Refactoring
This was an assignment in ICM during our unit on pixels. I really enjoyed making it and mostly enjoyed the result. However, I wasn't necessarily prioritizing clarity in the code, so I wanted to work on making the variable names more clear. Also, I didn't like that the pixels wouldn't show up as squares in fullscreen, because the rectangles had a different width and height that was proportional to the window. I also wanted the video to always be the full window, as it will be living on my github pages, rather than in the p5 editor. Lastly, I wanted the text to show up in front of the pixels. I definitely used chatGPT, especially for the grid update and getting the text to appear in front. I don't think I would have thought about storing positions, then reapplying them after the loop, so I feel like I learned a new technique. I tried to do the grid update alone, but with 3 sets of width/height variables (originally pw,ph,cw,ch,wr,hr) I kinda lost the plot about what was affecting what. Chat was really helpful in figuring out what each one did in the code. I did have to go back and forth, and be very specific about what I wanted.
I'm really happy that I had the chance to come back around to this, because I always felt like it had potential but I haven't really had the time to circle back. Now I have some ideas about how I could use it for poetry related art. Moving forward I'd like to either focus on a mix of video/pixel art or more 3D parametrics. I'm going to be taking the 7 week multi-screen experiences course, which will be doing stuff with the p5 video kit... but I really enjoyed making 3D parametrics. I'm considering combining this final with either that course or with two of my other computation heavy classes. I have 3 final project ideas that I want to make across my five classes, and at least two will involve generative visuals... so I'm ideating right now!