Please add 2-4 slides to The Google Slide deck here to introduce yourself.
- I suggest a brief (~100 words) of your background and the key words/ideas/questions for your work, with representative images/video etc.
- You can include a more formal bio, or artist statement, or something more informal about the inspirations that brought you to the program.
- Remember to include your name, and reference details (name, link etc.) for any images or media you add.
- Please be careful not to delete your colleague's slides!
You will create an online journal. If you set up a github repository, you can use the wiki feature as a very simple, markdown-flavoured online note taker; or simply create markdown files in the github repository itself.
Every week, please post an update on your journal, capturing the work you have been doing. The journal as a whole will serve as a documentation of your development in the course. For practice based work, posts should include video, screenshots, embedded scripts, links to github code, or some other concete material. Posts don't need to be long, but should focus on key questions and/or insights discovered along the way. What surprised you? Did you surprise yourself? What are the key challenges you found? We will bring these into the discussion every week.
This weekly post should include practice studies, such as links to (or embeds of) Codepen scripts. Every week I will share some prompts for these studies. These studies can be relatively simple but should demonstrate something you have learned or document an investigation you have made. Make, make make!
As the course progresses, this journal will capture your progress in development towards the major assignments, which will also be added to the journal.
- You will investigate a topic that ideally intersects this year's topic/theme with something of value to your own research goals. Good research always begins by seeking out key papers and other relevant research resources.
- Some investigative tips:
- Use Wikipedia to identify keywords or terms, questions and issues, foundational publications and controversies, etc. This can also help to make your search more narrow/specific. Look for the edges of a body of research. Wikipedia is an excellet network of conceptual nodes (but also a potential rabbithole). But remember that it is an encyclopedia, and should be used mainly as a guide map.
- Use these terms and publications in Google Scholar and other academic search engines to find for papers that address the questions and issues. Follow
cited byandrelated articlestrails to find new leads. Aim to find the most significant (qualitatively & quantitatively) papers. You should be aiming for a collection of 25-50 potentially interesting papers on the topic at this point. - At the same time, look for conferences or journals that are more specific to your topic, and see if they have collections of proceedings online to browse through.
- Not all papers are available as PDFs online. You might be able to find them via York Libraries or also communities like ResearchGate, but do not let this roadblock your progress -- find alternatives to work from instead.
- At this point you may be able to formulate a first draft of a title of the topic or area, perhaps even a key question or problem statement; but don't worry at this stage if you haven't yet.
- Collect this list as a Reading List, formatted with MLA, APA or Chicago style as you prefer (but keep it consistent) -- again, Scholar can help source these, but be aware that not all entries are complete. Any non-academic/non-paper references may need special citation styles (e.g. URLs, published films or audio recordings, etc.)
- Post the results into your journal:
- The specific topic title or
- The keywords or search terms
- The research question/problem statement/abstract
- Your initial Reading List
- From this reading list, select 8-12 of them to study in more careful detail as you create an Annotated Bibliography.
- Use skimming/speed reading and organization to identify those that are most interesting or most worthy of more detailed review; and which would constitute an adquate treatment of the topic.
- Aim for diversity. Avoid using the same authors for the majority of the selection. Include distinct and opposing viewpoints if possible.
- Use primary sources where possible (in particular avoid blog posts, news articles, etc.), unless the secondary source adds a significant new idea (in which case you may want to cite both).
- Not everything has to be an academic paper, but ensure that at least 75% of your references are academic publications (conference articles, journal articles, etc.).
- See York SPARK's guide to annotated bibliographies here. The annotation for each paper would be 100-400 words, making around 2500 words total.
- Post the results into your journal:
- The specific topic title or
- The keywords or search terms
- The research question/problem statement/abstract
- Your initial Reading List
- Your final Annotated Bibliography
- Any commentary on observations you found while researching the topic that are not specific to the papers -- in particular, did you find a "gap" in the treatment of the topic that could be an important avenue for your own work?
Research is about sharing. Sometimes, that requires sharing how.
- Create a video-based tutorial (roughly 10-20mins) to introduce a technical topic.
- It could be an introduction to a platform we are not covering in class
- or an exploration of a library/API or SDK etc. available for one of our platforms
- or alternatively, it could be a tutorial on a technique or algorithm or mechanism or a part of mathematics etc.
- Whichever you choose, it should cover both of:
- introducing the key concepts, the unusual and interesting parts, and related work
- deep-dive developing a demonstration (coding a sketch) from the ground up, explaining via voiceover what you are doing at each step and why.
- You are welcome to use any screen-recording tool. Zoom is OK, Camtasia is pretty fancy, OBS is very powerful. Whatever you use, I recommend doing a few takes. Sometimes the first take is the best, sometimes the third. You are welcome to edit them together if it makes sense. But don't lose time making it 'slick' -- that's not the point here. People like Dan Shiffman or 3Blue1Brown do make beautiful videos but the most important part is that they convey what is interesting/valuable/powerful/etc. about the technical system/tool/algorithm/etc by explaining how it works.
