Project #4 Digital Divination

Image from P5.js Palm Reader - Celeste Bohan

Description

For Project #4, We will use Javascript to create a browser-based divining experience. Your divination does not have to be spiritual or religious (think of the examples we went over in class such as Groundhog Day). But if you want to create something that is spiritual, cultural, or religious, you are welcome to. If you choose to base your project on an existing cultural or spiritual form of divination, just be mindful of your relationship with that practice (for example, is this from your own culture? If not, how can you avoid being appropriative or disrespectful in working with it?). The intention can be serious, such as self-reflection/connecting to nature, or it can be more satirical, such as building a divination ritual to decide which classes to take next semester. It's up to you to! Just be clear and communicative about your concept.

Your divination experience should take some sort of input from the participant (i.e. text, button click, form, hover, etc) and give them some sort of output (a written message, an image, a sound, etc). When you design your experience, you should take into strong consideration how you prompt the participant. To do this, think about the ritual you want to create and the purpose it serves. For example, you may ask a participant to hold a certain thought in mind, or stand up and move their body. Consider how the interface you create for your divination experience communicates to the participant.

Technical Requirements

Have some sort of user input through form elements and event handlers
Work locally with an HTML, CSS, and Javascript file and push your code to a github repository
Optional: We will go over Rita.js in the second week of the project. So if you want to incorporate an element of generative text, feel free to!

Required Readings

(1) The umbra of an imago: Writing under control of machine learning
(2) Traditional African Divination Systems As Information Technology

Resources

(1) Intro to Rita js, Allison Parish
(2) Markov Chains, The Coding Train
(3) Event Handlers, Mozilla
(4) Query selector, Mozilla

Timeline & Deliverables

April 14 | April 15: Complete a prototype. You should at the very least, have your html, css and js files set up and started. Post 1-2 sentences about your project concept in discord
Watch this video To get some understanding of Rita.js before our tutorial next week. (Note that Dan Shiffman also uses p5js in the examples but we won’t be.)
April 21 | April 22: Complete your project and be ready to present.

Submission Guidelines

Submit your finalized repository & github pages link to Canvas