Course Projects

Project 1: How do you do?: Human–AI Dialogue (10 %)

Due: Week 6, September 22  |  Modality: Single-page HTML dialogue (8–16 turns; ~1500–2500 words total, excluding captions/links)

Objective

Create a single-page, readable dialogue between you (Human) and an LLM on a class theme of human-machine entanglement (e.g., simulation/illusion, agency, intelligence, language, posthuman identity, cyborgs and transhumans, AI & creativity). This is not an essay—keep the dialogue exchange throughout. Aim for 1500-2500 words in the final edit. Probe the AI about “itself,” press for specifics, and follow threads. Finish by drawing out principles for how humans can work ethically, safely and productively with AI — both in general and for you in particular.

• Begin with your own metaprompt: craft 2–4 sentences that set the scene, context and signal to the AI who you are, what role the AI should play and what you want to explore.
• Ask sharp questions; use follow-ups (“give a concrete example,” “what would change your answer?”).
• End your dialogue by articulating 2–4 principles you discover for working with AI as a human.
• Afterwards: edit your raw transcript into a clean, finished version as if it were a publication-ready page. Use the AI to help with this!
• Keep responses concise; trim for clarity without changing meaning.
• Use 1–3 carefully chosen AI-generated images to support key parts of the discussion.
• Ask the AI to generate "a responsive single HTML5 page" for the edited text. *If you a new to HTML, you can send the generated html file and any images to me on Slack and I will put it on the web for you.
• In the HTML page, clearly label Human and AI turns.
• Be sure to include title to your dialogue (inside the "h1" tag) and your name.

Deliverables

• Single responsive HTML5 page."HTML file: One page containing the edited dialogue (8–16 alternating turns). Use basic semantic tags (<p>, <div>, <figure>, <figcaption>).
• Image integration: 1–3 AI-generated images placed where they meaningfully relate. Include descriptive alt text and a short caption (name the tool + prompt). Get the AI to help with this.
• If you are in DTC and have a directory on the server, you can upload a folder with images and index.html. Submit the url in Canvas. If you not in DTC, then send me your files in Slack and I will give you a link to use.
• Optional link: A link to a the full chat log if you want to show more.

Evaluation Criteria

• Inquiry & follow-through — begins with a clear metaprompt; asks pointed questions; pursues clarifications.
• Clarity & voice — Human/AI are easy to distinguish; clean, concise turns.
• Concept fit — clearly ties to a class themes and probes the model “about itself.”
• Principles & reflection — ends by naming key principles for human–AI work (general + personal).
• Image integration & accessibility — images are not just decorative; provide good captions + alt text; 1–3 well-placed visuals that support the dialogue.
• Presentation — tidy, edited HTML that reads as a finished piece. Just ask for "a responsive single HTML5 page" for your edited text.

Project 2: The Year 2045 — AI-Entangled Worlds (20 %)

Objective

In groups of 3–4, you will collaboratively design, research, and present a richly imagined world set in the year 2045. Your speculative world should explore how AI has become deeply entangled with science, health, government, education, culture, and everyday life—not as separate “themes,” but as an interconnected system of influences.

The goal is to imagine a plausible future, grounded in current research and trends. Avoid extreme utopias or dystopias. Instead, focus on realistic transformations and tensions: What might daily life look like if AI, biotechnology, or energy breakthroughs reshape what it means to be human? For instance, what are the cultural and social consequences of a breakthrough that makes energy cheap and abundant, or that dramatically extends human lifespans?

Drawing on cyborg, transhuman, and posthuman frameworks for understanding human–machine entanglement, your team will create a multimodal documentation website—a “world bible” that blends research, narrative, and creative media. Imagine your site as a documentary or museum exhibition about this future world. It should show evidence of deep research, imaginative thinking, and inventive use of generative AI.

Note: This project will lead directly into Project 3, where each student will create an individual multimodal work (slideshow or video) set within this shared world.

Collaborative Process

1. Form a group (3–4 people) and discuss your vision of the world and a single technological breakthrough (e.g., clean fusion energy, a cancer cure, universal basic AI assistants).
2. Brainstorm the consequences of this breakthrough—social, ecological, ethical, economic. Then write a 1-paragraph world summary to guide your collaboration.
3. Each group member chooses two domains from the list below to research and develop in detail.
4. Use real sources—white papers, policy reports, scientific research, or journalism—to ground your speculation.
5. Have an AI model integrate the group’s texts into a single world description. Review, edit, and iterate together.
6. For homework, each student creates AI-generated images that visualize their two domains.
7. Next class, you’ll build a group website combining all text, images, and links.

