The Messenger - Special Issue: Wicked Code
Socratus is organising a free online course: “wicked code” where creative coding meets climate change. The course starts on the 14th. No experience with code or data required. We would love to see participation from the readers of the Messenger and from your networks so please forward this message widely!
Interested: Register here.
Creative Coding meets Climate Change
Climate change can’t be understood as a standalone ‘scientific’ phenomenon that can be solved with renewable energy technologies. It’s a wicked problem that combines moral and material complexity. At the same time, we can’t address India’s climate challenges if we can’t measure them, and so we will likely need a comprehensive method of measuring and pricing carbon emissions (a carbon GST in colloquial terms).
So how do we get a grip on the problem of measuring carbon emissions at source?
We need to be able to combine an understanding of India’s climate scenario with a creative mindset: code, data and visualisation. That’s the focus of this two week course on creative coding for the climate. In this module we will develop a practice of the arts where code is your tool to tell stories, understand and visualise data, build interactive experiences, and measure the physical world. We will learn how to think computationally about carbon emissions in a local and global setting.
We will gain a foundation in how to play in code, with a focus on interactivity, data, visualisation, and experimentation. We will learn how to create sketches, generate sounds and images, create animations and installations, visualise data, and interact with machines. Through the course of the module, we will ideate, conceptualise, and design original creative works in code to better understand and reason about carbon emissions in the context of India’s needs. It will be conducted in the JavaScript P5. js library.
Who is it for?
It’s for anyone who wants to use computational thinking and creative practices to grasp the climate crisis in the Indian context. No prior experience with coding or data analysis is required; we will cover all the required ideas and tools from scratch. If you have experience with code and/or climate, we will provide additional material to keep you engaged. As long as you’re open to learning new ideas and having fun, you’re all set.
Where and when will it be held?
The two week course will start on the 14th of March and will be entirely online.
How much does it cost?
The course is free