OPEN CIRCUIT

Closed Circuit Busan

Study guidelines

  • Thursdays · Online · 70 min
  • Two people per session
  • One paper per person

Each presenter picks one work from the SIGGRAPH and SIGGRAPH Asia Art Papers, organizes what it was made with and how into eleven fields, and presents it. The talk is a slide deck you click through in the browser, and once the talk is over it is added to the Study page in session order.

One session

Two people per session, 70 minutes

Each person gives a 20-minute talk, and then we spend 10 minutes taking it apart together. Turns follow the rotation order.

  1. 01

    One paper each

    The ten people in the rotation pair up and complete one full round by early November.

  2. 02

    The lineage of my work

    After one round, we talk about which lineage our own work belongs to. Three people per session, 20 minutes each.

  3. 03

    The session we all research

    The session on Unfold X has no presenter. Everyone looks them up beforehand.

Your turn and the weeks off are on the schedule.

What we read

SIGGRAPH · SIGGRAPH Asia Art Papers

Art papers are written by the artists themselves, so alongside the intent of the work they describe what it was made with and how. Choose a paper on tekneh.com and get the PDF from the shared drive.

  • tekneh.com

    Search 229 artwork papers from the SIGGRAPH and SIGGRAPH Asia Art Papers, 2009 to 2026, by tool, sensor, and output.

  • Shared drive

    PDFs of the papers we read are collected here. Search by title and download.

The method

Eleven fields

We ask the same eleven questions of every work. Because the questions stay the same, works become easier to compare as the count grows. On the slides, ⑩ and ⑪ go in the "How it was made" group.

  1. ①

    What does the audience do?

    Their body, their voice, their time, or nothing at all.

  2. ②

    What signals come in?

    Camera, sensor, microphone. Note the exact model.

  3. ③

    Where does the computation happen?

    A laptop, a server, or a microcontroller.

  4. ④

    What is live and what is prepared?

    Separate what changes in the moment from what was made in advance.

  5. ⑤

    What software was it built with?

    A game engine, TouchDesigner, custom code.

  6. ⑥

    What is the output?

    Screens, projection, speakers. Include counts and sizes.

  7. ⑦

    What did the venue need?

    Power, blackout, ceiling height, attendants.

  8. ⑧

    Was anything released?

    Check for links to code, drawings, or datasets.

  9. ⑨

    What question does the work ask?

    Write it in one sentence. For lineage, list only the names the paper itself cites.

  10. ⑩How it was made

    What was discarded, failed, or iterated?

    Versions, failed attempts, and what changed from one exhibition to the next.

  11. ⑪How it was made

    Who did what?

    Note the roles. The author list alone does not tell you.

Fields the paper does not cover go on one slide

Fields the paper leaves out are not filled in with guesses. They are gathered on a single "Not stated in the paper" slide and presented there. On that slide, do not write "there was none", "they did not", or "it was not used". All we can know is that the paper does not say. Whether the work had it is unknown.

Preparing a talk

Eight steps to prepare a talk

All the preparation happens in Cursor's chat. After steps 1 and 2, either hand the rest to the guide in one go or paste the prompts below yourself, step by step. No coding is involved.

The slide template, guide, and install scripts are all public in the Open Circuit tools repo. Replace the yellow parts of each prompt with your own. For your-work-name, write the name of the work you are presenting in English. For Session 1's Cutting Kim, that is cutting-kim. Use the same name across all the steps.

Switch models only for the draft

Cursor's default model is tuned for writing code. In step 4, where the agent reads the paper and makes a draft, type /model in the chat and switch to another company's model. We recommend Claude. Claude uses a lot of tokens, so your usage limit runs down quickly. Use it only for the step that needs it, and switch back to the default model afterward.

  1. 01

    Choose a paper and download the PDFPresenter

    On tekneh.com, search for works by conditions such as tools, sensors, and outputs, and settle on a paper. Find the PDF by title in the shared drive and download it.

  2. 02

    Open the OpenCircuit folder in CursorPresenter

    Use File → Open Folder to open the OpenCircuit folder inside your Documents folder. If it does not exist, create it from the open dialog. Every step after this happens in the chat (agent mode) in this window.

  3. Hand it all over

    Steps 3 to 8 can be left to the guide

    Paste the two lines below and the agent reads the guide in the tools repo, then asks and proceeds one step at a time. If you have never installed the Open Circuit tools, it installs them first and tells you to reopen Cursor when done. To do each step yourself, skip this box and go to step 3.

