How Computation Applies to my interests.
I am a lighting designer with a background in computer science. In the art school where I learned theater lighting design, I discovered my passion and potential on making interactive media art. I have created things with many kinds of computers - from microcontrollers, smartphones, to entertainment lighting consoles. So my first answer to this question would be: Computation is everywhere in my interests. My art is dependent on computation.
But I am going to scratch that.
When I focus too much on the technological side of process, I tend to forget about PEOPLE. Computers are designed by people, but new technology is invented too fast that some people are being left behind. For the past year and a half, I have been fortunate enough to virtually meet with my parents. My parents, live on the other side of the world, have and know how to access the technology of video chat, which is expected of someone living in the 21st century.
On the other hand, I have been unable to speak with my grandparents. Despite living in a developed country, they can't even grasp the concept of internet, and have to rely on their children to use almost every technology that was invented after 1990.
I am sure there are many grandparents out there who are either unable or have extreme difficulties using technology to communicate with their family. I wonder why the design of our modern computer interface and applications are excluding older generations. And I think that one day the newest technology would also exclude me and my generation. So, for my time in ITP, I am interested in reinventing a less-ageist computational user interface.
The process of making a sketch with p5.js
The sketch is a self portrait, so I began with thinking about what I look like. I see the webcam camera on top of my screen, and realize these days I spend more time staring at my Zoom camera than in the mirror now! So I'm drawing myself sitting in a morning Zoom meeting as a cat.
I started with typing down in comments the elements by order. This order is like Photoshop layers from bottom to top. I decided the canvas' size and background color. For the body parts, I found the parameters of every function in the p5 reference. I couldn't quite understand how curve() works so ended up using line() for the whiskers. bezier() is interesting, but I wish I could change the stroke weight in a single stroke so it looked more like a tail. I also wish there was a way to recognize the coordinates of my curser in real time so I didn't have to do math in my mind all the time. I also wonder if there's a way to cut/trim a shape like a drafting software. LOL. Lastly, I was happy to find out the dark mode and the high contrast mode on the web editor. They make my eyes feel so much better.