Afternoon Discussion
ART: What is the role of the arts in our understanding of computationally enhanced materials?

Leslie - One thing that is changing in their practice-it’s more embodied, more than just the visual (e.g. installations). Nature of collaboration is important, sharing of knowledge and DYI culture is all about this. Sense of being the ‘only person’ doing this work is fading. Work can take on different shapes and meaning depending on who is involved. Finds the word amateur interesting and is entering the art world in work like this in a positive way.
Marjorie – Explain what you mean by amateur.
Leslie – I mean more in a traditional way…there are art professionals who have the training & years of showing in galleries and there are people that aren’t considered part of that world, who are considered amateurs. I don’t believe in that, but I think those roles still do exist. And there are ways those are being broken down…in good ways. That idea of the amateur or craftspeople entering into fine arts has threatened traditional practice a lot. Younger artists don’t seem to get bound up by this, are into the art and ways of sharing and doing.
Kylie – Seems there is a type of barrier these materials are trying to break with the high/low art and gender divides.
Katherine – Doesn’t consider the bee activity as art, but it has such power as a collective text, it’s dynamic and changing and everybody has a little part of it, and they have to collaborate for a shared meaning. That has a lot of potential, especially if you think about it in a here and now embodied space, where people take up and take on those identities.
Leslie – Had two groups of students one junior group that was learning a lot of technological approaches for the first time. And they just needed to see that they could do something before they could even learn to think about it. The other group was faster and had more time to play with it (grad students) and could think things through to design projects that made use of it. (e.g. the cloth doorways) The ones with experience broke through the barrier of “what does this have to do with how I make art”? It took less time to come up with ideas too.
Alison – wonder about someone like Banksy…is he high art since he worked his way up?
Leslie – depends on who you talk to.
Jeff – who is this?
Alison – Street artist…makes animatronic animals.
Leslie – Artists come through different ways, he’s an example that gained prominence from street art. (like Keith Herring in the subway in the 80’s). A lot of artists consider him an artist and curators are interested in him. Her students consider him a success. But feels some older professors are questioning how he became accepted in the art world.
Alison – He seems to have crossed both spaces and wonders if that is where it’s going.
Leah – Found in my workshops that it was difficult to get beyond a certain level of complexity and richness in working with the materials. What are your thoughts on the affordances of current tools and the projects they facilitate and the limits on those projects?
Leslie – Feels they are limited for those who don’t come from a programming or engineering background or don’t understand electronics. People look at it and get ideas but don’t know how to design it.
Leah – What are some ideas that your students had that they couldn’t do?
Leslie – One example that came from last year was Jay’s example, the garment designed to be used in a performance with someone else. They built pods to hang in made out of Lycra fabric to hang in a darkened space and would go inside of them and do these movements, and as you moved the LEDs would move around in the pod. And it was a wonderful way to use the LED in something new and became part of this moving surface and changing shape. So it had a use as a type of physical sculptural element. So that was a very simple thing, that they did something complex with it. I don’t think most students are getting past that original level. And artists, like myself, it’s taken a long time to get where I know what I want to happen, getting past the blinking lights. And not having the electrical knowledge, I’ll always need people to help me. And a lot of students know that and it stops them. So if there was anyway to get to them sooner or with the interface you’re designing is helpful but when you’re designing something on screen and then actually making a circuit. 'How do I make this without blowing something up?’
Marjorie - You can turn it around and say how does art get in the way of people using this? You say this is technology, but how does are get in the way? If what they are creating is suppose to be art that will stop them. Need to think about the problem in both of those areas. Also the artist, you have this technology with Van Gogh looking over your shoulder. How is he going to fit in with this?
Leslie - always have to get over the technology in any media before you feel comfortable. Right now teaching action script and Flash and starting simply to build the programs. They did fine till they got to code then they froze up, but some now are getting over the threshold. So the art thing will come, they just need to know what is possible. The media will help them understand and will give you ideas.