    Read https://raw.githubusercontent.com/joonhyungbae/opencircuit/main/prompts/05-study-guide.md and guide me through preparing my talk in that order.
The work is called your-work-name.

    If you are doing each step yourself and the tools are not installed, paste this before step 3. When the install finishes, quit Cursor completely and open it again.

    Check whether .opencircuit/repo exists in my home folder.
If not, install it following the "Install" section of the README at https://github.com/joonhyungbae/opencircuit.
If it does, run the bootstrap install script inside it with the update option.

  4. 03

    Create the talk folderAgent

    A your-work-name-study folder appears inside OpenCircuit with the slide template and the guide. Cursor cannot open drive links, so have it move the downloaded PDF into this folder too.

    Use web.sh --new in ~/.opencircuit/repo to create a study talk folder.
On Windows, use web.ps1 -New. The work is called your-work-name.
Once it is created, move the paper PDF I just downloaded from my Downloads folder into it.

  5. 04

    Make a draftAgent

    Type /model in the chat, switch to Claude, then paste the prompt. The agent reads the paper and fills in the eleven fields, gathering any fields the paper does not cover onto a single "Not stated in the paper" slide. When it is done, switch back to the default model.

    @your-work-name-study/04-study-slides.md
Fill in src/deck.json in the your-work-name-study folder using the paper PDF in that folder.

  6. 05

    Open the slidesAgent

    The slides open in your browser. Use ← → to move between slides and F for full screen. Any edits you make after this show up in the browser right away.

    Use web.sh in ~/.opencircuit/repo to open the your-work-name-study slides.

  7. 06

    Review the "Not stated in the paper" slideTogether

    The fields the paper leaves out are gathered on this one slide, with a yellow badge beside the title. Leave most of them as they are and use them as talking points in the discussion. If you found an answer outside the paper, such as an artist interview or exhibition video, fill in only that field.

    When you found an answer outside the paper

    On the "Not stated in the paper" slide of the your-work-name-study deck, fill in [field number, such as ⑦].
[Where I found it] says [what I found].
Move the filled field onto its own slide and set its badge to "Filled in by the presenter".

  8. 07

    Add figuresPresenter takes screenshots

    First get the list of figures needed. Capture those figures from the paper PDF, put them in the your-work-name-study/public folder, and say where each one goes.

    Get the list

    Show me a table of the slides in your-work-name-study that need figures, with the matching paper figures.

    After adding the screenshots

    Put [file name].png, which I added to your-work-name-study/public, into the figure slot on slide [number].
Do not shrink it.

  9. 08

    Write the three parts that are yoursPresenter writes the sentences

    The agent does not write these three parts for you. Write the three sentences in a notes app first, then paste them. If you leave out "exactly as written, without editing", the agent will polish your sentences.

    • Why you chose this paper

      Write where it connects with your own work.

    • The one sentence for ⑨

      Use your own words, not the abstract.

    • Discussion point three

      Write where this work and yours collide.

    Add the sentences I wrote to the your-work-name-study slides. Insert them exactly as written, without editing.
Why I chose it: [where my work and this paper connect]
⑨ one sentence: [the question this work asks, in my own words]
Discussion point 3: [where this work and mine collide]

    When the words will not come

    I am trying to write [why I chose it]. Do not write it for me. Ask me just three questions that connect my work with this paper.

If you stopped partway

Call up the guide copied into your talk folder and continue from where you stopped.

Read your-work-name-study/05-study-guide.md and continue guiding me from step [number].

If the slides will not open

Ask the agent for the cause. If you are still stuck, check the tools repo instructions or ask in the group chat.

Run web.sh --doctor in ~/.opencircuit/repo and tell me why the slides will not open.

After the talk

After your talk, send in your files

Presented slides are added to the Study page in session order. The organizer handles the upload, so all the presenter needs to do is compress the talk folder and send it.

If the discussion turned up things to fix, fix them first. The slides and figures sit in one folder, so compress the whole folder.

Compress the whole your-work-name-study folder.
Leave out node_modules and dist, and save it to the desktop.

Send the archive on your desktop to the organizer (Joonhyung Bae) in the group chat. Once it is up, we will post the link in the group chat.

Ground rules

What we agree to

  • Choose works starting from your own practice

    Pick a work that touches the problem you are stuck on right now.

  • Give two days' notice to swap turns

    If you cannot prepare one week, post in the group chat and swap with someone.

  • Leave unknowns blank

    Do not fill gaps in the paper with guesses. Keep them as something to look into next.

This group is separate from the regular curriculum and does not count toward attendance or assessment.