4 units
An introduction to the concepts of creative computing. Students will learn about the digital arts field with an emphasis on technological developments and their integration in art production.
4 units
Integrative overview of media arts and technologies, emphasizing the interconnections between technologies and humanities (means and ends), engineering and mathematics (concrete and abstract), and arts and science (synthesis and analysis). The THEMAS model proposes a continuum across disciplines previously separated by narrow specializations. It builds upon the successes of STEM/STEAM, with greater emphasis on the humanities, creativity, and synthesis.
Courses exploring the intersection of art and technology, including its broader social impacts and ethical implications. Topics vary.
Media Arts and Design: Concepts and Fundamentals is an introductory course that covers the principles and practices of media arts and design. Students learn to create digital graphics, audio compositions, and video productions using digital tools and technologies. The course adopts a hands-on approach, emphasizing emerging design techniques such as generative artificial intelligence, parametric design, and algorithmic composition. The course challenges students to critically evaluate the role of media arts and design in contemporary society.
Project-based course with an emphasis on technical skills within the context of digital arts or music. Topics vary.
Media Arts and Design Skills: Fundamental Skills is an introductory course that focuses on the skills and practices of media arts and design. Students identify a theme and explore it through reading and making over six weeks. The course emphasizes a hands-on approach and requires physical evidence of students' efforts. Students analyze successful architects, designers, and artists who defined the areas of media, arts, and design. The end goal is a successful final project presented in an exhibition format on campus.
4 units
Overview of the digital media arts field with an emphasis on technological developments and their integration in art research and production. Students are introduced to contemporary and historical directions and methodologies through seminar lectures, research presentation, and a final project.
4 units
Overview of music and technology, including historical aspects. Readings and exercises with a range of music software applications. Basics of Internet audio and evolving media, music production, business, technical, and aesthetic aspects.
4 units
This course surveys pattern formation mechanisms. Many complex visual phenomena can be generated from less than 100 lines of code, such as the Mandelbrot set, reaction-diffusion, and the Lorenz attractor. We will study and implement a variety of these phenomena.
4 units
Basic concepts in digital signal and image processing (transforms, convolutions, etc.), filter design, image enhancement and coding, digital video.
4 units
Recommended Preparation: One quarter introductory programming course and one quarter "data structure and algorithms" course.
Hands-on introduction to developing multimedia applications. Representation and perception of sound, images, and time. Media computing paradigms including OOP, callbacks, multithreading, OpenGL, distributed computing, algorithmic control, indeterminacy, real-time interactivity, and mapping data between sensory modalities. Students develop a series of audiovisual works (as C++ software) leading to a final project.
4 units
Comparison of electronic and traditional media. Topics: Impact of networks on art and commerce, social history of communication technologies. Notions of authorship, shifting role of corporations in an increasingly global economy. Impact of multi-user environments and virtual reality technology on society.
4 units
Covers advanced computer graphics topics in rendering, animation, and modeling. Topics may include, but are not limited to: programmable shading, General-Purpose GPU (GPGPU) computing, rigid body dynamics, OpenCL programming, physically based animation, subdivision surfaces, shadow algorithms, character skinning methods, ambient occlusion, and fractal growth algorithms.
4 units
Fundamentals of digital imaging systems, including the capture, storage, display, and retrieval of image and video data. Topics include the nature of light, color, optics, sensors, human vision, image processing, and computervision.
4 units
Computational systems of rules, relationships, and behaviors can extend traditional art and design practices or support new creative workflows. We will explore the creation of computational systems for visual art and design. We will use creative coding platforms and algorithms to create visual works that are flexible, dynamic, and generative. In the process, we will touch on the design philosophy and abstractions of existing creative coding platforms and examine methods to create alternatives. Students learn basic approaches to modify creative programming languages and frameworks or develop new software interfaces for visual expression. Technical production will be complemented by readings on computational art and design theory.
