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Introduction to Computational Media Syllabus

Daniel Shiffman

• daniel.shiffman@nyu.edu
• General ICM Page: includes links to helpful resources, work from other sections, and instructions on how to upload your homework.
• Office Hours Sign Up
• Homework Wiki: This is where you upload your weekly assignments.
• book web site (coming soon)
• Other Processing books available
• For last year's site, with some intro tutorials, please visit: http://itp.nyu.edu/ICM/shiffman

Week 1 -- Introduction

• Class Introductions
• Whaaaaaaaaaaaa? Why are we here? What is computational media? Can I program? What do I want to do?
• The Algorithm
• High Level vs. Low Level.
• Processing and the Java Virtual Machine
• The Fundamentals of Programming
• Coordinate Systems
• Shapes and Color
• Code itself & The Reference
• Pressing the "Play" button
• Exporting as an applet
• Read: Chapters 1, 2, and 3 from draft book. (Title suggestions anyone?)
• Read: Hackers and Painters by Paul Graham
• Sign up for course mailing list!
• Homework: Create your own screen drawing, using only 2D primitive shapes – arc(), curve(), ellipse(), line(), point(), quad(), rect(), triangle() – and basic color functions – background(), colorMode(), fill(), noFill(), noStroke(), stroke(). Remember to use size() to specify the dimensions of your window. (This is Exercise 2-9 from the book.)
• Examples: See the wiki and the book.

Week 2 -- Interaction and Variation

• The flow: code blocks, setup, draw, and events
  • continuous lines
  • mouse and keyboard events
  • interactive zoog
• Variables: Declare, Initialize, Use
  • many variables
• Random
  • random
• Conditionals
  • rollovers
  • bouncing ball
  • corners
  • gravity
• Boolean Variables
  • button
• Loops
  • while loop
  • zoog loop
• Read Chapters 4, 5, and 6 from draft book.
• Try exercises 5-6 and 5-8. We will go over answers in class.
• Homework: Create a dynamic application. You can continue to elaborate on last week's assignment or you can create something new. For example, develop a set of rules for moving it around the screen, have it grow and shrink, change colors, etc. Can you make it respond to mouse interactivity? Start by working in pairs (according to the wiki) You can post as a group or break off and complete the assignment individually. (This is Exercise 5-10 from the book.)

Week 3 -- Modularity: Functions and Objects

• Functions: Modularity!
  • bouncing ball with functions
• Re-usability and Parameter Passing
  • zoog function with arguments
  • function that returns a value
• Object-Orientation!
  • a single car object
  • two car objects
  • zoog object
• Read Chapters 7 and 8 from draft book.
• Try exercises 7-7 and 8-5. We will go over answers in class.
• Homework: Re-organize the code of a previous assignment or example using functions and objects. Start again by working in pairs (new ones according to the wiki) You can post as a group or break off and complete the assignment individually. (This is the "Lesson Three Project" from the book.)

Week 4 -- Arrays (and Iteration review)

• Reviewing looping
  • while loop
  • zoog loop
• Arrays
  • saving mouse coordinates with an array
  • an array of objects (car)
  • interacting with array of objects
  • resizing an array w/ append()
  • array of objects again (zoog)
• Dano's handout
• Review Chapter 6 from draft book.
• Read Chapters 9, 10 and 11 from draft book.
• Homework: Take an object you developed for week 3's homework and duplicate the object using an array and loop. Feel free to work individually or in pairs (no pairs will be assigned this week.)
• Try Exercise 9-6 and 9-7. We will go over answers in class.
• Exercise. Try to recreate the following applets in Processing. Many clues are available in Chapter 9. lab1, lab2, lab3, lab4 We will go over the answers in class.

