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Required Books
Standage, Tom. The Victorian Internet. New York, NY: Walker and Company, 1998. ISBN: 9780802713421.
Carter, Rob, Ben Day, and Philip Meggs. Typographic Design: Form and Communication. 4th ed. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons, 2006. ISBN: 9780471783909.
Britt, David, ed. Modern Art: Impressionism to Post-Modernism. New York, NY: Thames & Hudson, 2008. ISBN: 9780500238417.
Readings by Lecture
Course readings.
| LEC # |
TOPICS |
READINGS |
| 1 |
Introduction |
|
| 2 |
Paper and making marks on it
Typography, technology, and perception
|
Carter, chapter 7 |
| 3 |
Look at type, on hard- and softcopy
In-class exercise, "making letters"
|
Carter, chapter 1 (please bring Carter to class today) |
| 4 |
Video screening: Helvetica by Gary Hustwit |
|
| 5 |
Discuss essay 1 |
Standage, chapters 1-5 |
| 6 |
Continued discussion of type |
Carter, chapters 2-4 (please feel free to read further) |
| 7 |
Continued discussion of essay 1 |
|
| 8 |
Temporal and sequential media |
|
| 9 |
Discuss exercise 1 |
Standage, chapter 6 through epilogue |
| 10 |
Guest lecturer: Walter Bender
Color: physics, psychophysics, and aesthetics
|
Britt, chapter 1
Jacobson, N., and W. Bender. "Color as a Determined Communication."
Explore Apple Computer's color pages
|
| 11 |
How electronic displays work and why we care |
|
| 12 |
Guest lecturer: Walter Bender
Color: physics, psychophysics, and aesthetics (cont.)
Discuss OLPC XO (One Laptop Per Child) hardware and the Sugar environment
|
|
| 13 |
Discuss OLPC XO machine design |
|
| 14 |
Hand out XOs
Discuss first Python/Pygame example programs
|
|
| 15 |
Modern art |
Britt, chapters 2-3 |
| 16 |
Discuss exercise 2 |
|
| 17 |
More modern art |
Britt, chapters 4-5 (feel free to read further if you wish) |
| 18 |
Discuss sound on the XO |
Manuals for CsoundXO and CsoundXO Python (see exercise 3) |
| 19 |
Discuss essay 2 |
|
| 20 |
Discuss essay 2 (cont.) |
|
| 21 |
Discuss exercise 3 |
|
| 22 |
Discuss exercise 4 / essay 3 |
|
| 23 |
Discuss essay 3 (cont.) |
|
| 24 |
"Final project clinic"
In-class exercise: GTK Csound (aka exercise 5)
|
|
| 25 |
To be announced |
|
| 26 |
Presentation of student work — invite your friends! |
|