Week 6 Studio: Crit: First Instrument

The studio where First Instrument is due and shown, and the shift from building for yourself to building for a stranger's hands

29 March 2027

Before the studio#

Submit First Instrument before the studio starts, per the assessment page. Bring it running on a machine you don’t control, if you can borrow one — your own laptop already knows how to use your instrument, which is exactly the thing this studio is checking for.

In the studio#

Full crit format: everyone’s instrument gets handed to someone who has never seen it, with no instructions given out loud. What breaks in that silence is the actual result of five weeks’ work, not the demo you’d give if you were standing next to it explaining. Marking happens after the studio, against what was shown here and what’s in the repository, not against a later polish pass.

Afterwards#

Whatever the room found in the first thirty seconds of silent handling is the most useful single fact you’ll get about the build all semester. Write it down before the next studio’s constraint replaces it in your head.