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Creative Motion Control Week 1: Hello World

Date: Tuesday, March 31, 2026

Topics​

Core Theme: Introduction to Creative Motion Control

  • Foundations of Creative Motion Control
  • Course Overview and Mechanics
  • Getting Started with Stepdance

[3:00 - 3:05 PM] | Introductions​

What questions brought you to this room?

[3:05 - 3:35 PM] | Lecture​

An overview of past and contemporary CNC development and poetic machine control. Lecture slides:

[3:35 - 3:45] | Overview of Course Website and Resources​

[3:45 - 4:00] Teams Assignment and Project Repo Setup Details​

Documentation is a critical activity in the course (see course overview). All students are required to create a github repo and github.io site with which to document their work. documentation guide

[4:00 - 4:40] Activity 1 -- Make your first machine​

Follow the Step-a-Sketch guide to make your very first machine: the Step-a-sketch.

[4:40 - 4:50] Project 1 Overview​

Review the requirements and timeline for Project 1

Assignments​

  • Complete course preparation activities if you have yet to do so: Week 0 Setup instructions.
  • Join the class discord and say hi on the #creative-motion-control-26 channel invite link
  • Follow the Documentation setup guide with your teammate to set up your team Github repository and github.io site for documentation: documentation guide Make sure to include a photo of each team member, and give your team (cool) a name.
  • Optional: sign up for lab hours Thursday.
  • Optional: experiment with the basic Step-a-sketch configuration. Can you change how the machine moves by changing the parameters of the program?

Resources and References​

  • Optional Reading: Interactive Fabrication: New Interfaces for Digital Fabrication:** ACM Paper
    • Karl D.D. Willis, Cheng Xu, Kuan-Ju Wu, Golan Levin, and Mark D. Gross. TEI 2011.