Week 5 -- Strings and Networking

• Read: chapters 12, 17 and 18 from the draft book.
• Strings!
  • Displaying Text
  • Moving Text
  • Fancy Moving Text!
• String Parsing:
  • Concatenation
  • Loading from text file
  • Loading from URL
  • Reading King Lear
  • Chris Kairalla's awesome image loader!
• HTML vs. XML (plus libraries!)
  • SimpleML Library from Chapter 17: http://www.shiffman.net/teaching/simpleml -- easy, but can't do a lot
  • Processing XML library -- harder, but can do more
• Dano's handout
• Main ICM page has list of XML feeds
• Shawn's page about the proxy Note the new URL for the proxy is: http://itp.nyu.edu/proxy/proxy.php?url=
• Read: Science, Technology, and Poetry: Some Thoughts on Jackson Mac Low
• Homework: Create a Processing sketch that uses input from a text file or URL (see Lesson Eight Project from book.)

Week 6 -- Microcontrollers and Cameras

• Read chapters 15, 16, and 19.
• Intersection with Physical Computing -- Serial Input
  • Serial Input
  • Serial Input w/ Handshaking
  • Serial Input w/ Strings
• Video as Image
  • Simple Capture
  • Software Mirror
  • Scribbler
• Video as Sensor
  • Color Tracking
  • Background Removal
  • Motion Detection
• Dano's Handouts: Serial, Video
• Homework: Work with serial or video input. Post your code and/or screenshots to the wiki (since it won't run in the browser).
• Midterm: Brainstorm an idea for a midterm project. Feel free to think of your midterm on as grand a scale as you like, however, the midterm assignment will involve implementing only one step of a larger project. Remember, it's only a one week assignment! Be prepared to speak briefly about your midterm idea next week.

Week 7 -- Review and Midterm Workshop

Week 8 -- Show Midterm

Week 9 -- Java

• The Secret World of Java!
• Import Statements, Processing libraries vs. Java libraries
• Javadocs http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/api/
• A book: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/hfjava/
• Example Java classes
  • ArrayList Documentation, ArrayList Example
  • Rectangle Documentation, Rectangle Example
  • ArrayList & Rectangle
• try/catch, exception/error handling
• Read Chapters 22 and 23
• Sign up for two final project presentations and post a link to your work. You have three benchmarks. 1) Final Project Proposal, a brief write-up of your idea with sample images, sketches, links, etc. 2) An "in progress" report of your first step. 3) The final itself. We will go over the requirements for these stages in class.

Week 10 -- Propose Final Projects

• Translation and Rotation (Chapters 13 and 14 from book.)
• OOPS! Examples for topics below to be posted later today (wed, nov. 7)
• Z Axis
  • z-axis
• P3D vs OPENGL
• Translate
• Rotate
  • Rotate
• Custom shapes (vertex)
  • Pyramid
• pushMatrix / popMatrix
  • Planets

Week 11 -- Proposal Final Projects

• More on image processing and video (Chapters 15 and 16 from book.)
• Video as Image
  • Simple Capture
  • Software Mirror
  • Scribbler
• Video as Sensor
  • Color Tracking
  • Background Removal
  • Motion Detection
• Dano's Video Examples
• Danny's Examples:
  • Adjust colors
  • Tracking Examples

Week 12 -- Final Project Workshop

• Also PHP
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PHP, http://www.php.net/
  • Dano's PHP
  • Shawn's PHP
  • Basic unix commands, basic html
  • Hello World! run hello.php, hello.php source
  • Dynamic stuff! flip a coin, flip a coin source
  • Query strings! get a name, get a name source
  • Processing + PHP Persistance! Processing applet, look at saved info via php, saving an x,y coordinate, clearing the file, php source

Week 13 -- Final Project Workshop

Week 14 -- Final Project Presentations

Requirements

• You are required to attend all class meetings and submit all weekly assignments, midterm, and final projects.
• Grading will be determined by the following factors:
  • Attendance and participation in class discussion and engagement in other students' projects. (25%)
  • Completion of weekly assignments and midterm (50%)
  • Completion of final project (25%).
  • Note that your work is evaluated based on your own personal progress through the class, i.e. how much you advanced from your initial state.