Interactivity 1
Spring 2009 - Tuesdays (Flagg Hall 320) Thursdays (Art and Design lab 336E)
Instructor:
Kevin Hamilton, Associate Professor and Program Chair, New Media
contact kham-at-illinois-dot-edu
Office: Art and Design 131.
Office Hours: Mondays from 1pm-3pm. (best to email ahead of time though)
Course Description:
This class serves as an introduction to the processes, technologies, and design concepts involved in creating interactive experiences, especially those involving some form of computing.
Course Content:
The course will include introduction to both the technical fabrication of interactive media, and the conceptual design of such experiences. Through practice, lecture, group design work, and discussion, students will gain an introduction to a series of technical platforms (software and hardware), and to a series of research methods for interactive media.
In our design projects, we'll look to discover what's at stake in design decisions about interactive experience for art and media design. What sort of values and ethics do particular interfaces and experiences engender or deny?
Course Method:
We'll spend Thursdays in the Computer Lab (Art and Design 336) covering basic technical instruction, and Tuesdays in the design lab (Flagg 320) on group projects and discussion. We'll move through four group design projects, and many more short-term technical exercises. For a full rationale for this, see our page for Course Method.
Expectations:
As in any introductory course, you may not achieve much in here that you'll be proud to look at for long. The goal will be more to get your hands dirty in a lot of areas, so that you can come back later and continue on your own, or in a subsequent course. I'll expect you to complete course assignments, with special attention to contributing equal time on group projects. Assignments given for the technical part of our course probably won't look very pretty, but if you do them right your group design projects might end up portfolio-worthy as realized prototypes.
I expect full attendance - missing any class at all will put you quite behind in the technical instruction part of the course, and will leave your partners doing more work in the design component of the course. I also expect that you spend classtime on classwork, not checking email or IM or anything else.
Grading
For introductory courses I tend to grade less on how beautiful your final products are, and more on how thoroughly you address the assignment parameters. If you attend class and are prepared, participate in discussions, complete homework exercises, and contribute fully to your design group, you can easily come out with an "A" in this class. You'll receive an estimation of your grade at mid-term, but likely won't receive grades along the way for individual technical exercises. If at any time you'ld like to know more about how you're doing, let me know.
Facilities
This class comes with a lab fee and materials fee that allows you access to the computer labs and checkout window in Art and Design. These fees also enable me to make some purchases of materials for specific assignments.When we're in Flagg Hall, you'll be sharing a room and a tech pool with other oddball classes like ours. Please see to leaving the space clean and clear for the next class. We'll be using some equipment that either belongs to me or the New Media program, so please act respectfully.
Materials
No textbook is required, but I'll be posting articles on this site for assigned reading. You may have to purchase materials for your design projects, but often this can be improvised. You should, however, bring a small harddrive or jump drive (1GB minimum) to our tech sessions on Thursdays.
Prerequisites
This course expects that you already are familiar with the following:
- the Macintosh OS X operating system
- basic digital file management skills
- operation of a digital camera and scanner
- manipulation of digital images in Photoshop
- rudimentary digital video shooting and editing
This course also assumes that you have some familiarity and experience with creative processes - completing and finishing a drawing, painting, or musical composition, for example.