Online courses directory (88)

Animated GIFs are kind of like the flipbooks of the digital age. Quick and easy to produce and distribute, but with almost endless creative possibilities, the creation of animated GIFs is a great way to begin to explore both digital and traditional time based media. The popularity of animated GIFs in social media and advertising, the rise of short form video sharing sites like Vine and Instagram, and the ability to easily create short animations and videos with mobile devices make this kind of "micro cinema" an important part of our contemporary media landscape. Course will include introduction to creating GIFs with Adobe Photoshop.

A series of 4 exercises exploring various principles of design, time-based media, and animation while learning industry standard 2D animation software Adobe After Effects. These exercises will focus on the design, editing, timing, and animation skills needed to complete our larger class project "Title Transformation". Individual exercises will be graded separately. There will not be a final critique of the work, but there will be brief daily feedback from the instructor, and students are encouraged to seek feedback and critique from each other. Although there's a lot of software to learn during this exploration, we must never lose sight of the fact that we are designers and communicators first, and software operators second.

"Projectionists -- pull curtain before titles" This note was attached to cans of film reels containing Otto Preminger's 1955 classic, The Man with the Golden Arm. Before this, movie theaters didn't even open the curtain until the opening credits were over. The Man with the Golden Arm marked a turning point when film titles became more than just a dull roll of credits and became part of the artistic statement of the film itself. Preminger had collaborated with legendary graphic designer Saul Bass (Links to an external site.) to create a simple but arresting cut out animation that changed how we view the title sequence forever. Since that time, title sequence design has become an art form of it own, blending graphics, typography, as well as both traditional and experimental film and animation techniques to create unique visions that are sometimes more fascinating than the movies and television shows they were created for.

The course, lecture, and examples build on each other to teach the fundamentals of programming in general (logic, loops, functions, objects, classes) and also deals with advanced topics including multi-threading, events and signals. Throughout the course, students create meaningful and rewarding expressive digital “instruments” that make sound and music in direct response to program logic. The ChucK language provides precise high-level control over time, audio computation, and user interface elements (track pad, joysticks, etc.). ChucK is used (unknowingly in most cases, via SMule Apps) by millions of users throughout the world, and is the backbone of dozens of academic programs and laptop orchestras. Learning to program using ChucK, through the musical examples provided in this course, will prepare students to program in C++, Java, and other languages. There will be special guest lectures from creators of the ChucK language, Dr. Ge Wang (Stanford University) and Dr. Perry R. Cook (Princeton University).

This course is an introduction to writing code within the context of the visual arts. It asks two primary questions:

What is the potential of software within the visual arts?
As a designer or artist, why would I want (or need) to write software?

Software influences all aspects of contemporary visual culture. Many established artists have integrated software into their process. Prominent architects and designers not only use software, they commission custom software to help them realize their unique ideas. The creators of every innovative video game and Hollywood animated film write custom software to enhance their work.

As a comprehensive first introduction to the potential of software development within a broad range of the arts, this course aspires to teach you to engage the computer more directly with code. Programming opens the possibility to create not only tools, but systems, environments, and new modes of expression. It is here that the computer ceases to be a tool and becomes a medium.

Introduction to Sound and Acoustic Sketching will offer tools and practices  to inspire students to approach sound and acoustics as elements in the sketching stage of a design project.

The course provides students with foundational knowledge and practical tools to analyze and use soundscapes and acoustic impulse responses in projects. In addition, a basic taxonomy of sound terms will be introduced, allowing students to develop a language for communicating and establishing dialogues about sound with all stakeholders in an audiovisual project. The practical component of the course is anchored in exercises that allow students to experiment and assimilate the different aspects of sound and acoustic sketching, namely:

• Sound Walks – Students practice “deep listening”, “sound scripting” and sound recording;

• Sound Browsing and Retrieving – Students learn how to obtain free sounds (using the Free Online Sound Repository Freesound.com) and build up a scripted inventory in the process of sound design;

