Hello Again, World

Hello and welcome to the course website for DGST 301A: Creative Coding. This is a “special topics” class at the University of Mary Washington (“special topics” basically just means it’s new) where we’re going to be exploring programming and creativity through various code oriented projects.

This website is primarily a resource for students in the class, but of course it’s open to anyone. It’s hosted in Github pages, and we’ll be using Github frequently in this class, so in that spirit of showing one’s work and keeping track of iterations, I’m continuing the class website that I started last year, re-launching it with this post.

I don’t think I’ve ever launched a class website by saying, “Here it is! Everything is complete and all the details are finalized!”

Certainly, that is not the case with this website and this announcement. That said, this website has more content than I usually have at this point in the semester (i.e., the first day of classes), so I feel pretty good about that.

To kick things off, we’re going to do a little creative coding in class today as a kind of warmup for the semester. Here are your instructions, briefly:

• Download and install Sublime Text (unless you already have a code editor you prefer)
• Save a copy of Nick Montfort’s HTML/Javascript poem, “Taroko Gorge”
• Edit the Javascript in that file to make your own poem
• View and share the results

I’ll walk you through these steps in class, and if you want to work in a group, that’s fine.

Much more to come later as I bring the Canvas site online. For now, feel free to explore this website.