Yasmin - We have the same thing here, with needle and thread for the first time. To some this is like looking at program code. There is a real sense in how you manipulate this.
Yasmin - Originality seems to vary according to the situation (e.g. Cosplay) Sometimes imitation is the accomplishment rather than variation…what to do with this? How do we deal with the differing eastern and western ideas of art?

CLOTHING AS TEXTS: How do youth groups use different clothes and objects to signify their membership to other groups?

Jeff – I don’t’ think the work is the artifact. I think the work is the performance you do within that particular community. And the artifact is in service of your performance. So making the Cosplay outfit in the right way speaks to the people in that community so I think it’s tied up with personal identity and self expressions…but I don’t think the original contribution is about making the thing, I think it’s about how you wear it, how you stylize it.
Marjorie-It gives you a role and identity within that group and you can take that confidence outside.
Shaowen – Sees similar thing at sites her students are looking at. Notices a tension between art and craft. A lot of the crafters are trained artists, but when you ask them they resist the label of artists. They have expertise, regiment, tasks and schedules are very artist like. They become the expert in areas, do tutorials and online advice. It’s very similar to how you actually carry yourself in the community.
Marjorie – This was the single most interesting answer to any of my questions, when I emailed young people about their artwork, they were very accomplished fan artists in their costume making, and the final question was: what do you intend to do with this in terms of your career - 51 out of 50 said they had no desire to be an artist or to work in any art field or to pursue this as an art form. This was their way of balancing their life in the world. This is a whole group of people, the amateur, that you were talking about. When we focus on people who want to be artists, we’re missing people who are looking at creating this maybe for some personal reason that doesn’t connect to anything we think of in academia.
Karen-It’s a way of being in the world and participating in the world. To pigeonhole it into maybe an art performance is too limiting. That probably gets back to my claim that these are new ways about being literate. Ways of reading and writing self-online. Another thing I wouldn’t want to do is romanticize these sites, and a lot of the text that students will probably take up and they bring in are problematic and used to position one another with.
Mike-Wonders about this with his own son…at this point not concerned about originality of mash ups but is concerned about these identities invented by adults. He’s into (inaudible). As a parent I don’t’ mind, but I don’t see anything wildly creative about taking on these adult identities. There is a whole adult industry in providing these identities for kids that didn’t exist a century and a half ago. Historically that’s relatively a new thing.
Karen - Toys have always been invented by adults for children based on the adult’s dreams about childhood. But today, due to the transmedia, you just don’t play with the toy, you live the character (e.g. breakfast cereal, fruit bars). That’s a concern she sees of the teachers that the children are just copying and spewing out the corporate script. But I saw in my research when children have an opportunity to produce a text, that they make changes and add their own twists to it as they playout these texts. (e.g. Sleeping Beauty the Director/Fencer). Saw time and time again the importance of the children to embody those texts. Feels this is transformative and produces critical response from the children.
Jeff-They are not just consuming transmedia they are producing it. They are dressing up, but they’re also producing cartoons and writing stories…
Marjorie – Once you take on that character people in the room know how to relate to you and I may not relate to you in that character all of the time, but it’s a beginning of how I get to know you.
Alison-Has anyone looked into morphing (live action role playing), have friends that participate and went once? They are grownups that literally act out (inaudible) characters on their off time. They spend so much time and energy and tons of money doing this. I’m just curious...does it have to end when you’re a kid?
Marjorie – No it doesn’t. Last conference attended, I thought I would be the oldest, but there were 4 women in their 90’s in full regalia costume doing it all.
Alison – How is this different from reenacting activities?
Mike – Civil War
Marjorie – Or Renaissance Fairs
Alison-How is this any different than when you were a little kid?
Yasmin – I don’t think it’s so different. Maybe a precursor as leisure activities. These are newer characters adopted by a younger generation. Look at StarTrek, the conventions followed the TV show, movies, the conventions used to be outside events are now mainstream…and CosPlay no one heard about 10 years ago and is part of media culture with I don’t know how many scholars. Used to be on the fringe but has definitely moved, now an everyday part.
