that's all

Overall, I enjoyed the course. I loved the first half especially. Learning to program was one of my favorite academic experiences. I sat in the kitchen of my coop- ALL the engineers in the house super jealous that I got to play with an Arduino board- trying to figure out how to wire the thing up. After the wiring, I began to program. THIS is the kind of learning I can get into. Immediate feedback of whether it works or not. Literally telling the computer what I wanted the Arduino board to do, then watching it either do it or not do it, and problem solving from there. I worked on this for hours, all night, it was satisfying and I could not pull myself away. Nor could the engineers in the house pull themselves away from watching the art student attempt to write code for this apparently really fun little device. They watched me on and off all night, just hoping my face would look panicked and upset so they could run over and sit down next to me to help. Unfortunate for them, me and the Arduino board got a long great, and the first time programming and making a lamp went really well, I was so sad the next day to unwire it!

I really enjoyed some of the conversations we had. The last day, although we were all completely sleep deprived, held great conversation. It was nice to have people from outside of the class involved, and hear their input and suggestions. I really gained a lot from that. The workshops we had in class were very beneficial as well, and again, I thought having other people come in and talk to us about their careers and then about our projects was very helpful.

With my final project, I was very pleased. A few things were disappointing, and I really would love to see it work moving all the panels. I would love to see a larger version of this and see the shadows created below. I think it has a lot of potential ecspecially with the idea that the entire panel could be the solar surface, and even the reduction of snow accumulation- although questioned in class- i think has potential, and is something that could be improved upon. I would love to have this even more refined, all the details are important, and we are missing some neatness with the materials. I am extremely happy, however, that it functioned and moved the way we had wanted. We have the interaction with the sun as well as a human (in the gallery setting) stimulus.

I hope this class continues and would love to see projects from other groups of students. That is what has been so interesting throughout the semester. Watching different groups present extremely different approaches to one problem/prompt. The personalities, habits, and skills of the different group members is what produces the final project, and I would love to stay involved/see what future classes and groups produce.