- Announcements:
- Change of final schedule
- Distribution of keys
- box trays
- Madeline Gannon talk, 5pm Friday Feb 2 in the STUDIO (CFA-111)
- Proper Introductions; Roll Call
- Quick review of Drawing Machines (also for fun see this & this)
- Exercises (below)
- Lectures (below)
- Rule-Based Art, 1950s-1960s
- Minimum Inventory, Maximum Diversity
- Announcement of Assignment 2: Rule-Based Art (due Thursday January 25)
This is Sprouts, a planar graph drawing game. It is demonstrated in this video and this video. It was invented by John Conway and Michael S. Paterson in the early 1960s.
The game is played by two players, starting with a few spots drawn on a sheet of paper. Players take turns, where each turn consists of drawing a line between two spots (or from a spot to itself) and adding a new spot somewhere along the line. The players are constrained by the following rules:
- The line may be straight or curved, but must not touch or cross itself or any other line.
- The new spot cannot be placed on top of one of the endpoints of the new line. Thus the new spot splits the line into two shorter lines.
- No spot may have more than three lines attached to it. For the purposes of this rule, a line from the spot to itself counts as two attached lines and new spots are counted as having two lines already attached to them.
In so-called normal play, the player who makes the last move wins. In misère play, the player who makes the last move loses. Misère Sprouts is perhaps the only misère combinatorial game that is played competitively in an organized forum.[3]
There are two drawings made by the Professor, Drawing-X and Drawing-Y.
- Divide students into pairs. Call one person of each pair X, the other Y.
- X students get Drawing-X. Y students get Drawing-Y.
- Distribute blank paper and pens.
- Pairs sit back to back without looking at the other’s drawing
- X student describes their drawing to Y; Y tries to draw it from X's instructions. Switch at a reasonable time. Then Y student describes their drawing to X; X tries to draw it from Y's instructions.
- Pin up the drawings at the end. Group by X/Y. Discuss.
These exercises are by the Conditional Design group.
Instructions:
- Arrange participants in groups of 3-5 persons per table. Distribute colored pens and a large sheet of paper to each group.
- Each turn, find the most empty space on the paper and place a dot in the middle of it.
--
First Step: The first player draws a line. The other players draw a line that goes over and under the last drawn line.
In Turns: The player elongates his/her line on both ends. The elongations have to go over and under a line of another player and may not go over the line of the same color twice in a row. When a line can no longer be elongated, it is considered dead for the rest of the game. When both ends of a line have died, the player may place a new line.
--
Setup: Each player has one color pen. The paper is divided into 4 imaginary segments, in which a player operates. Each turn a player is either leader or follower. The players decide which person may be the leader first.
Play: Clockwise in turns a player is the leader, for approx. 30 sec. The other 3 people are the followers. The leader draws freely in his segment using only straight lines. The followers must mirror the drawing of the leader, synchronously while he/she is drawing.
End: The ending of the game is decided by the player who proposed to play it.
John Baldessari, Throwing Three Balls in the Air to Get a Straight Line (Best of Thirty-Six Attempts), 1973
Tara Donovan, Untitled (Pins), 2004
- Lecture: Rule-Based Art, 1950s-1960s
- Lecture: Minimum Inventory, Maximum Diversity
