Today we learned more about P5.js in class. It was a lot of information in one session and I couldn’t grasp all of the materials because I was trying to understand the parts that was explained at the beginning. I personally think Nick was going too fast, though I understand why he needed to. We’ve only got 2 years in grad school!
I’ve had this conversation with a friend, Allan Doyle, before, but I just remembered again that learning coding is just like learning a language. And we’re trying to understand it over such short amount of time. But I think the upper-hand of being in a learning space is that we can consistently dedicate a huge chunk of our time to learn it.
Learn it like a language. Learn it as if it’s ordinary. I read the intro part of Ordinary Affect by Kathleen Stewart today. What is Ordinary Affect? I tried to break it down by word definition as I usually do to understand a word or a phrase:
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1.with no special or distinctive features; normal.“he sets out to depict ordinary people”synonyms:
usual, normal, standard, typical, stock, common, customary, habitual, accustomed,
expected, wonted, everyday, regular, routine, day-to-day, daily, established, settled, set, fixed, traditional, quotidian, prevailing“the ordinary course of events”antonyms:
abnormal
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uninteresting; commonplace.“ordinary items of everyday wear”synonyms:
average, normal, run-of-the-mill, standard, typical, middle-of-the-road, common, conventional, mainstream, unremarkable, unexceptional,
unpretentious, modest, plain, simple, homely, homespun, workaday,
undistinguished, nondescript, characterless, colorless, commonplace,
humdrum, mundane, unmemorable, pedestrian, prosaic, quotidian,
uninteresting, uneventful, dull, boring, uninspiring, bland, suburban,
hackneyed, stale, mediocre, middling, indifferent; Moreantonyms:
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2.(especially of a judge or bishop) exercising authority by virtue of office and not by delegation.
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1.what is commonplace or standard.“their clichés were vested with enough emotion to elevate them above the ordinary”
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2.BRITISH•LAWa person, especially a judge, exercising authority by virtue of office and not by delegation.
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US(in some US states) a judge of probate.
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3.those parts of a Roman Catholic service, especially the Mass, which do not vary from day to day.
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4.HERALDRYany of the simplest principal charges used in coats of arms (especially chief, pale, bend, fess, bar, chevron, and saltire).
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5.ARCHAICa meal provided at a fixed time and price at an inn.
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6.HISTORICAL•NORTH AMERICANanother term for penny-farthing.
and interestingly, the word Affect had 3 different meanings in 3 different context,
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have an effect on; make a difference to.“the dampness began to affect my health”synonyms:influence, exert influence on, have an effect on, act on, work on, condition, touch, have an impact on, impact on, take hold of, attack, infect, strike, strike at, hit; Moreantonyms:
be unaffected-
touch the feelings of (someone); move emotionally.“the atrocities he witnessed have affected him most deeply”synonyms:upset, trouble, hit hard, overwhelm, devastate, damage, hurt, pain, grieve, sadden,
distress, disturb, perturb, agitate, shake, shake up, stir; Moreantonyms:be unaffected, be indifferent to, unaffecting, unmoving
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pretend to have or feel (something).“as usual I affected a supreme unconcern”synonyms:pretend, feign, fake, counterfeit, sham, simulate, fabricate, give the appearance of, make a show of, make a pretense of, play at, go through the motions of; More
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use, wear, or assume (something) pretentiously or so as to make an impression on others.“an American who had affected a British accent”synonyms:
assume, put on, take on, adopt, like, have a liking for, embrace, espouse
“he deliberately affected a republican stance”
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noun
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emotion or desire, especially as influencing behavior or action.
Being in a class called “Affect And Emotions In Practice” I went into the reading with presumption that within the context of the class the affect mentioned in “Ordinary Affect” primarily mean the 3rd description of the word. But I would miss the entire point of this reading if I take that as the only meaning of the word here.
Order, rules, fixed, not special, habitual, common and normal. It is what it is supposed to be and just is, ordinary. Nothing is out of place, it’s just there where it is supposed to be. What is it? Affect. But what is affect? “to make difference to”, “to move someone emotionally”, “pretend to feel”, “pretentiously”, or “desire or emotion”? perhaps it is all of them. They might seem to mean differently, but they make sense together in “Ordinary Affect”. as Steward wrote:
“Ordinary Affects is an experiment, not a judgement. Committed not to the demystification and uncovered truths that support a well-known picture of the world, but rather to speculation, curiosity, and the concrete, it tries to provoke attention to the forces that come into view as habit or shock, resonance or impact. Something throws itself together in a moment as an event and a sensation: a something both animated and inhabitable.”
But of what something? gestures, was it, that we talked about in class? Maybe it’s the poetry of everyday movements, the way someone touch their hair, when your parents lick their thumb to flick the page of newspaper, the way trees grow in directions that are recorded in their grain pattern, the tic toc of a clock? characteristics of the universe that are always affected and affecting to one and another, going on continuous motion keeping the world rotating and revolving.
I don’t know. I would love to hear what other people have to say in class on Monday. I’m very excited for the discussions in this class. But ordinary, ordinary…. I also want to make coding something that is ordinary to me.
So I did a little more practice this afternoon, and probably gonna watch videos and do more tonight. (you know I prefer a night out dancing at some old men bar with friends but I haven’t made many friends just yet and this is okay too).
I tried to create a prototype of our group project that reacts to microphone input, but somehow it’s not working on mobile as we intended to for the context of the piece.
https://editor.p5js.org/nilampwns/sketches/UGF7GFVCM
I tried to find solution to it but google wasn’t much of a help this time around.
But I also want to show this other thing I worked on for fun,
https://editor.p5js.org/nilampwns/sketches/mvB3bq2BG
Which is also in my sketches that make sketches series. The dot goes up and down based on microphone input and the horizontal movement are moving steadily. It’s almost as if it’s making graph for voice input. It was very fun to make!
P.s. we learned how to use webcam on our p5 sketches as well. And we captured this in class.
took us 4 collaborators to make this pic happen. Thanks Liam, Jessie, and Lilian.
Nilam Sari 