Marjorie- Parts of Taiwan and Korea, people walk the street dressed in (inaudible).
Kylie – Karen can you explain your theories on the sentiment design on piece?
Karen- Word comes from UK anthropologists looking at artifacts not only for the materials people chose to use to make the best object but they look at all the histories inherent within that object. Example: child’s bird craft they made, includes materials used but also histories of prior experience with birds like his nickname given to him by grandmother, so his stories accessed all of this history. Including petting, a family chicken farm reference, as well as various histories brought into the making of that.
Karen - In my work, the competencies where the community of practice is making a sewn circuit and it has a value, you would have a certain status within that group. Then this becomes an artifact with that cemented identity in it. Not only did the practice make it, but the social relationships, and fabric choices, subject choices make it important. All my choices have layers to look at as researchers. Was that it?
Kylie – Yes, I thought it was relevant to this conversation with the multi meanings.
Alison – one of the biggest problems is the embedded history of fashion and what it means and what you choose and layers and layers of complexities, combining with the new technologies. Do you work with the aesthetics of the garment, what it means to wear puffy sleeves – it all has its own context, history, and meaning. I see people looking at fashion technology they pooh pooh it…went to a well known fashion show and there were “crafted” pieces where these pieces did not look like fashion but art so there is this huge divide between the craft the fashion and the art. No one knows what to do with all of it.
Karen – what we do is different for each person.
Alison – And it’s on the body…and each culture is different. Do you subscribe to it or add more complicated meanings on top of it?
Marjorie – It’s not just an academic question, it’s one you hear of everyday…these are some of the comments that you hear the project runway critics say. This look like a craft. This looks like a costume. What do you mean by craft? Is it really costumey? People blog on this and argue about it.
Yasmin – Maybe the conversation itself is the beginning of an opening of the discourse. People did not consider design and crafting – the masters of craft – it’s only been 2 years that we really talk about the everyday craft – like embroideries and what we make and do at home. It is not ignored anymore. These kind of conversations start to consider what is fashion and how do we find it. It could be a counter discourse about what are haute couture, great concepts and opening up that third space – we need to negotiate that space. If there is not dialog (i.e. people running the fashion show), suddenly the experts are laying the law of the land. Bloggers are challenging that now. Youth are transitioning into the adult world where we can have this constant back and forth of not always opposition. Artists struggle with this too.
Leslie – all the things that go on there within that third space eventually disrupt the previous models. They over throw it. This is exactly what happens in the art world.
Leah – just to be devil advocate – a colleague of mine who is a contemporary artist, someone who is grumpy about being so free with the term artist – people do not go around calling themselves physicists. I do not drop this pencil on the floor, calculate it, and decide I am a physicist. People do not automatically become one, it has social meaning. You need to be trained, have deep knowledge, be part of the community, and this carries some weight. I think it is a worthy perspective that calling yourself an artist also carries some weight. Which is why I’m not calling myself an artist…it’s not the right thing to do. I don’t completely subscribe to this POV but I think it’s a worthy perspective and defendable position.
Leslie – Within that position there needs to be a break…It is not a limited static thing to be an artist.
Alison – and with people creating things on their own you have this strange middle gray ground…where do they belong?
Leah – To be acknowledged as a citizen physicist you do have to come back around and make a contribution to the community. If I paint as an expressionist’s artist, and I call myself an artist, that’s okay but I am not really contributing to art or that progression or that community or the larger endeavor. There are some worthwhile distinctions.
Mike – you are seeing a growth of amateurs in a lot of ways.
Alison – an unreal amount.