4 units
Computational tools create new opportunities for making things, yet designing expressive computational systems poses many challenges. Addressing these challenges requires finding ways to integrate rigorous and structured research and development methodologies with observations of real-world creative production, and dialog and collaboration with different kinds of makers. This course is for Ph.D and Masters students with an interest in researching and designing computational technologies for art, design, manufacturing, or craft. The course is run as a seminar involving discussion of readings and concepts presented in lecture and exploration of human-computer interaction research methodologies.
4 units
Computational fabrication enables people to design digital forms by writing code and then construct these forms, at least partially, via fabrication machines, like 3D printers and computer-numerical-controlled (CNC) machines. In this course, students explore tools, workflows, representations, and applications of computational fabrication. Students are instructed in the use of computer-aided-design software tools and programming languages aimed at the design of physical artifacts. The course also covers the process of converting digital designs to physical form through computer-aided machining (CAM) for different forms of additive and subtractive CNC machines.
4 units
Recommended Preparation: Some experience in programming and basic acoustics.
A six-quarter practical programming course devoted to digital audio applications development. The emphasis is on learning to use current state-of-the-art programming methods, tools, and library APIs. Programming assignments are given in the C, C++, Java, Smalltalk and/or SuperCollider programming language.
Topics: A. Using Commerical I/O APIs; B. Spectral Transformations; C. Spatial Sound Manipulation; D. Sound Synthesis Techniques; E. Multi-rateControl and Synchronization; F. Media Application Integration.
4 units
Theoretical and applied directions in arts-engineering research.
4 units
Recommended Preparation: Some knowledge in any or all of the following relavant fields: computation,simulation and modeling, aesthetics and visual studies.
Enrollment Comments: Open to non-majors. Designed for majors.
Interdisciplinary course to analyze the digital computational image, its history, the theoretical, conceptual, philosophical underpinnings, issues of aesthetics, and critical analysis of simulation and representation. Course bridges arts, engineering, humanities. Assignments include reports and possibly projects.
4 units
Interdisciplinary course/seminar/practice for artists, academics, engineers, and designers interested in exploring the technological aesthetic, cultural, and political aspects of the space side of the aerospace complex. Design history, space complex aesthetics, cinema intersections, imaging/telecommunications, human spaceflight history, reduced/alternating gravity, experimentation, space systems design/utilization.
4 units
Project-based course focused on aesthetics of algorithmic visualization. Course concentration on fundamentals of data visualization and design, with an emphasis on data query, analysis, processing and visualization in linear, 2D frequency, and spatial map visualizations.
4 units
The follow-up projects course to MAT 259A. Emphasis on data processing, representation of abstract data in 3D, interactivity, and correlation with an external data source such as NY Times. Emphasis on exploration of algorithmic processes, and aesthetics of visualization.
4 units
Recommended Preparation: Demonstrated experience and accomplishment in creative and analytical fields; programming; interactive media; 3D computer graphics; geometry and trigonometry; physics; art/architecture/music/design; theory and criticism.
Artistic, philosophical, scientific, and technical foundations of transdisciplinarity, transmodality, and Transvergence. New conceptions of actual, virtual, and informational space and form. Trans-Euclidean geometry, from Gauss to present. Emergence and immanence in algorithmic poetics and information aesthetics. Models of physical, biological, and social complex systems. Worldmaking and epistemology.
Open to non-majors.
4 units
Recommended Preparation: Demonstrated synthetic and analytical ability; programming; media. Project-driven studio (with articulated discourse component). Concurrent enrollmentin Transvergence Seminar I (261A) is strongly recommended.
Open to non-majors.
4 units
Recommended Preparation: Demonstrated synthetic and analytical ability; programming; media Discourse-driven seminar (with implemented art/research component). Concurrent enrollment in Transvergence Studio II (261D) is strongly recommended.
Introduction to Transmodal Continuum. n-dimensional conceptions of space (and form) after Riemann. Scalar, vector, and tensor fields and beyond. Digital, physical, biological, and neurophysiological considerations in the poetics of the very small. Models of morphogenetic and evolutionary developmental emergence. World making and ontology.
Open to non-majors.
4 units
Recommended Preparation: Demonstrated synthetic and analytical ability; programming; media Project-driven studio (with articulated discourse component). Concurrent enrollmentin Transvergence Seminar II (261C) is strongly recommended.
