at4x

POLYU SCHOOL OF DESIGN · SD5913 · SEMESTER 1 · 2026/27

Programming for artists and designers.

Thirteen weeks of Python for people who did not come here to be programmers. You will read more code than you write, ship what you make, and document how you made it.

Giovanni Lion · giovanni.lion@polyu.edu.hk

Slides · one deck per week · press S for speaker notes, O for overview

SD5913 · WEEK 01

Programming for artists and designers

Why are we here, Nake and Nees, computers and programs, Python, the tools, git & GitHub. What the room answered is linked from each question.

x SD5913 · WEEK 02

Reading code

Types, control flow, data structures, uv. Given working code, predict the output; given broken code, find the fault.

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SD5913 · WEEK 03

Getting data, and making it look like something

Scraping, matplotlib, generative visualisation. Assignment 2 is set here.

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SD5913 · WEEKS 04 – 13

Interfaces, installations, shipping, agents, the group project

Decks are published here the day before each class.

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Downloads: Week 1 slides as PDF · Week 2 slides as PDF · What the room answered, week by week · Words we use

Course documents

COURSE REPO · SD5913/PFAD

Tutorials, week by week

Branch 2026 is this year. Branch 2025 is last year’s complete thirteen weeks, kept as reference.

x REGISTRY · PFAD.AIT4X.ORG

Match your GitHub account to your student ID

Sign in with GitHub, enter the last four digits and the letter of your PolyU ID. Nothing is marked until you have.

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