Mike – Yeah. I remember you saying (Leah) as you were showing the (inaudible) that you are not an electrical engineer. I didn’t argue with you then and there…but yes you are. There are these gray areas. It does lead to this related question. I feel this often as a teacher as I have to make some judgment to quality. It may not be the best strategy to say that this is boring but we may think it from time to time. This will play a role educationally, too: this is a good project and this wasn’t a good project and we have to make judgments. It has to do with the quality of the things involved with. It is with the project courses that we teach. With art it’s a much harder thing to articulate, for me. With the projects I find myself saying it’s okay but it could have been better or it could have been more interesting, this is a little dirivitive; there is a lot of language built up about it.
Jeff – the position that you articulated, which I understand you aren’t embracing, that position establishes an equivalency between physics and art, which I think is problematic. To be human, is to embrace and participate in art but to embrace and necessarily embrace in physicistness. To me the relevant theory in identity and performance is that the notion of life as a work of art. The idea of life as a work of physics is kinda absurd.
Leah – But you could make a really rich analogy about discovering things and making theories about the world and proving them or disproving them…that’s how children operate. The way we all operate in many contexts. I think you can make similar analogies, both of the styles of thinking are important to being human.
Jeff – If you believe that you are abandoning the position you are espousing.
Leah – No…so thinking like a scientist does not make me a physicist. It means science is part of my life but does not make me a professional physicist. I think that in the same way that I am doing a sketch that it does not make me a professional artist. People consider themselves an artist easier than they consider themselves a physicist. That perhaps devalues art.
Marjorie – I think part of the devaluing art can be ambiguity of the very word. Art can be interpreted in a bazillion ways. Art is too basic to the instincts of the child, but physics is a specific field of knowledge that is relatively recent. But there are other types of specific sciences, like Shaman’s, which is different from physics. The only art that is relatively new is the modernist notion of what art is. And that caused this huge schism between modernist art and everything else.
Yasmin – There is an act of intentionality, because there are exhibits where we show where young children can adopt Picasso styles and many early paintings that children produce look like this. But there is a clear and distinct difference between what they are doing and Picasso was doing because of the intention of the artists while the children were ‘messing around’. There is new forms and representations that start somewhere on the fringes, they challenge our current notions; they wear things in a different way. I think this is the dialog which is happening.
Leslie – it’s not just the youth but is other disciplines walking into art practices to help create different forms too. Everything is not art but art goes through these shifts of what we consider art practices. Postmodern art practices has been interrupted by sources, popular culture, street art, engineering. That’s why showing the Arts & Technology piece was important…these people were shoved to the side at the time. When this happens it is radical and interesting. Art and technology was not talked about until the 90s when we all had the personal computers and could take it up. And that was the art world shutting it out. Now, it is considered an important moment because it signified a change in our practice and the possibilities of what an art experience could be.
Karen – That’s important, thinking about art as a community, it’s a much more open & welcoming community where people are invited to dabble. You can dabble in art but not astrophysics or medicine.
Alison – Serious changes are happening, people do not know how to define themselves anymore. And the younger generation doesn’t say I’m an artist, I’m a physicist, I’m a mathematician. They are multigeneralists.
Yasmin – People are sitting at home using desktop computer power to participate... mining photographs. There is much more fluency.
Mike – Recommends Between the Folds video – the people that are doing origami are at the boundary of math, engineers, art. They talk about many of the same questions here: materials and originality. I totally agree that there is this blossoming of amateur sciences, non-professionalize science. Some of it is good and some of it is not so good. We can try and decouple the quality from professionalism of the work. They are not always correlated. There are great amateur scientists and not so great. There are all these discussions about contributions. Comes back to the issue of not romanticizing the issue. Yasmin and I came from the logo group. I feel like there was a tendency to romanticize what kids were doing with the program language. Some would do well but some would just be typing random things. It is still a matter of what we would say to the kid. I would express more delight involuntary in the things they do.
Yasmin – No harm was done to children when Mike was….
Mike - Also, these issues of art and science and origami and the things that you are doing with switchcraft…where does the engineering leave off and the art begin?
Alison – don’t ask me what I do…I don’t have an answer.
