Hello Everyone! Ed here, the creator of the vvvvirtual course (pronounced 'v4virtual' pun intended).
This course is meant to provide an introduction to many topics at once, including but not limited to complexity, new media art,
post-structuralism, philosophy, computational music etc. We'll be working through the lens of a Chapter-wise reading of Deleuze and Guattari's
A Thousand Plateaus as well as making glitch art and music using VVVV Gamma and PlugData
Why such a broad sweep?
For a lot of people, school as an institution has become a place dedicated to, in my opinion, not the production of good sensibility,
but absolute stupidity, due to its insistence of adherence to rules, regulations and authority, all aspects antithetical to the ideal of
true creative ability. Thus, most people come out of school feeling like they're stupid, talentless and afraid of mistakes. This last
point, in my opinion, is extremely dangerous, because it's through mistakes, chances and errors that life on Earth learns and
thus evolves. A society that doesn't stray, cannot grow. Deleuze, Chaos theory and Glitch art are three domains that I belive espouse
this approach to life in the most beautiful manner, for if we don't take a chance at life, how can we know what we could ever truly
become as people?
I use VVVV simply because it's a quick and easy way to prototype generative art without the back and forth of regular languages like P5.JS
, while also providing stronger foundations than frameworks like Touchdesigner, Tooll3 or Unreal Engine. VVVV also has many benefits
like multi-threading, standalone application export and linux distributions, allowing us to run sketches on devices like the Raspberry Pi.
Who is this course meant for?
Well, I've taken a leaf out of D&G's book and have made this course for adolescents in highschool. This is not meant to be a
highly technical course (except in sections clearly labelled 'advanced') but is instead meant to help you get a grip on the technical foundations to
make your own glitch art in VVVV, understand Deleuze and Guattari's Capitalism and Schizophrenia project in these trying times and
to help you create your own concepts in order to fall in love with the joy of learning. I'll be using a lot of basic high-school math to explain these concepts
so this can also be considered a soft intro to CS and Math as well for people that struggle with it :)