Courses

Description

Integrative overview of media arts and technologies, emphasizing the interconnections between technologies and humanities (means and ends), engineering and mathematics (concrete and abstract), and arts and science (synthesis and analysis). The THEMAS model proposes a continuum across disciplines previously separated by narrow specializations. This class emphasizes Technologies+Humanities (means/ends) within the overall model of THEMAS.

Description

A six-quarter practical programming course devoted to digital audio applications development. The emphasis is on learning to use current state-of-the-art programming methods, tools, and library APIs. Programming assignments are given in the C, C++, Java, Smalltalk and/or SuperCollider programming language. Topics: A. Using Commerical I/O APIs; B. Spectral Transformations; C. Spatial Sound Manipulation; D. Sound Synthesis Techniques; E. Multi-rate Control and Synchronization; F. Media Application Integration.

Description

Artistic, philosophical, scientific, and technical foundations of transdisciplinarity, transmodality, and Transvergence. New conceptions of actual, virtual, and informational space and form. Trans-Euclidean geometry, from Gauss to present. Emergence and immanence in algorithmic poetics and information aesthetics. Models of physical, biological, and social complex systems. Worldmaking and epistemology.

MAT 261B

Transvergence Studio I

4 units

Instructor: M. Novak

W

5:30-8:30pm

Online

30437

Description

First quarter of a three-quarter sequence course concentrates on multi-track recording, mixing, digital signal processing, and studio based composition.

Description

Special projects for selected students. Offered in conjunction with selected industrial and research under direct faculty supervision. Prior departmental approval required.

Description

Independent research under the guidance of a faculty member in the department. Offers an opportunity to qualified students to undertake independent research or work in a group laboratory in digital media arts and technology.

MAT 502

Teaching in MAT

1-4 units

Instructor: TBD

TBD

TBD

TBD

30486

Description

Hands on practical approach to composition, improvisation, critique, refinement, and research dedicated to live performance.

Open to laptops, new interfaces for artistic expression, audiovisual art, live coding, local and/or wide area networked performance, interactive dance, music for acoustic and electronic instruments, performance art, trans-categorical live performance, etc.

Prerequisite: graduate standing in MAT or Music or consent of instructor; students are expected to contribute some combination of technical development, composition, and/or performance skills. Optionally, take in conjunction with independent study for related research.

We will prepare one structured improvisation for the entire group and several smaller pieces according to our resources. Will discuss many potential venues on and off campus for events.

MAT 594E

Special Topics in Multimedia Engineering, Visual Arts or Electronic Music.

1-4 units

Instructor: K. Yerkes

TR

10-11:50pm

Online

30510

Description

An interdisciplinary course that examines, thorugh case studies, the state of the photographic image, its history, the theoretical, conceptual, and philosophical underpinnings. The course bridges studio arts, engineering, and humanities. This course may be of interest to artists, humanities researchers or programmers as there are three directions to explore:

• The aesthetic creative applications, opportunities and constraints
• The computational processes from image processing to machine-learning
• The social considerations – to what degree can we believe in the image given the considerable software-based processing and autonomous image detail generation we are seeing through machine-learning processes.

The end goal is to investigate the photograph’s transformation through weekly presentations of projects, methods and discussion leading up to the impact of machine-learning on the creative process resulting in computational generated artworks.

Description

MAT 594P is a studio class for creating or adding to your professional portfolio. The work can be any media installation, composition, performance, or material computing project. It is also a media composition class, where we go through each persons’s process of how they compose media art works of any type. These works can be visual, sonic, interactive, material, and they do not have to include all modalities, it is whatever you are working on. Students will present their work weekly and the we will go through the process of making media art works. You can use any software you wish for this class.

Description

Special course in selected problems in multimedia engineering, visual arts, or electronic music.

Description

Computational tools create new opportunities for making things. Domains like computer-aided design, augmented reality, and collaborative robotics provide new opportunities for artists, engineers, designers, and craftspeople. Yet designing expressive computational systems poses many challenges. Technological systems often are brittle, requiring the correctness of low-level elements to function. The abstractions required to build computational systems impose a separation between makers and their materials. Digital technology changes rapidly, making it difficult for people to continuously master emerging tools and interfaces. Even successful creative technologies can disrupt cultures of practice by excluding, disenfranchising, or de-skilling existing communities of makers. Addressing these challenges requires finding ways to integrate rigorous and structured research and development methodologies with observations of real-world creative production, and dialog and collaboration with different kinds of makers.

This course is for Ph.D and Masters students with an interest in researching and designing computational technologies for art, design, manufacturing, or craft. The course will be run as a seminar involving discussion of readings and concepts presented in lecture and exploration of human-computer interaction research methodologies. Course assignments will provide students with the opportunity to refine or develop design principles and evaluation methodologies for new or in-progress research projects relating to course subject matter. The course will also feature artists, developers, designers, and researchers as guest speakers. We will make an effort to foreground authors, practitioners and guest speakers who come from communities that are underrepresented in engineering and computer science.

Course Goals

• Explore models of human creative production, processes, and learning.
• Investigate case studies of communities working across art, craft, design, and engineering, and between digital and physical media.
• Survey design principles for interface, interaction, and computational abstractions drawn from examples of existing technological tools.
• Develop familiarity with qualitative and quantitative strategies for evaluating expressive technologies drawn from ethnography, participatory design, data science, and in-the-wild research.
• Engage in critical analysis of existing expressive technologies and a discussion of strategies for inclusive and equitable design practices.

Description

A weekly writing, theory and guest lectures seminar, focused on research topics of interest to the wide fields at the intersection of media arts and technology. The seminar is organized in topical modules, covering writing methodologies, media theory, philosophy and critique.

Description

Independent research, either experimental or theoretical, may be taken by properly qualified graduate students under the direction of a faculty member.

MAT 597

Individual Study, PhD exams

1-12 units

Instructor: Use specific instructor code

TBD

TBD

TBD

30569

MAT 598

MS Thesis/Project Research

1-12 units

Instructor: Use specific instructor code

TBD

TBD

TBD

30577

MAT 599

PhD Dissertation Preparation

1-12 units

Instructor: Use specific instructor code

TBD

TBD

TBD

30585