So really unique part of this course is the gallery tool. So this is an environment in which you're going to be sharing your own work, whether it's still images or animations, or even the code that you're working on. And you're also going to be able to see work of other learners. And we think this is a really important part of this course, to have this kind of exchange of information. And also to be able to comment on each other's work, and peer review each other's work. I think that's a really important part of learning to be able to talk about somebody else's work in a constructive way. And I know it's been a really important part of my learning throughout my career, to be able to teach and comment on people's work. So I wanted to use this video to talk a little bit about some of the guidelines for doing that and maybe demonstrate a little bit how we can talk about work. What we've done with each assignment is, not only giving you the assignment, but we've also given you a commenting rubric that's specific to each assignment. Although it does share a common three part scheme, three different ways in which you might start to think about the work. So there's design, presentation and code. Design has to do with, how they're, you're going about designing the elements that you're producing within the course. How much does it vary from some of the things that I'm showing in the tutorials. Is somebody really starting to do something that you can't really figure out sort of how they're doing it. But it sorts of peaks your interest, and they're doing something unique. So, how are they pushing the limits of the design aspect of a presentation has to do with, how are they showing that. Are they using presentation to show a variety of different types of geometries that can be produced with the code that they've made. And there is a kind of crossover I would say between design and presentation. Oftentimes, you can't completely separate representation from the thing you're representing, that those things can often be very closely tied to each other. The last part is code, and code is really about how the code is presented, how it's organized. It's not always about the originality in the code, but it's about its legibility related to some of the things that I'm going over in the course. And also in terms of how it's commented, how clear is it. To understand what somebody is doing with the code. Now, commenting on work, and also receiving comments on work, is going to be an important aspect of the course. It's not about commenting on the person themselves, but it's about commenting on their work. So it's important to be very inclusive, and open, and helpful, and constructive within your criticism. It's also important not to take the criticism personally. What I tell my residential students is, don't put yourself between the commenter and your work. That means don't be in a position of defending your work. You want to be open to comments. You want to be frank about what you're doing, and you want to have a discussion about it. So don't be defensive. Now there's tools for commenting, and one of my favorites is the like, wish method. So, I like to start by talking about what I liked about a project, and starting it with like. And not just saying that I like it, but why do I like it? What are the certain aspects of it that I like? If I don't like something about a project, I don't use terms like hate, or that I really don't like that. But instead, I try to use the term wish. That I wish they had explored this a little bit further. I wish they had maybe shown more variation in this. So, it's a way of using language, to be more constructive, and more engaging with the other learners. And that's a really important part of this. It's not about attacking someone for something, but it's about helping them and helping yourself. Now what I'd like to do is show a couple of projects, and talk a little bit about what I think is, the qualities that I like within the projects. And maybe what they could have worked on, a little bit more. These are projects that might be round the level, that you might get. They're working with a 3D point matrix to create variable geometry. So, this first one I would say is about in the upper middle level of work. I think it's these four illustrations are really demonstrating very well, how they're producing variation, within the system. That it goes from a sort of more ordered, rigorous system that's adhering to the grid and that slowly sort of breaks down. I think the way they chose the the representation that they chose, this kind of almost drawing like I think is works very well with these angular forms. I don't think the project diverges to a really great degree, in terms of its the design coding, from what I showed in the tutorials. So that those aspects might have been pushed further, but it's not, it's a fairly good project. This project is, I would say not as strong as that last project. The things that I like about, it I like their use of color. I like the levels of transparency in the project. I don't think the three images I wish they had shown maybe some different angles of the project. It's difficult to understand what it is that they're varying within the geometry. All these three images all sort of share the same angle, so I wish they might have shown it from different perspectives, might have given different sort of views, and a different understanding of the project. This one is is not as strong as those other two, so I would say this is on the sort of weaker side of the projects. Although I think it it accomplishes a number of a number of things in terms of addressing the assignment. I think it does show some variety in the types of geometry produced, but probably not enough. I don't think it goes far enough, that I wish it had gone much, much further. Things that I like about it are, these sort of umbrella like forms which seemed to float in space. I don't think the six illustrations are going to showing enough variety or change in the geometry. I think the quality of the presentation is a bit sort of standard. It's a standard, rendering in rhino, and so those aspects of it haven't really been pushed that much and they could be pushed a bit further. This project, I would say is on a higher level than the ones we've seen so far. It does show a good variety in form. This is only one illustration of a number of illustrations that the students submitted for this project. You wouldn't recognize it at this point, but they're doing something very sophisticated with the code, in order to get the matrix to generate this specific types of form. So at a design level, it's a bit more advanced. I think they could have done more with the presentation. And the different sort of angles in which ways, in which they showed the work, but it is a strong project for these other reasons. This last project, I would say it's not as strong as that last project, in terms of the coding that was involved in producing it. The coding wasn't as complex, but I think in this case, the level of presentation, trumps the complexity within the coding. I think it's an extremely sort of evocative project. I really like the way that they're using both solid rendering and linework that there's this kind of delicacy within the project, but then there's also a weight to it. I think the absence the actually absence of color within the project actually thinks works better for it, gives it this kind of austere quality. And they presented a number of illustrations of it, that showed it in different varieties that were produced from the code. I think to also, what I really like about this project is, it shows the complexity possible, with doing something through code. If you could imagine, if you had to manually model this and produce these variations within these illustrations. It would probably take you weeks and weeks to do that, to do a single illustration. And so it really represents the power available within coding to produce that kind of complexity and variation. And so I think it is for this level, I think it is a really extraordinarily illustrated project. So the last issue is the code, and so as I said, you you're not going to be inventing completely from scratch new code, what you're really doing is working with the code that I'm giving you. Maybe editing a bit adding certain parts to it. So, commenting about it isn't about commenting about a completely invented new code, but it's more about its organization, how is it presented, and its legibility. And that has to do with a couple things. One of them is the use of variable names. So, can you clearly understand sort of the mnemonic structure of the variables? Where they're important, where they're holding. So, that's one aspect of it. So, looking at this code, it's very clearly organized. They have this area where they're declaring all their empty lists, and everything is really well commented which is all these green text parts. They tell me exactly what these individual things are. They have comments at the beginning of sections of the code here. Which really explicate, you know what the code is doing. So if I've never seen this code before, it's fairly easy for me to go through it and understand it. What it's doing, and how it's working because of the clarity of the variables, and also the clarity of the comments. Now, this is probably at this point, this is a lot more complex code than what you're used to seeing. And it has a number of different elements in it like functions, and iteration. And a whole bunch of things that maybe we haven't gone through yet. But that's okay, I mean, you could sort of look at it, and probably see that it's how it's clearly organized. The other aspect of the code is that in some assignments, I will be asking you to do certain things in the code. So, in some of them are asking, I'll say specifically, you should use conditionals in this or you use iteration in this or you should use a dictionary structure in this. So the other issue around the code is, are you using those things which are required within the assignment? And so if we look at a code, that's another code that works just fine. So and it's actually doing some interesting things in terms of its design. I would say I wish that it did things better was in its commenting and also perhaps in the way that some of the variables are named. They're not really telling me. Too much about what they're doing. I don't know, this is a conditional part of the code. I don't exactly know what that's doing because it's not commented out. I don't know this is definitely creating geometry here, but I don't know exactly what for and so. I will have to spend sometime picking through the code to figure out what's it doing. And that would have been helped by more comments within the code to make those things legible. So that's what I'm talking about when I'm talking about code. So I hope this video has helped you understand a little bit about the critiquing process and a little bit about what we're looking for in some of the assignments.
