{"id":93,"date":"2023-08-04T14:14:14","date_gmt":"2023-08-04T14:14:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/unewhavendh.org\/representations-of-nature\/?page_id=93"},"modified":"2024-08-29T18:04:48","modified_gmt":"2024-08-29T18:04:48","slug":"assignment1","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/unewhavendh.org\/algorithms-and-arts\/assignment1\/","title":{"rendered":"Assignment 1: Getting Started"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

For most of this course, you will be encountering creative works you\u2019ve never experienced before. But we\u2019re not doing that quite yet. As we get started, you\u2019re going to select a story that you\u2019ve already read (or watched or played)\u2013one that prompted a memorable experience. Making such a selection can seem a bit daunting. Maybe you\u2019re not in the habit of reading these days or maybe you don\u2019t think the stories you consume are worth mentioning to a \u201cliterature\u201d professor. Trust me, this process will work with any story (a novel, film, album, videogame, etc). This is because all stories (from Star Wars<\/em> to Beowulf<\/em> and from Hamlet<\/em> to Bridgerton<\/em>) are fundamentally tools that do work on our brains. These tools are crafted by artisans (authors, content creators, stand-up comics, songwriters, video game developers, etc.) who draw on an ever-expanding set of techniques as they create. Literature scholars like to argue about which stories are superior (this is why we have a literary canon), but if it has a character doing something, it\u2019s a story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In other words, be honest about what you like! Your semester will be most enjoyable if you use this first assignment to explore something you have genuinely enjoyed. Once you\u2019ve put a name to the experiences you\u2019ve had with stories in the past, you can find more stories that have provoked similar experiences in others. If it\u2019s hard to pick just one story, you can go through this process for two or three different stories. The more you explore in this assignment, the more you\u2019ll discover about your preferences (and remember, that\u2019s the point of this assignment).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once you\u2019ve decided on the story you\u2019ll explore in this assignment, make sure you have access to it. It\u2019s often been the case that students don\u2019t have a copy of the book they read five years ago or don\u2019t have the right setup to play a specific video game on campus. Talk to me if this is the case. Within the two weeks you\u2019ll spend on this assignment, there should be time to track it down. You can also change your choice if it turns out you can\u2019t access the story. You will need to be able to quote from it to meet the requirements for this assignment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We have two primary goals with this assignment. First, we want to isolate specific story experiences and try to figure out which specific features of the story prompted those experiences. While we\u2019re doing this, we also want to try to remember how we learned about this story that has been meaningful in our lives (this will be the beginning of our work exploring algorithms). Once we\u2019ve isolated the features of the story and considered how we came to know about the story, we\u2019ll try to figure out the technique\/s the author used to create those features. We\u2019ll do this step by step and you\u2019ll submit a piece of writing that shows your thought process. This means that you are not (for this or any other assignment this semester) going to be asked to produce a traditional \u201cEnglish paper\u201d (clear thesis statement supported with evidence from the text). Instead, you are going to describe, explore, and chronicle your process figuring out how you think one or more stories work. You might feel an urge to find out if others have already figured it out and it\u2019s fine to do this (though definitely not required). It\u2019s unlikely you\u2019ll figure everything out, and that\u2019s okay. If you do find a source that offers an explanation (like an article or a blog post), make sure to cite it! 
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Describe your Experience<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Describe how you came to experience the story you\u2019ve chosen, starting with your best recollection of how you found the story. Did you search for it or did a friend recommend it? Was it assigned reading in a course or did it show up on your Netflix feed? Try to remember the year or even the specific time of year. Next, try to remember the way you felt when you first experienced the story. More specifically, try to put into words the emotions you experienced when you encountered the story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Classify your Experience <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Now that you\u2019ve described your experience, you\u2019re going to consider whether others have had that same experience with a story. This might be a little challenging because it\u2019s not what we typically do with stories in a classroom. You might be expecting to interpret<\/em> stories in a course with an English professor, perhaps using class discussion to debate the meaning of Frankenstein\u2019s relationship with the monster he created in Mary Shelly\u2019s Frankenstein<\/em>.
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But with this assignment, I\u2019m not asking you to find out if someone has interpreted the story you\u2019ve chosen in the same way you have. Instead, I\u2019m asking you to determine if others have had a similar experience with any work of literature<\/em>. You can see in the list of experiences below that an experience is different than an interpretation (and wildly different works of literature can prompt similar experiences. What you see below is just a fraction of the many unique experiences people have with stories<\/p>\n\n\n\n