Domains of Exploration

1. Environment & Geography

• What does Earth look like in 2045? Which places are thriving, and which are struggling?
• How have climate change and new technologies affected cities, farming, oceans, and wildlife?
• Are there new kinds of homes or cities—floating, underground, or off-planet? How do people connect with nature and nonhuman intelligences (animals, machines)?

2. Technology & Infrastructure

• What everyday technologies shape people’s lives (AI helpers, robots, biotech, clean energy)?
• How do people work with machines? Are they teammates, bosses, or invisible systems in the background?
• How is energy made and shared? Is it free and renewable, or controlled by big companies?

3. Economy & Work

• What kinds of jobs or creative work exist in 2045?
• Has automation replaced most work, or made space for new types of meaning and innovation?
• How do people earn and trade—money, credits, reputation, or something else?

4. Education & Learning

• What does learning look like in 2045? Are schools still physical spaces or more like global networks?
• How do students learn—with AI tutors, simulations, games, or real-world apprenticeships?
• What skills and values matter most in this world—creativity, empathy, coding, critical thinking?
• Who controls education—governments, communities, AIs, or individuals?

5. Society & Governance

• How are people organized—nations, eco-cities, online communities, or global cooperatives?
• How are decisions made and justice maintained? Is AI involved in keeping things fair?
• How do citizens take part—voting, consensus rituals, social media, or AI-led debates?

6. Culture, Media & Art

• What kinds of art and media are popular in 2045? How do people express themselves?
• Is AI a creative partner, a tool, or a full-on artist?
• What new styles, languages, and hybrid art forms have appeared? Are there cultural revivals or rebellions?

7. Body, Mind & Identity

• How have biotechnology and neural tech changed what it means to be human?
• How do people think about identity, beauty, and gender? Are bodies customizable?
• What new psychological or spiritual challenges come with longer lives or digital minds?

8. Everyday Life

• Describe a normal day for an average person. What do they see, eat, and do?
• What do friendship, love, and family look like?
• How do people relax, find meaning, and stay connected in an always-on world?

9. Key Tensions & Themes

• What gives people hope in this world? What worries or divides them?
• What big moral or philosophical questions shape daily life?
• Where do resistance and rebellion show up? Who has power—and who challenges it?

Deliverables

• Speculative Scenario Narrative (1500–3000 words): A collectively written overview describing your world’s origins, tensions, and transformations. Address how AI intersects across multiple domains and shapes daily life.
• AI-Generated Media Assets: 8–12 visuals (concept art, environments, artifacts) with captions and alt text. Optional audio or video fragments (short loops, “news” clips, micro-scenes).
• Rules, Technologies, and Cultural Structures: A section detailing key technologies, infrastructures, social norms, rituals, and archetypal characters or factions.
• Group Website: A functional HTML/CSS/JS site with coherent design and navigation, integrating all narrative and media content.
• Process Documentation: PDF or doc archive with prompt logs, citations, research sources, and design iterations.
• Group Reflection (300–400 words): A co-written reflection on creativity, research, AI tool use, collaboration, and what your world expresses about hopes and fears of AI futures.

Evaluation Criteria

• World depth & originality: How fully realized, interconnected, and imaginative is your 2045 scenario?
• Integration of research & theory: Evidence of real-world research and critical frameworks.
• Quality & coherence of AI media: Alignment of visuals/audio with your world’s tone and logic.
• Website design & functionality: Aesthetic cohesion and technical reliability.
• Transparency of process: Clear documentation of AI use, citations, and collaboration.
• Collaboration & reflection: Evidence of meaningful teamwork and critical engagement.

Project 3: 2045 Video Stories: Multimodal Essay-Fiction (15 %)

Due: Week 11  |  Modality: Individual short video, slideshow video, or hybrid media piece (30–60 seconds) + with sound

Objective

Create a short AI-assisted multimodal piece that expands the world your group designed in Project 2. You may generate short video clips and/or still images to build a video with audio. Your project must remain visually and conceptually consistent with your group’s world by using the same visual references, cultural cues, and stylistic rules. The piece can be an ad, PSA, news transmission, tutorial for a process in the world, short story, social media post, or meme-like commentary. Treat it as a new “window” into your shared universe.

Deliverables

• Multimodal Clip (30–60 seconds): May be produced with AI video tools (Runway, Sora, Pika, Stable Video) or edited entirely from still images plus audio. Added text is optional.
• No Prompt Log & for this project

Evaluation Criteria

• Originality and strong alignment with the group’s world-building project
• Craft and technical execution: pacing, sequencing, audio mix, overall polish
• Conceptual clarity: how well the piece expresses, complicates, or interrogates the world’s ideas

Project 4: Creative Challenges in AI Art (15 %)

Due: Week 13 | Nov 17  |  | Group website section + collective essay

Overview

In this final collaborative project, your group will explore one challenge in creating art with AI. Each group will choose a key issue—such as bias, slop, authorship, or originality—and build a short web section for our class exhibition that explains and illustrates the challenge with examples.

The goal is not to praise or condemn AI but to understand its creative limits and possibilities. You will show how artists, designers, or musicians are working with or against the “machine logic” of AI—turning problems into creative discoveries.

Part 1: Choose a Challenge

Select one challenge from the list below—or propose one of your own with instructor approval. Your section will explain what this challenge is, why it matters, and how artists are responding to it.

• Slop / Homogenization: The tendency toward over-smooth, over-trained, or “average” aesthetics. What happens when the machine’s search for coherence erases surprise, texture, or individuality—and how do artists work against that flattening?
• Bias and Perspective: Every dataset has a worldview. How do aesthetic patterns of race, gender, culture, and class emerge in AI imagery—and how can artists expose or subvert these hidden biases as part of the artwork?
• Error / Glitch / Hallucination: When generative systems misfire or hallucinate, they reveal their inner logic. How can error become a style, and how do artists use misrecognition as an expressive or poetic device?
• Hybrid Authorship: When human and machine collaborate, where does intention live? How do we define authorship, agency, and co-creation when part of the “artist” is a model trained on millions of others?
• Remix and Originality: If AI art is made from remixed data, can originality still exist? Or does AI force us to rethink creativity as recombination, pattern recognition, or curation rather than invention?
• Prompt Aesthetics: The language of creation—the prompt itself—becomes an artistic medium. How do wording, iteration, and ambiguity shape the aesthetics of output? Is the art in the image, the prompt, or the process?
• Data Ethics: What is the moral and aesthetic weight of a dataset? How do questions of consent, ownership, and transparency alter how we value or interpret AI-generated art?
• Emotion and Simulation: AI can mimic sentiment, but can it feel? How do we respond emotionally to machine-generated expression, and what does that say about human empathy, projection, and meaning-making?
• Labor, Access, and Scale: Behind generative art lies vast computational and human labor. How do issues of access, privilege, and ecological cost shape the aesthetics and politics of AI creation?
• Human Trace: What happens when touch, imperfection, or embodiment return to the digital image? How do artists hybridize hand-made and machine-made processes to reinsert presence, care, or craft into AI art?
• Machine Perception: How does an algorithm “see,” “hear,” or “imagine”? What new visual grammars or aesthetics arise from the difference between human and machine perception?
• Temporal Flow / Iteration: Generative systems evolve through loops and versions. How does this continuous becoming alter our sense of composition, completion, or authorship over time?

Part 2: Group Exhibition Section

Working together, create a web section (part of our class online exhibition) that introduces your challenge to a general audience. Use short text, clear visuals, and accessible examples. Think like curators: your section should both inform and inspire.

• Design: Simple, consistent layout and navigation with other groups.
• Media: Include 3–5 visual, sound, and/or video examples—either found or created by your team—that illustrate the challenge.
• Captions: 50–70-word texts explaining how each example shows the issue or turns it into an opportunity.

Part 3: Group Essay (2,000–3,000 words)

Write a multimodal group essay that explains your chosen challenge and why it matters for the future of creative work. Include images, screenshots, or video stills that support your points.

• Define the challenge: What does it look like in practice? Where do we see it in current AI art?
• Show examples: Compare weak and strong uses of AI—where it falls short vs. where artists make it work.
• Reflect critically: What can humans learn from this challenge about creativity, technology, or collaboration?

Part 4: Ethics and Transparency

• Include short notes on tools and models used (e.g., DALL·E 3, Runway ML, ChatGPT, Udio, etc.).
• Add alt text for all media and a short “prompt log” showing one or two example prompts per work.
• Be transparent about human vs. AI contribution.

Part 5: Individual Mini-Essay & Artwork

Alongside the group section, each student will create an individual mini-essay and artwork for the final exhibition site (another project). These personal works can connect to the group theme but should express your own creative exploration.

Evaluation Criteria

• Clarity and insight in defining and exploring the chosen challenge.
• Quality and originality of examples and captions.
• Design and usability of the exhibition section.
• Collaboration and balanced participation within the group.
• Transparency and ethical reflection (prompt logs, alt text, sources).

