ACT I · PAPER
ACT II · TEXTILE
ACT III · ZINE
ACT IV · GAME
Passages
Index cards, string, and a hypertext with choices that count.
Twine + Harlowe
Patterns
A grammar is a pattern: symbols, rules, and the pieces that repeat.
Tracery
INTERMISSION + BREAK · BETWEEN ACTS II AND III
Demo: Claude Code as power tool
We'll build something complicated together, then let it finish on auto mode while we keep making. It keeps working through a 15-minute break and Act III, and we check what it did in Act IV.
Sketches
Shapes, clicks, and drifting text. Fork it, credit it, give it away.
p5.js
Agents
Work with an agent to unflatten the grammar into a 3D print, and keep track of who decided what.
Claude Code + OpenSCAD
BRING
- A laptop with a current web browser. Everything in the reference files runs offline from this folder.
- For Act I: index cards, string or yarn, tape, and a marker.
- For Act III: a free OpenProcessing account.
- For Act IV: a free GitHub account, and Claude Code (claude.ai/code in a browser is enough). No subscription? The act includes a way to work with a free chat assistant instead. OpenSCAD (free) if you want to open the print files yourself.
SOURCES
- The talk this workshop accompanies: Critical (Un)Making and the Agentic Humanities (the four acts, crafts and avatars come from its slides).
- Emily K. Johnson and Anastasia Salter, Critical Making in the Age of AI (open access).
- Tutorials adapted from ENG 6819, Critical Making in Digital Humanities (UCF, Spring 2026): exercises on hypertext, grammar, code, generation, and tools.
- The cryptex and flower spinner: Emily K. Johnson, ekjphd.com/unmaking.