New

Software tools make our creative workflows possible.  They allow us for us to create and edit media, design and sketch new ideas, build interactive experiences and more. Good tools expand our abilities.  The best tools can begin to feel like an extension of ourselves, allowing us to work quickly and joyfully without considering the underlying interface. Increasingly, creative software tools use web-based interfaces, making our work collaborative and portable.

This course asks students to create new web-based tools for creative work. Week to week, it will consist of a series of assignments on identifying a creative need, scoping, designing and developing a web-based software solution as well as readings and reflections on the software tools which make our creative workflows possible.

From a technology standpoint, students will learn the fundamentals of building full-stack web applications using web technologies (HTML, CSS and JavaScript) as well as server-side tools (Node.js). We will start with ‘vanilla’ web technologies before introducing a series of open-source frameworks (React & Next.js) and component libraries which allow us to work in a more modular and collaborative way as developers.

This course is focused on refining projects and making them more accessible, robust, and functional. Students should come to class on the first day with a working project, and we will user test each other’s projects in the first class. From there, you will work  together with the class and the instructor to finish the project. The goal is to iterate on your project to the point where it works consistently without you having to maintain it or explain it to the intended audience or user.  

Weekly class meetings will alternate between project reports, testing, critique, and  in-class production work with guidance from the instructor and classmates.  If technical topics of general interest emerge, we will take class time to discuss them. Students are expected to show their projects multiple times during the semester, test the projects in stages, and get feedback from both class members in class and from the audience for whom their projects are intended, outside of class.

The instructor’s expertise is in digital hardware and physical interaction, so the course will focus on projects in that area.

Prerequisites: Intro to Physical Computing and Intro to Computational media, or equivalent experience. Some prior fabrication knowledge is useful as well.

In order to be admitted, Interested students must apply to the instructor with documentation of an existing project.

How do we make things move, produce sounds, or maybe even emit light without batteries? Through this course, each student will design their own purely mechanical automaton. We will learn how to use simple materials and tools to hand prototype mechanisms in their early stages. Various software tools will be used to refine the designs and then a series of traditional and digital fabrication tools (various wood shop tools, laser cutter, 3D printers, etc.) will be used to produce the final pieces. We will learn how to work iteratively in the shop through weekly exercises and a final project.