• Sound Editing – Students learn how to produce a creative sound montage based on their acoustic memory and a sound design script, using the free multi-platform sound editing software Audacity;

• Critical Sound Review – By comparing the sound sketch produced in this exercise with the actual recording of the sound walk, students can develop critical insights about the their conceptual perception and representation of an acoustic phenomena, in comparison with the factual recording of the same event;

• Acoustic Mapping by Impulse Response – Students learn how to record an acoustic impulse response from a physical space;

• Acoustic Imprinting by Convolution – Students learn how to imprint a pre-recorded acoustic response in an original audio content, producing an acoustic simulation for an architectural space, using free multi-platform sound programing environment Pure Data/Chuck.

Upon the completion of these exercises, students will produce two sound sketches: designing a soundscape based on their recollection of sound events, and simulating an acoustic space, based on analogous impulse responses from similar spaces.

Furthermore, students will gain introductory experience using the using the free online sound repository Freesound.com, the free multi-platform sound editing software Audacity and the free multi-platform sound programing environment Pure Data (or Chuck).

A course examining the art of moving while standing still, and traveling far without moving. This will be approached through a study of form and variation techniques used in music. Students will be asked to make more from less while maintaining musical interest in their compositions.

Compositional techniques and styles studied include minimalism, ambient, alternative, musique concréte, popular, independent, experimental and sample based music. Assessment will consist of short composition assignments (1-2 min) rooted in class discussion and readings. These will be turned in as audio files. A single composition of 5-10 minutes will act as the final project.

By the end of this course students will be able to:

· Compose an engaging piece of music using a minimum amount of musical material.

· Critically engage with a piece of music through aural analysis.

· Analyze or break down music compositions to determine structural form and construction.

· Adapt compositional principles to their own music.

· Discover new approaches to music composition.

Have you ever wanted to build a new musical instrument that responded to your gestures by making sound? Or create live visuals to accompany a dancer? Or create an interactive art installation that reacts to the movements or actions of an audience? If so, take this course!

In this course, students will learn fundamental machine learning techniques that can be used to make sense of human gesture, musical audio, and other real-time data. The focus will be on learning about algorithms, software tools, and best practices that can be immediately employed in creating new real-time systems in the arts.

Specific topics of discussion include:

• What is machine learning?

• Common types of machine learning for making sense of human actions and sensor data, with a focus on classification, regression, and segmentation

• The “machine learning pipeline”: understanding how signals, features, algorithms, and models fit together, and how to select and configure each part of this pipeline to get good analysis results

• Off-the-shelf tools for machine learning (e.g., Wekinator, Weka, GestureFollower)

• Feature extraction and analysis techniques that are well-suited for music, dance, gaming, and visual art, especially for human motion analysis and audio analysis

• How to connect your machine learning tools to common digital arts tools such as Max/MSP, PD, ChucK, Processing, Unity 3D, SuperCollider, OpenFrameworks

• Introduction to cheap & easy sensing technologies that can be used as inputs to machine learning systems (e.g., Kinect, computer vision, hardware sensors, gaming controllers)

This course introduces students to twenty-four of the greatest mo(nu)ments in the history of Western art, and the forces that shaped the larger history of Western culture. Two dozen key monuments in different media, including visual arts, music and literature, will provide the focus for an evolving and ever more widely ranging discourse concerning the ways in which we define art. We will examine the way art has been (and can be) interpreted and re-interpreted; the infinitely complex relationships between art and the artist and the viewer; and the time and place in which it is made and the time and place in which it is subsequently seen, assessed, and interpreted.

The course begins with an examination of the fifth century BC Parthenon (1) on the Acropolis at Athens, the greatest example of Greek classical architecture and sculpture, followed by a discussion of the Hellenistic sculpture, Laokoön (2), a discussion that expands the notion of classicism and entails thoughtful consideration of the rapport between art and human suffering.

