Monthly Archives: December 2012

Andy

28 Dec 2012

Greetings IACD Spring 2013. My name is Andy Biar; I’m a junior in the BCSA program studying Computer Science and Music Technology. I drool over the possibilities of other people using my software, and I’m fascinated by creative applications that music can provide. I also play the cello, so if you’re ever in need of a cellist hit me up!

Most of my projects have been group projects, but I do have one solo project which I consider to be of some merit, a small point-and-click game called Autumn Skyline. Based on the title, you may expect to see some beautiful autumn trees, but instead the game opens up to a scene of skyscrapers with autumn-colored windows: (Although this is not the opening scene exactly)…

skyline

In Autumn Skyline, the player watches as a city is built from the ground up, and is then set with the task of destroying the city by a series of tasks. The text which accompanies the most dramatic decision in the game is a Picasso quote, “Every act of creation is first an act of destruction.” When the player finally destroys the city, a tree grows up out of the rubble, leaving the player to question their role as destroyer when only through destruction could natural flora be again created in the city.

Autumn Skyline is live on my website here (requires Flash): http://www.andybiar.com/Autumn-Skyline

Golan

24 Dec 2012

Welcome to the Spring 2013 edition of “Special Topics in Interactive Art and Computational Design”, an interdisciplinary studio course in new-media arts. I have taught this course in this format at CMU since 2010. If you’d like to enjoy the fruits of previous semesters, please see the links:

We begin our semester with 25 students enrolled: twelve women and thirteen men. Here are some additional statistics about our class population, obtained from the entrance survey:

Students enrolled in the class span every level from first-year undergraduates to doctoral students, distributed as follows:

  • Freshman – ⚫
  • Sophomore – ⚫ ⚫
  • Junior – ⚫ ⚫ ⚫ ⚫ ⚫ ⚫ ⚫ ⚫
  • Senior – ⚫ ⚫
  • Masters – ⚫ ⚫ ⚫ ⚫ ⚫ ⚫ ⚫ ⚫ ⚫ ⚫ ⚫
  • PhD – ⚫

Students in the class hail from 12 different degree programs within Carnegie Mellon, distributed as follows:

  • Computer Science and Arts – ⚫ ⚫ ⚫ ⚫ ⚫ ⚫
  • School of Art (Art) – ⚫ ⚫ ⚫
  • Interaction Design (Design) – ⚫ ⚫ ⚫
  • Tangible Interaction Design (Architecture) – ⚫ ⚫ ⚫
  • Music & Technology – ⚫ ⚫
  • Mechanical Engineering – ⚫ ⚫
  • Computational Design (Architecture) – ⚫
  • Entertainment Technology – ⚫
  • Institute for Software Research – ⚫
  • Electrical Engineering – ⚫
  • Computer Science – ⚫
  • Robotics – ⚫

Asked to select two of the following three options, enrolled students described that they were most interested in making things which are:

Beautiful 68%
Interesting 84%
Useful 48%

Asked to select two of the following three options, enrolled students described that they prefer to make things:

Quickly 56%
Inexpensively 52%
Of good quality 92%

Students ranked their interests in various topics and themes. In decreasing order, enrolled students expressed their degree of interest in these subjects as follows (arbitrary units):

tangible/body-based interface design 1.52
information visualization 1.28
augmented reality 1.24
mechatronic, robotic and/or device art 1.16
game design 1.08
artificial life, physics simulations 1.04
generative form 1.00
audiovisual media / performance 0.92
tactical / hactivist media 0.80
computer animation / CGI 0.80
locative / mobile media 0.72
design fiction 0.56
dynamic typography 0.56

Experience with various text-based programming languages was as follows:

None < 1 year 2-3 years 4+ years Response
Count
C, C++, C# 40% (10) 28% (7) 24% (6) 8% (2) 25
Objective C 76% (19) 20% (5) 4% (1) 0% (0) 25
Java 24% (6) 28% (7) 40% (10) 8% (2) 25
ECMAScript variants (e.g. JavaScript) 28% (7) 32% (8) 32% (8) 8% (2) 25
Mathematica, Matlab 64% (16) 20% (5) 12% (3) 4% (1) 25
Perl 92% (23) 8% (2) 0% (0) 0% (0) 25
PHP 64% (16) 12% (3) 20% (5) 4% (1) 25
Python 33% (8) 46% (11) 21% (5) 0% (0) 24
Ruby 79% (19) 21% (5) 0% (0) 0% (0) 24
Visual Basic 88% (22) 8% (2) 4% (1) 0% (0) 25

Enrolled students’ prior experience with the following arts-engineering toolkits was as follows:

None Ran demo Used it <1 year 2-3 years 4+ years Response
Count
Arduino 12% (3) 12% (3) 24% (6) 24% (6) 24% (6) 4% (1) 25
Cinder 88% (22) 12% (3) 0% (0) 0% (0) 0% (0) 0% (0) 25
Cocoa 80% (20) 8% (2) 4% (1) 4% (1) 0% (0) 4% (1) 25
D3 92% (23) 4% (1) 0% (0) 0% (0) 4% (1) 0% (0) 25
DirectX 84% (21) 16% (4) 0% (0) 0% (0) 0% (0) 0% (0) 25
Flash / Flex 24% (6) 12% (3) 36% (9) 8% (2) 20% (5) 0% (0) 25
GLSL 96% (23) 0% (0) 4% (1) 0% (0) 0% (0) 0% (0) 24
Grasshopper 76% (19) 12% (3) 4% (1) 8% (2) 0% (0) 0% (0) 25
HTML Canvas 52% (13) 20% (5) 12% (3) 8% (2) 8% (2) 0% (0) 25
Max/MSP/Jitter 52% (13) 12% (3) 24% (6) 8% (2) 0% (0) 4% (1) 25
MEL Script 92% (23) 8% (2) 0% (0) 0% (0) 0% (0) 0% (0) 25
NodeBox 96% (24) 4% (1) 0% (0) 0% (0) 0% (0) 0% (0) 25
OpenGL 56% (14) 16% (4) 20% (5) 8% (2) 0% (0) 0% (0) 25
OpenFrameworks 61% (14) 26% (6) 0% (0) 13% (3) 0% (0) 0% (0) 23
Processing 0% (0) 24% (6) 8% (2) 28% (7) 36% (9) 4% (1) 25
Pure Data (pd) 68% (17) 20% (5) 8% (2) 0% (0) 4% (1) 0% (0) 25
Quartz Composer 92% (23) 4% (1) 0% (0) 0% (0) 0% (0) 4% (1) 25
RhinoScript 87% (21) 0% (0) 8% (2) 4% (1) 0% (0) 0% (0) 24
Silverlight 92% (23) 4% (1) 0% (0) 4% (1) 0% (0) 0% (0) 25
SuperCollider 84% (21) 8% (2) 8% (2) 0% (0) 0% (0) 0% (0) 25
Unity3D 68% (17) 16% (4) 8% (2) 8% (2) 0% (0) 0% (0) 25
VVVV 84% (21) 16% (4) 0% (0) 0% (0) 0% (0) 0% (0) 25
WPF 96% (24) 0% (0) 0% (0) 0% (0) 0% (0) 4% (1) 25