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Syllabus:
CG421 Interactive Project Design – FIT Computer Animation & Interactive Media
In a simulated real-world production environment, students study the history and theory as well as the creative and technical aspects of interactive design and integrated media, producing interactive projects in various mediums. Interdisciplinary technologies and expressions such as performance, immersion, programming, interactivity, the Internet, digital video and multimedia based cultural practices will be considered.
Credits:
3 credits. Meets once a week for four hours in room c307, 1 hours Lecture, 3 hours studio
Computer Etiquette:
No social networking, chats, emails, or homework from other courses.
Course Objectives:
- · Design interactive occurrences in real-world space and to develop visual techniques to support their human activities
- · Have a strong understanding of interactivity in the context of digital media
- · Gain a understanding of Cognitive Systems and conceptualize their Special Design.
- · Explore compositional structures related to image, sound, animation and video in context of interactivity
- · Design and produce projects within responsive interactive environments that use video, film and animation.
- · Write for multiple points of view within a participatory interactive system.
Required Reading:
Designing Interactions” (2007) by Bill Moggridge; 1st Edition; MIT Press
Recommended Reading:
Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction by Helen Sharp MD Yvonne Rogers PhD, and Jenny Preece MD (2007).
The Art of Participation: 1950 to Now – Hardcover (2008) by Rudolf Frieling
Recommended Video:
Barney, Matthew: The Cremaster Cycle. 1994–2002.
Campus, Peter: Edge of the Ocean. 2003, Three Transitions 1973, Double Vision. 1971.
William Kentridge: Five Themes 1998, Black Box 2000.
Course requirements:
- Design an interface with clear indication of the five senses that will help answer the questions: Where did that sound come from? What color is this, really? Create an audio sketch book (two week project).
- · Record all the activities in your potential interactive space and begin to design a cognitive framework and list the devices that could be interfaces. From a McLuhan perspective create or “replicate” a limited functionally, limited feature, limited skill image in limited format that feels homogenous with everything else on a social network.
- Make a short film using the concept of Fan Fiction.
- Using interactive techniques like tracking, “blend” or interact two linear videos or a video with an object.
- Design a project focusing on mapped video projection with a strict reference to architectural structure.
- Create a real-time interaction and representation using a range of display scales ranging from cell phone to larger displays.
- Design an interactive visual system using images, action, sound and a string of commands with the goal to “attend this now” aware that the program, the viewer experience, has to run in the mind of the viewer.
- Final Project: Submit a task analysis and interactive design including defining your problem space: Select and prototype one design from this and do useability tests on the prototype. The exact nature of the final project will discussed and approved by the professor after submitting the above materials.
Evaluation and Grading of Students:
Individual and collaborative projects will be approximately 80% of your grade. This means everybody in the team receives the same grade based on the success or failure of your visual project. For both individual and team projects I will look for creative solutions, exploration, communication techniques, interactivity, color, space/depth cuing, and awareness that you are trying to make a work of art. I will also look for references to all the principles that were covered in my lectures. The remaining approximately 20% will be your individual grade factor. This will be based on class participation, attendance, critically engaging in the lecture and professionalism. Also class participation means your attention and dedicated use of your time to your group project.
Attendance Policy:
More than three absences will severely affect your grade. More than four absences could affect your passing the course.
Late work and presentations:
You are responsible for completing all work, assignments, including weekly and the final project in order to pass the course. No exceptions.
Critiques:
Critique will be a systematic analysis of your projects. Your work will be analyzed for structure of thought in the content, the creative process and the visual interactive result. The critiques will be individual or by team. There will be no full class critique except on the last day for final project presentation.
