Week 13 • Final Project Workshop & Critique

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.