Yasmin - We have a very concrete challenge. We proposed that we can study communities of e-textile designers and see how creativity emerges and how it is recognized, because it is an example. We don’t have established standards, like if you study drawing or sculpture, this long legacy, that you have to deal with when you enter the community. But we are just beginning but there is nothing that is recognized to examine when it springs up. We are also struggling with how do we define and recognize something like that?
Leslie - The art community can be so closed. The dabblers can only make it so far. When it is a new form or practice, these people can emerge. People do not have a way of reading of what is quality but a better way of phrasing it is how is this shifting what we consider to be an artwork. We do not know how to read that in the new form, it’s something we need to learn.
Alison - I have my standards for certain things. Coming from teaching and design, I apply a lot of design critiques to other things and the process. There are basics in fashion history, theory. I feel that I am all about exploring art and I am completely open. If I have to critiqued, I need to figure out certain standards like craftsmanship, where did this come from, there is critique already there
Leslie – Things are there, but there is something a new form brings with it about the experience they are creating. It shifts what we consider to be an artistic experience. It changes faster than other disciplines.
Alison – I think that art is harder than fashion….
Leslie - We have legacy of critique and standards and that term ‘quality’ – for me as an artist, I like to see those things broken but only in ways that they work. And how do we find that?

CREATIVITY: How can we conceptualize creativity in this context?

Kylie - Jeff, notions of creativity – some of the markers within the community, like the Csikszentmihalyi model and the systems based approach to creativity. It’s not the divergent model or thinking – the more ideas that I have. There are four scales – flexibility, fluency, originality and elaboration….key ways field has been looked at in a cognitive view. As we move towards situated or social cultural views, using Csiks model, where we think about how the individual creates things but how it is taken up in the domain or not, and how the field is the judge of that. People have not been able to look at that model because it is difficult to track the entire system. What is being taken up by the field as a marker of creativity? On YouTube, if you get 100 hits and it’s taken up by the field, is that a marker of creativity? Most of us, even her fans, would say that Britney was not creative but she definitely contributed to the domain.
Jeff - I do not have any strong positions, but could say a few things. First, some of the earlier work I did was resisting some of the rational and instrumental notion of creativity that was dominate in ACI. Where someone who created has this nice rational agency, and formulate these nice crisp intentions and then used well designed tools in a correct way that leads to this nice aesthetic or creative output, so that model came out as insane to me. But what has been dominating in my field is creative IT’s vision: creativity support tools. That phrase implies that creativity is something that can be supported by tools. So there is this rational agency and instrumental notion. So I started with asking what are some alternative and conceptualizations or constructions of creativity that have been out there? One out there in the history of philosophy and science like Thomas Kuhn, who is very close to Picon, and continues to Paul Feyerabend and more recent to the people who studied the history of physics…there is a book Bohn? and somebody talk about creativity in science and have a different vision, more institutional where you have some expert community in the community of practice that has a consensus about how things should be done. Occasional there are ruptures that causes seismic shifts. Now people are critiquing this saying even during normal sciences, these things are happening all the time. The third conceptualization is Marshal McLuhan, Manovich, Walter Benumeen?, Jacqolul? argue the technology, because it mediates how we express ourselves, media is the way we understand others expressions. The technology seems to take on an agency of its own and becomes so strong it starts to dominate what anyone is trying to say. Therefore it’s difficult for us to exercise any agency. My point is looking at the three traditions, rather than embracing any one of them, is to say if you embrace one of these it has very different implications for the design tools. Right now the prepackaged design tools are committed to that first rationalist theory, which is the worst of the three.
Leslie - When you are talking about open source, adobe, etc…
Jeff – First, there are still institutional structures that shape how people can do open source. Includes the programming languages, the theory like interoperability and efficiency that a good language does become embedded. The people that are involved in those communities have had schooling on these like in an engineering tradition. I’m not well versed on open source but the stuff I’ve worked with has been similar to package software.