Trans Architectures: The Pantopicon, Habitable Cinema, and Invisible Architectures. Multi-agent systems: Implementation of morphogenetic and developmental models of emergence. Design and implementation of everted virtual environments and eversive Worldmaking. Locative Worldmaking: linking locative media, online worlds, tracked/sensed space, and eversive virtual environments.
Open to non-majors.
4 units
Recommended Preparation: Demonstrated synthetic and analytical ability; programming; media.
Advanced projects course fusing all modalities of transvergence into implemented works embodying the Transmodal Continuum. Physical Worldmaking: addition of physical computing, spatial sensing, and digital fabrication to immersive, eversive, and locative Worldmaking. Worldmaking and phenomenology.
Open to non-majors.
4 units
Student defined research projects course focused on optical, or other imaging/sensing device interfaced with a computer such as anamorphs, experimentsin multiple exposure, spatial & virtual exploration, distance/presence, reflection and penetration (x-ray, infrared, medical (MRI, PET), etc.
4 units
First quarter of general purpose computing for computer music applications. Topics include: music synthesis using computer programs, and score input programs.
4 units
Second quarter of a two-quarter sequence course concentrates on computer music instrument design using music software and exploring applications of frequency modulation, additive/subtractive synthesis, digital signal processing, and computer music composition.
2 units
Three-quarter sequence course concentrates on multi-track recording, mixing, digital signal processing, and studio based composition.
4 units
Advanced topics in computer music composition, synthesis, and digital signal processing.
4 units
Special projects for selected students. Offered in conjunction with selected industrial and research under direct faculty supervision. Prior departmental approval required.
1 unit
Students develop concise descriptions and practice mock presentations that will be critiqued by faculty and peers in preparation for public exhibition of their work. Emphasis on technical and aesthetic clarity.
4 units
Independent research under the guidance of a faculty member in the department. Offers an opportunity to qualified students to undertake independent research or work in a group laboratory in digital media arts and technology.
1-4 units
Courses taught or assisted by T.A.'s.
1-4 units
Hands on practical approach to composition, improvisation, critique, refinement, and research dedicated to live performance. Open to laptops, new interfaces for artistic expression, audiovisual art, live coding, local and/or wide area networked performance, interactive dance, music for acoustic and electronic instruments, performance art, trans-categorical live performance, etc. Prerequisite: graduate standing in MAT or Music or consent of instructor; students are expected to contribute some combination of technical development, composition, and/or performance skills. Optionally, take in conjunction with independent study for related research. We will prepare one structured improvisation for the entire group and several smaller pieces according to our resources. Will discuss many potential venues on and off campus for events.
1-4 units
Haptics lies at the intersection of robotics, human-computer interaction, and computational and human perception. The term "haptics" is often used to refer to science and engineering related to the sense of touch. This course introduces human haptics, including sensory specializations and touch perception. It reviews the engineering of electronic technologies for haptic (touch) feedback, emerging technologies, and the design of haptic systems for human-computer interaction, sensory substitution, virtual reality, augmented reality, and other emerging areas. The class involves a mix of readings, hands-on activities, lecture/discussion, and projects.
1-4 units
This is a studio-based course in media composition for making media art works for advanced students working on their portfolios. We will deal with the compositional process with regard to multimodal content that unfolds over time and space. The object of this seminar is to make, and also to discuss our compositional processes as we build our portfolios. Each student will work on their individual or group project and will present work each week. We can meet as a group and individually as well. During the class/lab sessions, students will also bring in various works and readings from artists and researchers from which their philosophy of making is being drawn.
1-4 units
2-12 units
Independent research, either experimental or theoretical, may be taken by properly qualified graduate students under the direction of a faculty member.
1-12 units
Maximum of 12 units per quarter; enrollment limited to 24 units per examination. Instructor is normally student's major advisor or chair of dissertation committee. S/U grading. Individual studies for Ph.D. qualifying examination.
1-12 units
For research underlying the thesis/project and writing of the thesis/project.
1-12 units
For research and preparation of the dissertation.