Due: Dec 1 (by class time)

Objective

Create an original work or series that emerges from your journal reflections, AI dialogues, experiments, and class discussions. Your project should explore a meaningful term or idea from the course—ideally one from the aesthetics framework—but you may move beyond your group’s specific term if your creative direction shifts.

Your project should demonstrate a hybrid human–machine process. The goal is not to “show what AI can make,” but to create a personally meaningful artifact that uses machine systems as collaborators, materials, constraints, or provocations.

Relation to Project 4: Entangled Aesthetics

This project is your individual contribution to the collaborative exhibition. Your group’s aesthetic concept should be a starting point, not a boundary. Your work must be in dialogue with human–machine entanglement in some way—conceptually, visually, narratively, sonically, or structurally.

Your final artifact and mini-essay will appear in the online exhibition, accompanied by your caption, alt text, prompt logs, and ethical documentation.

Required Presentation Format

The entire project must be presented on a single responsive HTML5 web page. Students may design the look and layout of their own page (fonts, spacing, color, etc.) as long as the required elements appear in order and are responsive on desktop and mobile.

• Project Title at the very top of the page.
• Your Name directly under the title.
• The Creative Artifact embedded immediately after your name:
  • Video (YouTube or Vimeo embed — required for anything longer than 30 seconds).
  • Image series or grid (not a single image unless conceptually necessary).
  • Audio player (MP3/WAV).
  • Interactive HTML5 or p5.js work embedded in the page.
• Responsive Video Requirement: All videos must be placed inside a responsive container using standard embed code. (Ask ChatGPT: “Give me responsive YouTube/Vimeo embed code.”)
• Alternate Pages: If your project requires its own page (interactive, multi-part, or full-screen experience), include a clearly marked link **after the mini-essay**. The main Project 5 page must still contain the title, name, reflection, and documentation.
• Mini-Essay/Reflection after the creative work:
  • The essay title as an h2 heading
  • Essay text in parapagraphs
• Chat Log + Tools Used: The bottom of the page, after the essay, must include:
  • A short list of AI tools used (e.g., Midjourney, ChatGPT, RunwayML, ElevenLabs).
  • URLs to AI essential chat pages.

Deliverables

• A finished creative artifact or series (video, image sequence, interactive piece, sound work, text-based media, or hybrid form).
• A reflective statement (700–1,500 words) explaining your concept, your hybrid human–machine process, and how your work engages the course themes.
• Documentation:
  • Links to all essential AI chats.
  • A list of all AI tools used in the project.
• Place your index.html page and all artifact media (images, audio, video embeds, JavaScript, CSS, assets) inside a folder named after your project.
  • A 500px × 500px image capture of your artwork to be used as a thumbnail (ideally png).
  • Upload this folder to your server space, if you have it.
  • Submit the link on Canvas and in the class Slack channel.
  • All project folders must also be compressed as a ZIP file and sent to me in Slack.

  If you do not have server space, the compressed ZIP is sufficient. I will provide the URL for uploading to Canvas and Slack.

Mini-Essay Guidelines

Your 700–1,500 word reflection should:

• Explain your concept and motivation.
• Describe your hybrid human–machine workflow with specificity.
• Discuss how your thinking evolved throughout your process.
• Connect your project to one or more course ideas (not limited to your group’s term).
• Reflect on what this process taught you about creativity, authorship, and AI.

Evaluation Criteria

• Originality and depth of the creative work.
• Evidence of inquiry, iteration, and reflection.
• Quality and clarity of the mini-essay.
• Technical and creative execution of the artifact.
• Transparency and ethical awareness in documenting AI usage.
• Effective and accessible presentation on a responsive HTML5 page.

Suggested Directions & Tools

You may work in any medium as long as the project explores human–machine entanglement. Below are recommended starting points.

1. Immersive or Cinematic Video

• Tools: Midjourney, RunwayML, Veo 3, ElevenLabs, Suno.
• Experiment with narrative, montage, voice-over essays, abstract video, documentary-poetic forms.

2. Generative Code Art

• Tools: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, p5.js — p5js.org
• Concepts: Perlin Noise, flow fields, randomness, cellular automata.
• See examples from The Coding Train and p5.js references. Use AI to describe your ideas and get the code.

3. Sound Art / Experimental Music

• Tools: Suno, ElevenLabs
• Create synthetic voices, machine-composed atmospheres, layered sound environments.

4. Image Series or Visual Narratives

• Photo essays, design sequences, comic-style panels, iterative visual ideas.
• Avoid single-image submissions unless conceptually necessary.

5. Text-Based Art

• Generative poetry and kinetic text in a video or dynamic web page.
• Experiment with fragmentation, repetition, procedural structures.