Yasmin – What’s interesting is the economic implications…Open source argues against the economic model where people are rewarded financially. And with open source you don’t have that motivation but only the idea of contributing to a larger common good. Banker makes this argument about the wealth of the centralized network using Linux…
Mike – Generally I would agree…but just started reading You Are Not a Gadget – he is very negative against technology and argues technology has led us into bad aesthetic decisions. Midi for music is an example of where the technology limits us. Also has negative things to say about open source.
Yasmin - The whole discussion about open source is pushed as an alternative model. If you do more detailed study, it does not all hold true, towards a more middle ground. It does offer an alternative model on how people can accomplish significant things. Linux probably steps away from being open source to being more institutionalized. We think of Scratch as kids driven and those contributions toward open source.

K-12 CONTEXTS: What kind of connections can be formed between e-textile work in fashion and design to the traditional K-16 schooling curriculum?

Kylie - Online models you are trading in one type of capital for another. Usually people want to contribute to the community to get their work out there and get the hits-the social and human capital begins to build positioning myself as an expert. On Facebook, people look at number of hits, followers, and usage, some just want to communicate to family but the people that are really advocates are looking into the different types of capital to game that system. Record deals are given to people with MySpace levels over a certain point. There is a threshold of followers in LA that you need to assume before they will even talk to you.
Yasmin - So much of it is fake. In order to really prosper, you need to make fake accounts for Farmville, so there are all of these fake neighbors. The woman who did this understands but it is surprised. She has multiple accounts that populate on the fringes. We here there are large numbers, but who is actually participating in these environments is a smaller number. The large of the majority is much more silent and on the periphery.
Marjorie – They are called sock puppets and they raise a who different issue to about bullying and controlling an aesthetic. You have sock puppets that start fighting with one another and you end up a winner because your aesthetic idea was superior and you can elevate your status. I don’t’ know if kids have started using those yet, but grownups do.
Mike - It’s like the authors on Amazon that invent names to give glowing reviews for their own book
Alison – That’s changed, you can’t do that anymore…I tried
Kylie - If you can mobilize your close friends where you can game the system it represents you understand the system. Those people that cannot game it do not have a firm understanding of the system. Being able to game the system gives a more nuanced view.
Leah – Would like to return to Jeff’s comment on the stamp that tools have on artifacts. Since I am a builder of tools, I am very self-conscious of the effect that the stamp has on artifacts. I am frustrated by the rhetoric on it (e.g. LilyPad is for sewing, Arduino is more general purpose). People do not even realize the assumptions that they have in their brain that have profound impacts on the type of things that are created, who is creating things and other issues. I think that it is a powerful space that designers have to be conscious and thoughtful about. I think it is still worth building tools. What do you see as how people should approach these undertakings with more self-consciousness about their assumptions?
Jeff - First of all, that was a technological determinist position, but Manovich sometimes appropriates this rhetoric. In his paper the Velvet Revolution he argues Adobe aftereffects permanently altered the aesthetics of television in ‘90 by introduced 2.5 d layering compositing lettering and that had a fundamental effect on how TV is produced titles, television news. TV with its digital language was altered forever. My objections is that in this rationalist position that sees all of the agency in the creative person. Taking this position, as the tool developer, this says you are exempting yourself from any of the responsibility for what happens.
Leah - Where is even the space to have this discourse? I assume people at adobe are aware of the power they yield. Ben Fry (processing developer) wants to do text-based stuff in processing but he is worried that by making a default font, that will be font that will dominate all the processing projects. I think designers think about this stuff…but where is this discourse happening?
Jeff – I think it happens but it’s distributed across disciplines. The more critical part is going to be in New Media and Arts. Engineers are not reading Manovich. I have worked with Adobe and tried some of these ideas in adobe, so I understand the processes and how the decisions get made and a little of the internal politics. Adobe serves three communities: government, education and corporate graphic designers and creates models to support these three groups and designs software for the activities of those three groups. The kinds of things we are talking about here are not relevant or interesting to them because they are not a major buying demographic. So for people to use Adobe software they need to appropriate it.
Yasmin – Similar effort has been in game design, due to gender issues within companies. The designers propagate the same stereotypes and how they get embedded in the characters. Mary Flanagan & Helen Nissenbaum have a website on value loaded design that helps designers, every step of the development, realize how these aspects enter your design decisions to be aware of. Once it is completed, it is too hard to change. It is their perspective on how to deal with the gender stereotyping issue. If you have an idea of who your users are but how they take it up.
Karen – and that fits within your anticipated identity, that theory of who your users are you’re going to embed projected practices you intend for them with that tool. But how they take it up may or may not fit what you anticipated.

SIMULATION: What is the role of “simulation” as a way of understanding circuits? What role might this activity play in learning?

Kylie – Leah – simulation question – designing tools that have connections to the K-16 curriculum. Usefulness of a circuit simulation in software, more public capabilities for kids.
Leah - Simulations – seems an awkward relationship between the screen and off the screen. My intuition is to try and keep the focus off the screen in designing artifacts and activities. Something that has come up in several circumstances when people use our tools in different settings they really want a simulation environment to design, learn about electricity or a set of things. We are deliberating why having simulation tools may or may not be a positive thing.
Kylie – One of the tools used in Chicago is the Phet tools – circuit simulation tool – where you can build the circuit and more complex things, and they felt like this is where you would go first to design your layout for circuits. Once that is approved, you can move forward with your project. Is that a step that all users need to go through? Is it useful?
Leslie - I find that my students like to have simulations. But I have issues with that, because I think when you step away from that, I think that you are going from the different though processes that happen with real things and learn that kind of stuff. I see the progress when they have these graphic tools available. I wonder if it is because I am dealing with more art students who process things visually, I’m not sure.
Marjorie – There is an opinion on simulations that comes out of observation in teaching art in K-12 topics. When you have a simulation that is focused on learning a certain thing then you move to apply it, there is a huge gap to doing it. Communities of practice embed this particular process in the narrative of what they are doing and then it makes sense. If you see it embedded in a single narrative, you can take it and apply is to another, but if not see it stand alone you can’t see how it layers on top of variables narratives. So simulations are outdated to me.
Leslie – What if they are used at the same time, so you are going back and forth then there is the relationship between the two things.
Alison – What about a 3D environment? I draw it by hand first or in Illustrator. Just because it is laid out, it does not mean that it will be work when in practice maybe you can see things in layers
Mike - It is difficult to see how the pieces would be difficult to see
Alison – But I don’t have 3D. If it’s not some kind of 3D model, it’s hard…especially with soft circuits. They can go anywhere. By the time you move it over to the actual garment you are totally lost sometimes. I always go back and forth, back and forth, like she said. I look at my circuit, then I draw my plans, then I start making it and make a prototype, then I draw it on the prototype, then I go back to my plans. It’s never 100% simulation because you get there and you find out….
Leah - Drawing is different than a simulation. That’s a different activity.
Alison – but I’m saying the two together may be helpful. To do things in layers.
Jeff – What’s being simulated? Just the logic?
Leah – That’s a good question too.
Alison – I thought it was just the circuits.
Leah – To start with, it could just be a simple circuit where you can drag the battery, the light, and draw thread and see the light light up. Once you get beyond that, you could try to simulate the LilyPad, which gets into computational issues which are massive, big and thorny : -) But that’s a good question too. Starting with we are thinking about simple circuits.
Jeff - From a pedagogy standpoint, I might answer one way. But I’ve already confessed my ignorance in electronics which I maintain. I can imagine a professional who really does know that might be a very different need. So what you were talking about dragging stuff, that might make me less afraid of doubting...
Leah – Than just doing the thing. This would be a tool to help novices get into the space.
Jeff - It might demystify some of the scariness of it.
Leah: For you the hands on thing was scary?
