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:
- Interactive Art & Computational Design, Spring 2012 (+ final projects)
- Interactive Art & Computational Design, Spring 2011 (+ final projects)
- Interactive Art & Computational Design, Spring 2010 (+ final projects)
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 |