Maths and Art is one of our papers this semester and it looks to be pretty intense. It replaces Intro to Creative Technologies. Our first class, we were given a run down of what to expect and our assignments. I'm going to keep Maths and Art as a separate entry from the studio entries so that it can be documented properly as this paper is going to be quite an exploration.

The aim of the paper is is to develop an understanding of both Maths and Art and explore interdisciplinary creative practice between them.

We'll explore history and various contexts of art and basic concepts in maths.

We'll also be doing a lot of research - reading of texts from libraries and academic resources and honing our academic writing skills too. Aside from the lectures and tutorials (and own research), we will have a literature review - That is a culmination of our research efforts, an Essay - Our own arguments based on the review and a Practical Project which I can't really go into yet and I'm a bit hazy on it.

We also had an outline of the rest of this semester and it looks both daunting and exciting and interesting. This semester instead of 4 Studio projects, we will be given 2. They will be broader scope, and we'll be able to use previously learnt skills but we will also be learning new skills and software in order to complete the projects. There will be more to them but we'll have more time as there are only 2.

The 3rd paper, Design and Data Structures will be like the short but intense Programming for Creativity, this time we'll be learning C and writing an application for an iPhone. Because of this (and the fact that I'll be busy anyway) I'll hold off from further self-directed learning in that subject (I might revisit it at some point though). Instead I might dedicate my spare moments (not that I'll really have any) to some more PHP learning and mySQL, because I have a website idea that I want to execute, and I'd kind of like to either write the site from ground up or know enough to pull apart an existing CMS and customise it to my needs - I doubt there is a CMS off the shelf to do what I'm planning. Also I've been trying to watch one video a night (failing half the time though) from Khan Academy on Mathematics. The plan is to work my way through all the videos on various maths subjects and become rather good with maths.

Footnote. You have got to be kidding me! The sidebar puts this label "10" directly under 1. Yes I know how that works and why, I just expected better. Spoilt by current generation OS's (even Windows finally) that order numbered lists correctly. I need to fix it soonish...