The Roman Pantheon (3), Emperor Hadrian’s temple to the planetary deities, by many scholars identified as the most perfect building in the world, will be the focus of the second session, leading to an examination of the sixth-century AD mosaics at San Vitale in Ravenna (4).

The Early Middle Ages in Europe will focus on the Lindisfarne Gospels (5), while the Sainte Chapelle (6) in Paris will be the conduit for a conversation on the Medieval ecclesiastical interior.

The Renaissance will pit Leonardo’s Last Supper (7) against Titian’s Rape of Europa (8) and Michelangelo’s David (9); Palladio’s Villa Rotonda (10), Caravaggio’s Beheading of Holofernes (11), and Gianlorenzo Bernini’s Cornaro Chapel (12) will extend that discussion into the Baroque period.

Northern art will be discussed in a session that moves from Jan van Eyck’s Ghent Altarpiece (13) to the etchings of Albrecht Durer (14) and the Bathsheba of Rembrandt (15). The complex of absolutist complexes that is the palace of Versailles (16) will be viewed from the perspective of Goya, as introduced by his Self Portrait with Doctor Arrieta (17).

Jacques Louis David’s Oath of the Horatii (17) will be viewed against the backdrop of the ancient regime. Romantic and Realist alternatives to Neoclassicism will be found in the “trialogue” between Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello (18), Gericault’s Raft of the Medusa (19) and Courbet’s Burial at Ornans (20). Monet’s Impression: Sunrise of 1872 (21) is the opening of a session which ends with a comparison of the Eiffel Tower (22) and the Ferris Wheel in Chicago (23).

The last session will consider a work by Jackson Pollock (24) as representative of the Modern notion of the end of the hegemony of traditional representation.

This course provides a broad overview and substantial introduction to the theories and practices of current object design. Illustrated using recent work from established and emerging designers, this course provides a journey through the "meaning-making" processes that lead to iconic products, and a glimpse into the world of the designers who create them. During the second half of the Twentieth Century, the clearly defined profession of industrial design broadened and fragmented into a defuse array of specialized practices. Rather than confining their activity to shaping objects for everyday use, object designers have expanded their practice by borrowing from fields such as sociology, anthropology, art, film, and management consultancy, thereby uncovering new ways in which design can affect our lives.

Beginning with a tour through design’s pluralism, this course delves into the power relations and semiotic structures which lie behind object making. It analyzes the process of design as it unfolds in the designer’s mind, on paper, through model making, and via other generative “thinking tools”. Examining the motivation of designers today, it reveals radical, avant-garde positions, as well as progressive, ethical, and sustainable practices that question the profession’s quiet complicity in unchecked mass consumption. This course concludes by examining the working contexts of today’s object designers, discussing the often "slippery" nature of client relationships, as well as the joys and perils of independent practice. Making Meaning: Designing Objects offers insight into the way today’s object designers operate, the theories that guide their decision-making, and the tools and processes they use to get results.

Making Typeface Families includes drawing a complete alphabet start to finish, then building on to add bold, italics, small caps, glyphs, and other Open Type features including language support. Topics will include researching and sourcing references, translating concepts from rough pencil sketches to digitized finishes, and establishing cohesiveness in a small trial range of selected characters. Versions and variations on each letter will be explored in a detailed study of each component, and students will establish how these parts need to come together in a logical way to form a set of related letters and eventually, an entire typeface.

This course introduces the student to the history and techniques of creating objects from hot metals. Techniques include the 3000 year old lost-wax (cire-perdue) method, sand casting methods dating back over 5000 years, and others. Finishing techniques covered include drag and flash removal, surface cleaning and polishing, and others.

In this course, we will introduce you to the basics of motion control and robotics. We will show you how to build a few simple circuits to connect motors and add motion control to your next project. We will start by covering the basics behind servo motors, and make our way toward adding larger motors to your projects, and using switching transistor circuits to drive them. Learning to control motors is a basic step to home automation and robotics projects. Finally, this course will teach you about H-Bridge circuits and Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) Control Systems for extended control over speed, direction, and motion.

This course is offered in collaboration with SparkFun Electronics.

An introduction to data mining through the lens of music information retrieval. Topics explored include classification (genre, mood, instrument), multi-label classification (tagging), and regression (emotion/mood).

Based on the concepts and algorithms explored in the previous 2 courses, "Extracting Information from Music Signal" and "Music Data Mining", we show how more complete and complex music retrieval systems, tasks, and algorithms can be developed. More specifically we will look at how four complete music retrieval systems are put together: audio fingerprinting, query-by-humming, chord-detection, polyphonic music-score alignment, and a visual music browser based on self-organizing maps.

Today's vast amount of streaming and video conferencing on the Internet lacks one aspect of musical fun and that's what this course is about: high-quality, near-synchronous musical collaboration. Under the right conditions, the Internet can be used for ultra-low-latency, uncompressed sound transmission. The course teaches open-source (free) techniques for setting up city-to-city studio-to-studio audio links. Distributed rehearsing, production and split ensemble concerts are the goal. Setting up such links and debugging them requires knowledge of network protocols, network audio issues and some ear training.

Today's vast amount of streaming and video conferencing on the Internet lacks one aspect of musical fun and that's what this course is about: high-quality, near-synchronous musical collaboration. Under the right conditions, the Internet can be used for ultra-low-latency, uncompressed sound transmission. The course teaches open-source (free) techniques for setting up city-to-city studio-to-studio audio links. Distributed rehearsing, production and split ensemble concerts are the goal. Setting up such links and debugging them requires knowledge of network protocols, network audio issues and some ear training.

This course introduces the basics of Digital Signal Processing and computational acoustics, motivated by the vibrational physics of real-world objects and systems. We will build from a simple mass-spring and pendulum to demonstrate oscillation, learn how to simulate those systems in the computer, and also prove that these simple oscillations behave as a sine wave. From that we move to plucked strings and struck bars, showing both solutions as combined traveling waves and combined sine wave harmonics. We continue to build and simulate more complex systems containing many vibrating objects and resonators (stringed instruments, drum, plate), and also learn how to simulate echos and room reverberation. Through this process, we will learn about digital signals, filters, oscillators, harmonics, spectral analysis, linear and non-linear systems, particle models, and all the necessary building blocks to synthesize essentially any sound. The free open-source software provided will make it possible for anyone to use physical models in their art-making, game or movie sound, or any other application.

This course presents five sessions in which the student is introduced to playing the piano and reading music. Each session contains a video lecture presented by the Instructor, piano practice assignments and graded assignments that include a quiz about music terms, theory and/or ear training and a video assessment of the student playing selected piano technique and repertoire. The course also includes a graded assignment for two concert reviews, which can be completed at any time during the course, and a final exam in which the student will improvise a piece. This course presents five sessions in which the student is introduced to the fundamentals of piano playing and music reading. Each session contains a video lecture presented by the Instructor, piano practice assignments, and graded assignments that include a quiz about music terms, theory and/or ear training, and a video submitted by the student of playing selected piano technique and repertoire. The course also includes a graded assignment for a concert review and report, which can be completed at any time during the course.

This course presents six sessions in which the student continues to expand their knowledge of piano technique, repertoire and musical concepts, including eighth notes, treble C pentascale, G pentascales, sharps and flats and intervals of 4ths, 5ths and 6ths. Each session contains a video lecture presented by the Instructor, piano practice assignments and graded assignments that include a quiz about music terms, theory and/or ear training and a video assessment of the student playing selected piano technique and repertoire. The course also includes a graded assignment for two concert reviews, which can be completed at any time during the course, and a final exam in which the student will perform a memorized piece of music of the Instructor’s choice for an audience.