Online courses directory (88)

Can we capture the unpredictable evolutionary and emergent properties of nature in software? Can understanding the mathematical principles behind our physical world help us to create digital worlds? This class focuses on the programming strategies and techniques behind computer simulations of natural systems. We explore topics ranging from basic mathematics and physics concepts to more advanced simulations of complex systems. Subjects covered include physics simulation, trigonometry, fractals, cellular automata, self-organization, and genetic algorithms. Examples are demonstrated using the p5.js environment with a focus on object oriented programming.

Video featuring original artwork in P5.js by:
Particle Equalizer #1 by Sehyun Kim
Look at me! by Muqing Niu
Dancing Spring by Yue Hu
FireWork by Yue Hu
Nature Of Code final at ITP by Joe_Mango
Nature of Code - midterm by Marcela Nowak
Sound And Motion Coding by Marcela Nowak

The Practical History of Typography serves as an introduction to The Complete Typographer, and provides a historical appreciation of the art and science of typography: display lettering (both hand drawn and mechanically generated), and text typefaces—a “historical bucket” approach. The course examines typefaces associated with key design and technological developments of the 20th century—the Bauhaus, the New Typography, etc.—with an eye towards critical analysis of form, moving right up to 2017, including advances in generative type and variable fonts for web.

This dynamic course focuses on the history of modern and postmodern art from the 19th and 20th centuries, with an emphasis on major works found in the collection of the renowned Art Institute of Chicago.  Painting, sculpture, photography, and other media, placed within a larger socio-political context, will reveal how aesthetic expression proves a compelling barometer of the modern human experience. 

From the advent of European democracy and the parallel birth of the avant-garde artist, whose singular vision boldly shattered prevailing styles and norms, to the radical rise of abstract painting and the even more provocative introduction of everyday objects into works of art, this course will unfold modernism’s defiant embrace of the new. This course will engage the major issues of twentieth-century aesthetic practice, from Freud’s description of the unconscious and the play of dreams as fertile source material for the artist, to the explosive rise of pop art and the dizzying information age that has profoundly shaped contemporary practice. To closely study modern and postmodern art is to learn how to look at the world, to take notice of form, color, and image, and to respond to the richness of visual and material culture that is all around us. 

This course will not only provide a canonical repertoire of great works of historic art, as well as the context for understanding them, but through the unfolding of such a narrative, these lectures will allow new ways of observing one’s own contemporary world and reimagining its value.

Typography in Graphic Design covers the role of typefaces as cultural artifacts and how the influences and concerns of the day are reflected in type vernaculars. Very fine detail on font characteristics will also be explored (stroke widths, x-heights, serif qualities, etc.) and how these affect usage and emotional impact. Choosing the right typeface for a project and mixing typefaces in a design will be explained in depth.

This course will take the student through the basics of visual development: from visual storytelling to character design; from creatures to environment design. Beginning with simple visual elements, the student will learn how to create images that tell a story visually, as well as support a production in animation, live action, and video games.

This course is an introduction to using the Web for artistic creation. It is a "literacy" course designed to introduce you to the various core components that make the web such a powerful platform for art – art that is not only visual, but sonic, physical, interactive, and social. It will give you the basics (in terms of knowledge and code templates) to make things that run in browsers using:

• Animation with graphics and sound,

• Interaction with graphics and sound,

Just as you don't need to be a mechanic to drive a car, you do not need to wait until you are an expert programmer before creating work for the web.

There is a vast array of tools for making things for the web. Making things for the web is a process of constant learning and discovery – not one of knowing everything first and then making. It is also a process of ripping and mashing rather than writing everything from scratch. Getting comfortable with this process is the first step, and is the approach we take in this introductory course.

By the end of this course, you will be making things with the real-world core components that give the web its potential for art, but you will have only just begun. More importantly, you will understand what you have to learn more about to accomplish your artistic objectives, be able to recognize things and be able to evaluate their value to you, and have a command of the terminology you need to search for and discuss your needs and interests with the huge community of people on the net with experience (and code chunks) to share.

Why JavaScript and the Web?

There are some excellent special-purpose coding platforms for artists out there such as Processing for interactive graphics, Chuck or supercollider for synthesis, graphical languages such as Max/MSP or PD for interactive sound and graphics. These platforms have extensive communities of people to share experience and code with. However, these special-purpose platforms are not standard web building and design tools.

What they offer is a direct path to achieving a specific artistic objective, but it is at the expense of a more general applicability of language, tools, and skills that would allow you to interact with people in the web-based creative industries. They do a great job at "hiding" things you may not want to worry about as an artist, but dealing with a bit of the scaffolding is necessary if the web is the space you have chosen to embark on for developing your work.

This course will take you through the basics you need to develop artistic content for the web using standard web tools – JavaScript, html, and several fundamental libraries. It will point you to exactly what concerns an artist most – making creative content. It will guide you and teach you what you can ignore for now in order to focus on artistic content, but will not prevent you from integrating with the vast world of the web and learning and using some of the scaffolding if and when you should need it later.

Our basic approach to achieving this goal is to "throw you in to the deep end" with a set of code templates for meeting artistic goals – interactive graphical mobile applications using physical sensors, for example, and explaining simple things you can do immediately to explore and implement your own ideas.

The advantages to JavaScript:

• It is the language embedded in all browsers today.

• It is general purpose, and makes no assumptions that limit your artistic objectives.

• You can deploy all your work on the web for others to experience.

• You only need to learn one language for writing both client and server code.

• A *lot* of other people use it that you can share and communicate with.

• It is a marketable skill.

Thus, we are not restricting you to special-purpose tools that don't generalize well to the web – but that doesn't mean you will have to write a bunch of code not related to your artistic vision. The "template" technique used in this course is a "middle way" that gets you up and going fast, but provides a path to future growth and connection to the real world.

You will learn to recognize patterns of code that you need not know how to write. This will provide you with a basic understanding of how things work in the real world (let's call it literacy). This will help you find, recognize, and use chunks of code that others share, and it will allow you to focus on code directly relevant to artistic content.

This will give you the foundations you need to go on learning on your own by exploring the unstructured wealth of material available out there on the web to pillage and modify for your own work. That is how real web programmers work all the time, anyway!

In today’s digitally connected world, an engaging, distinctive website is a necessity for artists, musicians, designers, and creators. This course provides an introduction to website design and development for artists, providing the tools to create and maintain a unique online identity. In this course, you will learn how to build a custom website for your online artistic presence and portfolio, and how to leverage content management systems to develop and manage your site. You will also learn how to customize your site further with HTML, CSS, and PHP, three building blocks of the modern Web. This class will teach essential skills for designing and organizing your website, so you can create a site that is both visually distinctive and engaging. Over weekly assignments, you will develop an actual, live website from simple HTML to a full-featured site with galleries, analytics, social media integration, and other advanced features.

This class is a deep dive from photography to videography, and shows you how to think in motion. Many of the core concepts carried over from still photography are the same, but putting your camera and scene in motion opens up a new world of possibilities and demands. You will learn how to add motion where there is none, and to control focus, light and sound.