MAS.110 | Fall 2008 | Undergraduate

Fundamentals of Computational Media Design

Readings

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

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!  

Course Info

Learning Resource Types
Problem Sets
Programming Assignments
Presentation Assignments
Written Assignments