Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

Introduces students to computer programming that encompasses knowledge of art/design history and practices, and introduces a deep approach to design thinking in creating interactive software projects. This programming-intensive course includes an introduction to Interactive Design Computing and the history of ideas that lead to modern interactive computing systems and emphasizes decision making in software design process, historical perspective of art and design, interactive software objects, iterative design cycles and design rationale in producing interactive software and introduces a historical perspective on these techniques.

COURSE DETAILS:

Student will engage with the practice of making interactive technology by writing programs in an object-oriented programming language by their design and implementation in software in a progression of interactive software projects based on interdisciplinary goal oriented design needs. They will also be able to engage critically with the intellectual and ideological underpinnings of interactive computing.
Student programming assignments culminate in a term-long project, where each student will engage with a stakeholder of their choosing to design and develop an interactive computing system ideally in collaboration with the stakeholder. There will also be a final essay containing a critical analysis of readings that concern an issue in interdisciplinary techniques interactive computing, such as ethics, the aesthetics of computing platforms, the ideology of visual realism, the power of interactive systems to enforce compliance, and any other reasonable issue germane to visual computing. Grading for assignments will be based on individual improvement.
The course would take a parallel tracks model, with the computer/technical materials introduced on Tuesdays, and the interdisciplinary computation media history and theory taking place on Thursday.

COURSE-LEVEL EDUCATIONAL GOALS:

Students will be able to critically engage in interdisciplinary design thinking in the development, design, implementation and testing of interactive software projects. Students we be able to bring in knowledge and practices from art making, design process and the historical record of interactive design computing into their software practices. Students will learn to express themselves programmatically. Student will understand computing as problem-solving, computing as aesthetic experience, computing as expressive media, computing as a user-centered artifact.

Grading

Materials

MATERIALS + SUPPLIES:

REFERENCE READINGS may include:
"New Media from Borges to HTML" by  Lev Manovich [online version is excerpt] 
"'Happenings' in the New York Scene" by  Allan Kaprow, 1961 
"AUGMENTING HUMAN INTELLECT: A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK" by Douglas C. Engelbart, 1962 
"Sketchpad" Ivan Sutherland, 1963
Selections by Experiments in Art and Technology From "9 Evenings E.A.T.", Billy Klüver, 1966
"A Personal Computer for Children of All Ages" by  Alan C Kay, 1972 
"Responsive Environments" by Myron Krueger, 1977 
"Direct Manipulation: a Step Beyond Programming Languages" by Ben Shneiderman, 1983 
"Interface for Advanced Computing" by James D Foley, 1987 
"Ubiquitous Computing" by Mark Weiser, 1993 
"Bricks: Laying the Foundations for Graspable User Interfaces" by Fitzmaurice, G., Ishii, H., & Buxton, W., 1995 
"Computation and human experience" by Philip Agre, 1997 
"Code is Law: On Liberty in Cyberspace" by Lawrence Lessig, 2000 
"Expressive AI: A hybrid art and science practice" by Michael Mateas, 2001
"Reflective Design" by P Sengers, K Boehner, S David, JJ Kaye, 2005 
"Computational Aesthetic Evaluation: Past And Future, From Computers and Creativity" by P Galanter, 2012

REQUIRED READING: