Happy New Year! / Random Compositions / Website Update

Dear Creative Coders, 👋

First of all, I would like to wish you all a successful and happy 2024 from the bottom of my heart! I took the opportunity to recharge my batteries and spend time with my closest friends and family. Now I'm looking forward to the new year with lots of energy and new ideas!

Course development: “Random Compositions” 🎲

Over the past few weeks, I've continued working on "Random Compositions" and realized how important this course could become for my curriculum. Here is a first intro text:

In this course, we will look at an apparently simple task from my university teaching that can lead to fascinating results and interpretations for my students. It is about the composition of a few geometric shapes with the help of random parameters. In Creative Coding, exploring randomness is one of the most fascinating, but also one of the most unsettling experiences in the learning process. In the beginning, when it is still unclear how to control randomness in a way that makes sense,  Leaving design decisions to the computer contradicts an outdated paradigm, namely that we humans are the ones who make all the decisions and retain full control. By integrating randomness, we break with this perspective and give the computer limited freedom to make "decisions". In this way, we can elicit a breathtaking variety of variants from our sketches, giving a first, albeit chaotic, taste of the potential of generative design.

Attached to this post you’ll find a few very simple experiments that will become a part of this course. Feel free to experiment and share your results with us, on Discord or by dropping a download link here in the comments. 

In general, as always, I would be very happy to receive feedback here. Can you perhaps recommend resources on the topic of randomness? Please feel free to put your ideas in the comments!

A complete frontend overhaul of timrodenbroeker.de ✏️

I took a couple of days to rework and optimize the website for mobile and smaller devices. Basically, I completely rewrote a large part of the template code. In the process, I added some minor design features that you will surely notice. If you find any errors, please let me know.

That's it from me this week. See you next Friday, happy coding, happy learning!

Warm greetings, ☀️

Tim