Yes

The Art and Science of Light

Let there be light! is the command that began everything. Begin to understand the science of light by playing with what you can do with it.

Construct a sundial to tell time with shadows. Paint images with sun beams. Blend red, green and blue lights to color shadows. Experiment with ultraviolet light that sees new colors and glows. Construct a Camera Obscura that guides an artist’s hand to make art, or can become a projector to project that art. Build a tiny lighthouse and small ship it can guide.

Build shadow puppets to perform with your group in digital light.

Signal Boats

Long ago sailors realized they needed to communicate with other boats that their voices could not reach. They invented flags with colors and patterns to speak commands or spell words as far as the eye can see.

Learn the international language of boats. Master the A-B-Cs of flags. Build boats each day, that use flags in their work: a fishing boat, a tug boat, a freighter, a rescue boat and more. Build a lighthouse whose flashing light speaks through storms.

Use your boats and flags to speak to friends far away.

The Art and Mystery of Mazes

Construct and share mazes to explore an ancient art form that teaches and tests.

Create a classic maze with creatures and heroes, climbing maze to compete with friends, an electric maze to train steady hands, an artful quilled paper labyrinth for a magnetic marble, a Castle Escape Room, a digital maze that connects you to new friends far away. Mazes, like stories, have beginnings middles, and ends.

These mazes like stories are designed to be shared.

Robot Letters

In the beginning, computers spoke only in ones and zeros. We taught them words so we could communicate with them easily.

Teach the computer how to write using only basic commands in the Python programming language. Make a list of instructions that move a cursor precisely how each letter must be formed. Then, take your program and make a robot act them out.

Cyphers and Secrets

Sometimes hiding information is a battle. Sometimes it is a game.

This is a game. Learn to use the first level and simple tools of a code breaking program. The class will divide into two teams. Each team will write their own codes and attempt to unravel the other teams's code.

Practical note: there will always be work for artful encryptors

Illuminated Letters

Scribes who copied manuscripts in the Middle Ages sometimes added flourishes of individual artistry in their colorful elaboration of the letters that began chapters. Sculpt and engrave your initials in acrylic with a Laser Cutter. Then illiminate it with the colors of LEDS and a circuit you will assemble.

Laura Discenzia is a STEM teacher at Davis Academy for Arts & Design Innovation

Your Type

Kalli(beautiful) graphy (writing). The computer offers tools that allow you to shape letters with artistry that once required years of practice. Keep practicing your handwriting. But try the new tools as well.

Learn to use a Laser Cutter to cut a classic Asian 'chop', a stamp a merchant would use to identify goods or transactions.

Cut your name in wood type. Cut your initials into a stencil. Print a tee shirt.

The Wadsworth Coder: Hacking 1816

Writing is a code. It can deliver messages with open clarity. It can deliberately hide meaning. Eli Whitney's friend Decius Wadsworth devised a brilliant coding machine over 200 years ago.

• Construct simple letter substitution coders.
• Construct a working Wadsworth Cipher machine.
• Send secret messages that only your friend can read.

Analog Hand: Hand Cranked Word Processing

for centuries, great mechanics sought to make machines to rival the human hand. Japanese, French and Swiss masters all succeed. And now you.

• Construct a machine than can crank out your initials.
• Contruct Thomas Jefferson's 'Polygraph' copier.
• And other clever copiers.

Lettering Tools: 26 marks to make.

The history of civilization has been written by many hands and tools. Compile a deck of sculptural building cards with 26 different implements.

• Fingertips, sticks, charcoal, stones, shells.
• Stylus, reed, etching, carving, needle, brush.
• Qalam, quill, nib pen, fountain pen, crayon, pencil.
• Chop, seals, stamps, wood cut, type, typewriter.
• Stencil, engraver, branding, cross stitch, decal, laser cutter…
to name just a few possibilities.

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