Jeff: I was nervous when you started passing around the hardware, I’ll tell you that.
Alison - If I could look at a sample of the sewn circuit would you feel better?
Jeff – Probably, definitely.
Karen - In some ways, there is excitement in exploring and figuring out.
Alison – A lot of people have comfort issues with this stuff. Serious comfort issue. Encountered with Girl Scouts a few times. Some will just take it up and be excited and happy and another one will look at you like this and you can see crickets going off in their head. I am not standing up; I do not want to know what she is doing. It is absolute fear. It’s easy if you are not there, you pull them in but if you aren’t there. Then maybe some kind of simulations might help. I don’t know where it’s being used…in a classroom?
Yasmin – Phetlab are established and used in science classes – it goes multiple ways – interesting way to bring in science and engineering. It is taking away by sticking it on the screen. And the activity takes place in the 3D world so you have all these tensions, and children may not understand electricity not just adults. So what do you gain and what do you give up is essentially the question.
Alison - If you are going to work in the world, you have to learn that skill to move back and forth.
Yasmin – We have the short cut we use the alligator clips.
Alison – I think it’s better with young kids, to get them going. That’s my personal opinion and that’s been my experience. They usually just want to dig in. Once you get them inspired or show them something pretty in real life, they’re cool. So to me if you give them a simulation…oh we’re talking about electricity and science. And before we were talking about making pretty things and art.
Leah - Maybe it would be something easier and productive to match with the tools if they are already using it in the classroom. I am not sure if that is a defense but from a pragmatic point of view, if tools like that are going to be used, it might be worth designing a tool that is beautiful, has resonance with craft and things that sync with the rest of these tools.
Kylie - I have seen people that are interested in the processing environment.
Leah: It would be exactly like that. Which feels very different from the Phet.
Yasmin - There are different levels. There is laying out the circuit and giving smarts to the simulation tools in terms of giving you feedback. Can give you feedback on a short for instance.
Alison – Eagle software has simulation devices and such. They would not look anything like you would make. But they have the simulation down.
Leah – I think the interesting questions are less about how you do it or is it doable. But weather it’s the right thing to do.
Mike - How would you feel about a tool where the laser etched out pieces on the fabric, like a template?
Leah – That’s interesting.
Mike – I find it easier to plan something on screen. But then I’d really want to make it a physical object.
Leah – In some far away scenario a simulation tool could do all of that. We could also make a shirt on Threadless that could have LilyPad components.
Mike – But you want them to be able to design it.
Kylie – I don’t know that a Laser cutter will not be accessible to kids.
Alison – Templates are.
Leah – You mean iron on right?
Mike – The popup tool was you did a lot of design on the screen but that motivated you to make the physical object.
Marjorie – A lot of the resistance to this is almost a formal language the way it’s presented. For example, my art majors are terrified of math. I brought in Donald in MathmaticsLand and presented to my students and they thought it was easy. Japan has all of their physics texts in Manga style, so it’s not intimidating. The visuals are cute. But if you see these things that look like calculus equations, it scares them.
Kylie - In Leslies class, where no one has a science background, the students wanted to understand how many LEDs could go on each of the batteries. So Ben wrote up the equations, which they probably would have never wanted to know before or cared about. But all of a sudden, they were like I need this equation, why didn’t you give this to me earlier, it would have solve all of my problems. When there is a use for it, even an unsexy equation becomes fun and exiting because it solves a problem.
Leslie – Even in teaching action script their eyes glaze over, but when I say this is a script the students are all writing it down, the students have something to connect it to. They can imagine I want that stuff over there, how they want to get there?
Marjorie - That is why learning online is so exciting. You can look at things and figure out where you need to go on Google to get it. But how do you teach like that in the classroom?
Leslie – That’s a huge question.
Alison – I just bring my laptop in and I say this is the website to go to and this is where you put in this formula and if you guys want this, I you want that. I have them come up and find stuff. Being part of online is part of the teaching tool.