- The final paper can continue from the Literature Review. You may incorporate documenting & contextualize your practice studies or one of your artworks. You could write a 'white paper' on a technique. You might re-implement a known research paper, and analyze the results. Or you might discuss more deeply ideas encountered in the bibliography. Perhaps pen a manifesto.
- Find a few other papers online that have similar focus, and analyze their structure as a guide.
- Find related conferences/symposia/journals/etc. to contrast other papers as well as submission and review criteria.
- You should identify at least one conference/festival/other appropriate venue to submit your research or research-creation. Investigate papers submitted to this in past years, and the submission requirements and review criteria.
- Document these findings in your journal.
- The format will be a very modern, online-first academic article. That is, one designed to be read online, with at least some active components, rather than primarily on paper. The notion of publishing in academia has been rapidly changing, and these changes are accelerating under pandemic conditions.
- See https://www.pubpub.org for an example of a modern online-first collaborative publishing venue. Many conferences in recent years have moved over to this format (e.g. NIME, ICLC).
- See https://distill.pub for an example of a modern, web-based peer-reviewed journal with embedded visualizations and interactive components.
- See https://jar-online.net for a different example more focused on art theory & practice.
- Alternatively, create your own using github, github-pages, html5/css/js, markdown/pandoc, D3.js, webgl or similar.
- Whichever platform is used, the paper should meet academic standards of relevance, clarity of writing, structure, balanced and evidence-based argument, critical thinking, and appropriate level and kinds of academic references.
- Post your final paper online -- either inside or linked from your journal.
Between week 9 and 10 we will run an 'internal review' process, emulating what is frequently done in conference submission review processes. Typically this means:
- A call for work (papers, demonstrations, artworks, panels, etc.) is made public.
- Authors submit a draft or extended abstract of a paper (or a proposal for an artwork etc.) by a certain deadline for review, usually using an online interface.
- Reviews are most often performed "blind" or "double-blind" (that is, reviewers and authors are anonymized).
- Each draft is sent to a handful of reviewers. Members of the review body are usually made up of many previous authors at the conferene. Though a conference may have hundreds of submissions, usually reviewers only have a handful assigned to them.
- Reviewers complete a review of the submission, usually using an online interface, by a certain deadline. Sometimes a meta-review is performed by a lead jury member of the conference to synthesize the reviews and reach a verdict on acceptance. Sometimes submissions are accepted, sometimes rejected, sometimes accepted but on different terms (e.g. long paper submission may be accepted as a short paper, with requirement to reduce length.)
- These reviews are sent back to authors, along with the accept/reject verdict. Authors of accepted papers must act upon any requirements or corrections identified by reviewers, and may follow further recommendations. Then the final submission is resubmitted with these changes by a new deadline (usually very shortly after receiving reviews).
For our purposes, you will act both as authors and reviewers: each of you will act as reviewers for the others' submissions.
For general review guidelines, see here and here or here, or here:
"The purpose of peer review is to improve the quality of the manuscript under review, and of the material that is eventually published. Conscientious peer review is a time¬-consuming task but is essential to assure the quality of scientific journals." Reviews should be conducted fairly and objectively. Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate. If the research reported in the manuscript is flawed, criticize the science, not the scientist. Criticisms should be objective, not merely differences of opinion, and intended to help the author improve his or her paper. Comments should be constructive and designed to enhance the manuscript. You should consider yourself the authors’ mentor. Make your comments as complete and detailed as possible. Express your views clearly with supporting arguments and references as necessary. Include clear opinions about the strengths, weaknesses and relevance of the manuscript, its originality and its importance to the field. Specific comments that cite line numbers are most helpful. Begin by identifying the major contributions of the paper. What are its major strengths and weaknesses, and its suitability for publication? Please include both general and specific comments bearing on these questions, and emphasize your most significant points. Support your general comments, positive or negative, with specific evidence. Is the aim clearly stated? Do the title, abstract, key words, introduction, and conclusions accurately and consistently reflect the major point(s) of the paper? Is the writing concise, easy to follow, and interesting, without repetition? Are the methods appropriate, sound, current, and described clearly enough that the work could be repeated by someone else? Is the research ethical and have the appropriate approvals/consent been obtained? Are appropriate analyses used? Are they sufficiently justified and explained? Are statements of significance justified? Are results supported by data? Are any of . the results counterintuitive? Are the conclusions supported by the data presented? Are the references cited the most appropriate to support the manuscript? Are citations provided for all assertions of fact not supported by the data in this paper? Are any key citations missing? Should any portions of the paper should be expanded, condensed, combined, or deleted?
As a structure, we will base our review form on materials as used by the SIGGRAPH Art Papers review body.