Algorithmic Art: Integrating Abstraction, Art, and Computational Thinking (Poster 2)

• In Event: Computational Thinking in Humanities

Abstract

Objectives
In this poster presentation, we discuss how middle school students used computational thinking to generate abstract images in the styles of Wassily Kandinsky and Josef Albers.
Background
These Op-Art pioneers use geometrical shapes and patterns to form their art, which lend themselves to a computers' strengths and built-in functionality. Computational thinking represents a formalization of human creative expression, just as art does. By blended art and coded learning activities, students apply computational thinking, use abstraction, and incorporate the algorithmic processes needed to create different works of art. Students build programs that produce different works of art each time the program is run (without changing the code), which creates the coded work of art (Neumann, Dion, and Snapp, 2021).
Methods & Data Sources
We conducted a case study of an integrated computer programming and art lesson with middle school students at a Girls Who Code club session. The lesson focused on designing abstract art pieces utilizing the Scratch and Codesters coding platforms. We recorded details of the lesson, collected students’ coded artifacts, and interviewed the teacher immediately after the lesson.
Results
As a result of this lesson, two themes emerged from the data. First, integrating art and computational thinking helped students learn how to be an artist through coding. Students created great works of abstract art as well as learned how to code loops, sequence executable commands, and use algorithmic processes. Students commented during the lesson about the nature of the abstract art they were learning about and they discussed the coding ideas required to create a work in the style of Albers and Kandinsky on their computers. Students discussed the need for randomness for the different colors and placements of the shapes. For example, one student commented, “you need a random circle generator” and after some prompting the students decided they would need loops to repeatedly draw the circles.
The second theme surfaced how the teacher realized that integrating these two disciplines was not only possible but enriching. After the lesson, she commented, “it was cool with how much range there was with what they could do...I was worried that covering loops and hexadecimal and random at the same time would be too much, but it wasn't. They caught up with random quickly. There was a lot of stuff they could incorporate, [if students were done early] it was easy to think of other things they could do.”
Scholarly Significance
Integrating art and coding lessons fosters skill development that is dynamic, creative, applies critical thinking, productive struggle, perseverance, learning from mistakes, and valuing the work of others in both disciplines. Teachers who use integrative approaches to lessons find that blurring the lines between the disciplines encourages students to expand their comfort zones, knowledge bases, and self-imposed limits. By bringing an art lesson into a coding club, student coders see that they can be artists, too; and maybe bringing the same lesson into an art class means that artists can see that they can be coders, too.

Authors

• Maureen M. Doyle-Neumann, University of Vermont
  Presenting Author

• Lisa Dion, University of Vermont
  Presenting Author