Each student authors an identity, builds the generative system through which it speaks, and carries that system into an exhibition-quality artefact.
Four weeks, each ending on a Friday. Critiques close the first three weeks; the opening closes the fourth. Select a day to jump to it.
Take a position
One authored identity, a manifesto and an identity card. Submitted as A1.
Write the rules
A working system and twenty outputs. Submitted as A2.
Give it a body
A locked production file and a physical prototype.
Every day has the same shape: talk in the morning, make through the middle, and end at the wall.
The wall builds up across the month. By Day 15 it should show every identity's direction, so the cohort reads as one archive, not twenty separate projects.
Twenty students share one A2 plotter, one resin printer and the in-house archival printer. At Critique 2 on Day 10, each student chooses one pathway or several. No one has to produce all three. From Day 11 every machine is booked through a shared queue.
By Friday every student speaks from one authored identity: a named practitioner tied to a real condition of the world they will graduate into. Displacement is used as a lens on that world, not a way out of it. Read the brief →
Opening talk: Out of One's Place. A short history of generative art and its masters. A walk through the plotter, resin printer and archival printer, with past work. Set up GitHub, create your repository, and set up Codex.
Coordinates exercise: list the places, languages, roles and routes you already hold.
Reading: Pessoa's heteronyms and Duchamp's Rrose Sélavy, authored selves with full bodies of work.
Conditions exercise: choose a real condition (water, labour, migration, language, automation, the city, care) and ask who is shaped by it.
Identity worksheet: the condition, the position, the facts, what it attends to and refuses, its beliefs and rules. Pair interviews: a partner questions the identity for 20 minutes.
Codex as interlocutor: five computational metaphors, no code yet.
Manifesto workshop: 150 words, read aloud, edited by cutting.
Field research: real archives, materials, sites and data from the identity's world, not a style moodboard.
Critique runs all day. Students not presenting revise and draft the identity card and a one-page proposal with an initial generative concept.
By Friday every identity has a working system. The system needs parameters, constraints and controlled randomness, and must produce at least 20 outputs. It should not be possible to mistake its rules for someone else's. Read the brief →
Foundations: pixels and vectors, CPU and GPU, rendering. Then: what a generative system is (inputs, rules, parameters, randomness, seed). Codex as researcher: the algorithms behind your chosen metaphor.
Clinics: agents and simulation; cellular automata; data as material, using real datasets from the identity's condition.
Codex as collaborator: propose the architecture before writing code. Seeds and reproducibility.
Twenty Variations of Myself: twenty seeds or settings. How far can the system change and still be this identity?
Codex as critic: analyse the outputs without erasing the voice. Authorship log: what Codex suggested, what you rejected and why.
Peer-group review in fours.
Critique runs all day. Students not presenting choose a fabrication pathway and book machine time.
By Friday every student has a locked production file and a physical prototype. Each student works in one medium or several: only plots, only prints, a resin object, or all three. Capacity is 6–8 A2 plots and 4–6 resin objects. The archival printer can take everyone, so it is the fallback. Read the brief →
Demos in rotation. Plotter: A2 is 420 × 594 mm; covers SVG, path ordering, pen lifts, nibs and paper. Resin: watertight meshes, wall thickness, supports, safe handling. Archival: 300 PPI at final size, colour profiles, TIFF or PDF.
Codex as fabricator: export pipeline (SVG optimisation, STL repair, high-resolution TIFF). Resin test prints begin, one a day.
Test plots on two papers and two nibs. Resin test washed and cured. Archival colour proof and test strip.
The hero piece at reduced scale or as a section. Draft process.md, explaining the computational logic in your own words.
Critique runs all day. Students not presenting lock the production file and write an exhibition proposal (what is shown in the zone and how).
By Thursday all twenty zones are installed. By Friday the archive opens as An Atlas of Elsewhere: twenty identities connected through the Collective Atlas. Read the brief →
Final archival prints. A2 and resin finals continue in their queues. Artist statement workshop. Each student gets coordinates on the Collective Atlas.
Resin post-processing, print checks, mounting (framing to be confirmed). Identity cards, labels and QR codes linking to each repo.
Photograph the artefacts. Finish the repo: README, process.md, final-statement.md and the authorship reflection. Gallery layout fixed on the floor plan. Collective Atlas entries submitted.
Hang the hero works and set out the zones (identity card, manifesto, QR code, artefact). Assemble the Collective Atlas. Lighting and technical tests.
Morning: walkthrough, label and QR check, a 60-second introduction for each identity (opening checklist). Opening in the evening. The exhibition stays open Sat 19 Dec.
Each critique takes the full day with one facilitator: 9:30–12:30 and 1:15–2:45, about 13 minutes per student. The student's peer group of four sits in. Students who aren't presenting keep working in the studio.
13 minutes per student, 20 students, one room. Critique 1 assesses A1 (20%) and Critique 2 assesses A2 (30%); Critique 3 is feedback towards A3 (50%). Read the critique rubrics →
Who is speaking? What do they care about? Would this voice matter outside the studio?
Bring identity worksheet, manifesto, references, the condition it answers to, the week’s log on one A4 sheet.
Does the system speak in the identity's voice, or could anyone's rules have made this?
Bring running system, 20 outputs, parameter table, authorship log, the week’s log on one A4 sheet.
Does the physical work embody the system, and does the material carry the identity's position?
Bring prototype, test log, production file, exhibition proposal, the week’s log on one A4 sheet.