Time is distance: Success/Failure is a function of time

This exercise felt like failure at the time but in retrospect was satisfying progress in playing with play and time. I gave myself a timebox to play with Martin Andersson Arberge's implementation of Conway's Game of Life. My success criteria was a looping animation that plays with the emotional effect of colour and shape of the cells and their generated patterns. You can see the above iteration: there's no colour, no shapes other than the square cells and it doesn't loop gracefully as intended. 

Against this success critieria, when my time ended I felt discontent and dissatisfied with the outcome:

f(i) = Failure

where i is the interim time when this part of the planned activity ended. The completion of this exercise is in the second part of the activity is the synthesis and reflection, and at this time I feel proud and satisfied with the outcome:

f(c) = Learning

where c is the completion time because success and failure is a falsely binary result. I've enjoyed learning about Conway's Game of Life through playing with the code.

Perhaps this visceral feeling of failure is one of Bjork's desirable difficulties and this is my experience of learning slowly is learning deeply (Epstein, 2019). In which case, learning truly is a function of time.

I feel a sense of achievement in making something generative for the first time but I still feel the drive to play with colour and shape with inspiration from the Bauhaus artists I love and the constructivist idea of the engineer as artist.

Next time APD, next time.