump in it, until some
student stumbles upon it and breaks his/her jaw,
but by that time you're
usually gone.
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| Mathieu Bouchard - tél:+1.514.383.3801 -
| Freelance Digital Arts Engineer, Montréal QC
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