Syllabus

Interactive Art and Computational Design

Spring 2016 Syllabus
Prof. Golan Levin

COURSE NUMBER, MEETING TIMES, MEETING LOCATIONS:

Course Numbers: 60-412, 62-726, 51-482, 51-882
Location: CFA-111, CFA building, CMU
Time: Tuesday/Thursday mornings, 8:30-11:30am
Course Calendar: http://bit.ly/golancoursecalendar

COURSE DESCRIPTION

This is an advanced studio course in arts-engineering and new media practice (with an emphasis for Spring 2016 on mapping and information visualization using geographic data). Topics surveyed in the course will be tailored to student interests, and may include: experimental interface design, locative and mobile media, data-driven activism, image processing and computer vision-based interactions, and other topics. Through a small number of exploratory assignments and a public capstone project, students will bolster interdisciplinary problem-solving abilities and explore computation as a medium for curiosity-driven experimentation. Enrolling students are expected to have demonstrable programming skills, without exception, beyond the level of an introductory class such as 15-112. Although the course will provide technical overviews of major visualization toolkits (including D3, Processing, and openFrameworks), assignments may be executed in the student’s preferred programming environment. Graduate students should register for section 51-882 or 60-712, which meets with the undergraduate sections 60-412 and 51-482.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Upon successful completion of this course, students will:

  • Have practical skills in the use of popular open-source arts engineering tools, such as Processing and OpenFrameworks, for new-media arts development
  • Gain familiarity with the repertoire of artists, designers, works and activities around interactive art, information visualization, and computational design
  • Understand the use of computational techniques in interactive 2D and 3D visualization
  • Understand how to execute a project iteratively from prototype to final work
  • Understand how to document and present creative work in person and online

REQUIRED COURSE MATERIALS

Students should have access to a personal laptop; OSX, Windows and Linux are all acceptable. However, although nearly all of the toolkits with which we work are free and cross-platform, example projects will generally only be given for OSX. An Android or iOS smartphone may also be helpful for some projects.

Except where otherwise indicated, students may develop projects in their preferred programming environment. The programming environments used for example projects and sample code are Python, JavaScript, Processing (Java), and OpenFrameworks (C++). For OpenFrameworks, students should have a suitable IDE installed (such as XCode or Visual Studio).

PREREQUISITES

Enrolling students are expected to have demonstrable programming skills, without exception, beyond the level of an introductory class such as 15-112. Although the course will provide technical overviews of major arts-engineering toolkits, assignments may be executed (except where indicated) in the student’s preferred programming environment. Graduate students should register for section 51-882, which meets with the undergraduate sections 60-412, 51-482, and 62-726.

CREDITS ALLOCATED

Spring 2016: 12 Units

ASSIGNMENTS

There are four main assignments: three small projects due at (approximately) 14-21 day intervals, and a Capstone project with a proposal, check-in, and public exhibition phase. Additionally, students must make weekly “Looking Outwards” research reports based on Internet research. More details are on the Assignments page.