Creative Prompts

Following are a variety of very general prompt questions which may be useful for developing idea for the course.

Specificity is generative. The more details you can generate, the better you can communicate your intent. The following list of prompts may help you clarify details. These are meant to provoke your thinking, this is not a checklist.

Concept and Performance Prompts

  1. What the main idea?

  2. What is the machine?

  3. What physical dynamic processes are involved?

  4. What is the narrative implied by the dynamics?

  5. What, where, how? I.e., exactly what does the viewer see and hear, over what timescale, and at what physical scale?

  6. How does the performer experience exploration and practice?

  7. How is it surprisingly animate?

  8. Are there multiples?

  9. Is it repetitive in time? Is there a beginning or end?

  10. What is the role of the viewer?

  11. What question will be answered by making this work?

  12. What are creative constraints which would focus the performance on the chosen question?

  13. How does the physical form underscore the dynamic behavior?

  14. Where is the locus of agency?

  15. Is there some sense of success versus failure?

  16. Is the behavior something a human can do?

  17. Is it part of daily life experience?

  18. Does the action suggest a narrative context?

  19. Does the action involve a prop?

  20. How can the movement be captured in a line drawing?

  21. Can the tempo be varied? How would a different tempo affect the outcome?

  22. What skills and strengths can you apply to the execution?

  23. What new skills or experience will you need to explore this idea?

Machine Design Prompts

  1. What kind of materials are needed? How do they support the concept?

  2. What kind of sensors and actuators?

  3. Where can we cut corners on implementation? Where can we not?

  4. Are there specific alternatives to consider?

  5. What is the simplest mechanism which can achieve this?

  6. What are the fewest number of degrees of freedom which can achieve this?

  7. What kind of feedback makes the action controllable?

  8. How can the action be parameterized?

  9. What is the interaction between the parts?

  10. What is the free body diagram?

  11. What kind of proprioceptive sensing is needed?

  12. What kind of external sensing is needed?

  13. What kind of failures modes will it exhibit?

  14. What is the narrative potential of the failure modes?

  15. Is the process amenable to machine learning?

  16. What is the narrative potential of that learning process?

  17. Could the feedback process be mechanical? How does digital computation improve the result?

Abstracting and Resolving

A key technique for resolving an idea within limitations is Why-How Laddering, a process of abstraction and resolution. For a specific artistic impulse, please consider the “why”: what question does this answer, or why is this of interest? This can reveal a more abstract form of the idea, which in turn can be resolved into other execution forms. Iterating this process can focus an idea to help ensure the result will be fully considered.