Class syllabus, schedule, class notes, & assignments for CCNY/CUNY Creative Computing Fall 2022 class.

This will be our class homepage, so it may be a good idea to bookmark it.

This course is a graduate-level, introductory course to creative programming and interactive arts, oriented toward students with some or no prior programming experience. This course will cover programming concepts, such as variables, data types, functions, and algorithmic problem-solving, where a sequence of instructions describe the steps necessary to achieve a desired result.

We will apply and discuss computation in relation to a variety of media, such as 2D graphics, animation, image and video processing, interactive web experiences, and physical-digital interfaces. We will cover the basics of circuit design and analysis (both analog and digital), and interaction design utilizing sensors and microcontrollers. The class will provide context for these tools, and an overview of the contemporary and historical landscape of electronic and interactive art.

Please refer to The City College of New York COVID-19 Safety Plan for Fall '22

• Develop programming skills for creative coding in Javascript (mainly p5.js) and Arduino.
• Learn best practices for designing software within an event-driven, object-oriented and functional framework.
• Apply basic principles of programming and interactive electronics design for creative applications, using tools like microcontrollers, sensors, actuators, and javascript.
• Understand the landscape of creative programming and apply critical thinking skills to analyze work within historic, aesthetic, economic, and technological contexts.
• Develop personal learning strategies, project planning, troubleshooting, and problem-solving skills.

• Discussion/Crit: Presentation of assignments, questions, discussion of reference material and artwork
• Lecture: Technical concepts, explanations of example code, & reference work
• Workshop: Exercises related to the weekly topic
• Assignments: At-home practice of skills from class with your own twist

Class materials will be documented on this github. Text references, class notes & code will be included in the link for each week. Asynchronous participation will be possible through this class github, the class discussion channel, and office hours.

Homework & exercises can be submitted on Github or your personal blog.

If you miss a class where an assignment is due, please note any questions you came across or whether particular feedback would be helpful along with your code and/or documentation. Please offer and solicit feedback from the class discussion channel.

We will pick our preferred software and distribute a link to the class in our first session.

• Sharing and borrowing code is a normal part of programming. You will learn that you can find solutions to problems, examples, and techniques online. You may want to build off of a project you find, or work a classmate has done.
• If you are incorporating code you found online into a project, you must cite the source. This is so others looking at your code can find the original reference, and it the polite way to engage with the creative coding community. If you continue to do this kind of work, you will benefit from this habit.
• If you are building off of a significant amount of code or recreating a project, the same rule applies. It is often a good exercise to recreate or remix pieces, but you must reference the original work.
• If you are borrowing code from or building off of work a classmate has done, the same rule applies. If it is a significant amount of code, or an idea or concept, you should take the extra step of asking permission before using their work.

• Clearly describe what you want to happen, and what is happening instead.
• Give enough information in order for someone to recreate the problem.
• Ideally, give a link to the code itself.
• Utilize the class discussion channel to get feedback from others in class!

There is no required textbook for this class, however the following texts are strongly suggested:

• Make: Getting Started with p5.js: Making Interactive Graphics in JavaScript and Processing, by Lauren McCarthy, Ben Fry, and Casey Reas (O’Reilly)

Recommended:

• Learn Electronics with Arduino: An Illustrated Beginner's Guide, by Jody Culkin and Eric Hagan
• Make: Electronics by Charles Pratt (O’Reilly)

Additional resources:

• Practical Electronics for Inventors, by Paul Scherz and Simon Monk
• Making Things Move, by Dustyn Roberts
• Interaction of Color, by Josef Albers
• The Art of Interactive Design, by Chris Crawford
• Art and Electronic Media, by Edward A Shanken (CUNY Library link)
• Dan Shiffman’s Coding Train Youtube Channel
• Processing tutorials, examples, and reference
• P5.js tutorials, examples, and reference
• Learning Processing, by Daniel Shiffman (online access to the text through CUNY/CCNY)
• The Nature of Code (free online) by Dan Shiffman
• Javascript & JQuery by Jon Duckett
• Arduino Playground
• Physical Computing Reference

Any reading required for a particular week will be clearly stated in the homework section for that week.

• Weekly homework assignments: 45%
• Participation: 25%
• Final project: 20%

There is no attendance policy: please communicate if you will miss a class session. Follow the schedule and assignments for the week & submit your work and feedback to classmates via other channels.

If you are a student with a disability requesting accommodations, please contact The AccessAbility Center/Student Disability Services (AAC/SDS). For more information, included here are links to examples of academic adjustments and auxiliary aids, information about registering with AAC/SDS, and forms.

CCNY also provides student health and counseling services.

Required Statement on Academic IntegrityThe CUNY Policy on plagiarism says the following: Plagiarism is the act of presenting another person’s ideas, research or writings as your own. The following are some examples of plagiarism, but by no means is it an exhaustive list:

1. Copying another person’s actual words without the use of quotation marks and footnotes attributing the words to their source.
2. Presenting another person’s ideas or theories in your own words without acknowledging the source.
3. Using information that is not common knowledge without acknowledging the source.
4. Failing to acknowledge collaborators on homework and laboratory assignments.
5. Internet plagiarism includes submitting downloaded term papers or parts of term papers, paraphrasing or copying information from the internet without citing the source, and “cutting and pasting” from various sources without proper attribution.

The City College Faculty Senate has approved a procedure for addressing violations of academic integrity.

• August 31: Week 1 - Introduction
• September 7: Week 2 - Interaction and Color
• September 14: Week 3 - Conditionals
• September 21: Week 4 - Functions
• September 28: Week 5 - Objects
• No Class October 5
• October 12: Week 6 - DOM
• October 19: Week 7 - Arduino
• October 26: Week 8 - Digital IO
• November 2: Week 9 - Analog IO
• November 9: Week 10 - Arduino + P5.js
• November 16: Week 11 - Power
• November 23: Virtual meetings
• November 30: Workshop
• December 7: Workshop
• December 14: Final Presentations

• 2021
• 2020
• 2019