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Take the Graduate wide interface class or workshops.

Sign up for studio units with Program 15 Faculty.

Here is a partial list:
Don Day | Electronics
Barney Haynes | Programming
David Cole | Fabrication
Sue Slage | Programming / Performance

The best way to take advantage of the classes offered is to become an Individualized Major. This will allow you to take as many of the Program 15 classes that maximizes your personalized program of study.

Another way is if you want to study in an official program you can work with your "Program Expert" to use your electives to take one or two these classes.

Here is an example of a "curricular chart" that adheres to our credo:
"Art Using Technology Using Art"

1st Year:
4D requirement: Take the Action and Interaction version'

2nd Year:
Critical Studies:
Science Requirement: Basic Electronics or Feedback Physics.
Math: Math and Media or Programming and Art.
In either case you can choose one to fufill the requirement and take the other as an Critical Studies elective.

Interaction Design:
Intro to Interaction Design
Interaction Design 1
(As this program develops there will be a number of courses offered in this program that will be highly valuable for Program 15 adherents)

3rd or 4th Year:
Interdisciplinary Critique:
Art and Tech

Interdisciplianry Studio

Classes offered in Fall 2011 and Spring 2012
Interface ( There are two sections, one is listed in Sculpture)
Chain Reaction
Off the Grid

See below for other versions of this class that are not offered next year.

Visual Studies:
Game On
Remixing

Philosophy
Music, Sound and Media

This is a partial listing. Classes change every year. Check back to this site for updates

In this class students will learn to apply math towards the creation of time based media. They will learn to author their own programs that analyze, convert, affect, and manipulate real time video and audio streams towards their own ends. Music is made, video is sequenced and stories are told through the use of algorithms, conditionals, and operators. Media production is now firmly located in the digital domain and math has become an essential and flexible creative tool. Whereas, packaged digital programs are designed around preconceived tasks, in this class artists pick up the equivalent of a stick, cram it in the digital morass and turn history on its ear. The proof of this mathematics is in the making of media.

This class will use Max/MSP/Jitter, a graphically based authoring program that allows one to program in a visual environment. In addition to real time video and audio processing students will learn to create 2D and 3D graphics and imbue them with interactive behaviors.

Basic Electronics

Electronics is increasingly becoming an important skill for artists, designers, and architects. Artists are embedding circuits into their work to create interactive art or kinetic sculpture. Architects are designing smart buildings that can adapt and change to environmental conditions. Designers are embedding electronics into products, fashion, and interactive displays to enhance the daily quality of our lives. This course is an introduction to electronics for use in art and design. It will concentrate on applications of basic electronic fundamentals and techniques with the aim to design and build your own circuit device. Topics include power supplies, diodes, resistance and capacitance in different circuit composition, sensors, switches, simple circuits and transistor amplifiers. Lectures, demonstrations and critical discussion of work will be the mode for this course. Some models and theories will be presented as they relate to the subject of discussion.

Math Programming and Art

This course will encourage an exploratory and discursive approach to learning the mathematical foundations of geometry, trigonometry, and Boolean logic through an engagement with computer programming. Students will learn the basics of programming as they write software which explores these mathematical concepts using the open source language Processing. Students will discover the ways in which mathematics are used in contemporary digital media practices as they create their own visual and interactive software projects. By the end of the course, students will be able to author software projects which meaningfully engage with mathematical concepts. No previous programming experience is required.

Feedback Physics

This course will introduce students to the relevance of Feedback in Physics and various areas of Design, use a wide range of concepts in physics linked to problems in Design, provide a brief exposure to the concepts and importance of Modern Physics, and give students a taste of doing science through conducting demonstrations and presenting projects in class. It will include a level of mathematics that assumes simple algebra and trigonometry. Assignments and demos will be selected to highlight work in Interaction Design, Industrial Design, Fashion Design and Furniture Design. Areas covered will include topics in Mechanics, Dynamics, Thermodynamics (Entropy and Efficiency), Feedback, Structural Stress and Strain, Environmental Stress, Transduction, Electricity and Magnetism; Sustainability will be considered in the Design process.

Intro to Interaction Design

Interaction designers design and build meaningful and innovative experiences in all realms of work, lifestyle, and play. This introduction course will take a studio-based, collaborative, playful approach to learning about the Interaction Design major. We will explore investigative research, systemic thinking, creative prototyping, and hands-on building. Our class projects will create through a number of different interactive canvases such as mobile, desktop, car, game console, kiosk, and apps. We will also investigate how interaction design plays an increasing role in adjacent design disciplines such as industrial, graphic, fashion, film, sculpture, gaming and architecture.

Interaction Design 1

This course examines the fundamental principles and materials underlying the interactions between people, artifacts, and systems. Course work will introduce students to a variety of new tools and techniques that will facilitate the crafting of design interactions from user interfaces to user experiences. Through interface design of interactive canvases such as mobile, desktop, car, game, console, kiosk, and apps, students will gain an appreciation for the application of interaction design principles and tools, their respective strengths and weaknesses, and the prior and subsequent steps to using them. By examining existing situations and objects, and, using newly acquired interaction design sensibilities and vocabularies, students will begin to develop their own contextualized design perspectives and devise new solutions and strategies for addressing contemporary design issues. The interdisciplinary role of interaction design will continue to be explored through the study of adjacent fields such as industrial, graphic, fashion, film, sculpture, gaming, and architecture.

Interface

In this introductory course, students will design and fabricate interactive and kinetic artwork. Through a series of projects students will learn to implement hybrid art systems that can use computers or circuits to interface with sensors, motors, video, sound, pneumatics, and lights. Students will gain basic skills in: electronics, mechanical fabrication, and computer programming. These skill sets will enable students to imbue dynamic characteristics to their artwork. Field trips to industrial salvage yards as well as artists visits will augment technical instruction, lab time, and theoretical discourse. Topics include: the nature of interfaces, narration in random-access environments, the poetic potential in electromechanical devices, interactivity and isolation, and integrating video and audio into sculptural environments and objects.

This course will concentrate on the dynamics of media presentation and interaction. The objective is to create generative, recombining media systems that evolve and mutate, reacting to internal and external stimuli. The environment, the body, and the internet will be explored for their potential as remote control/stimuli. Students will research and implement hybrid acquisition and delivery systems. Trashed scanners, extended surveillance cameras, compounded desktops, projection systems, and myriad sensors will be mined for their potential as alternate means for media creation and narrative recombination. Topics include generative and iterative structures, autonomous interactions, physical computing, and artificial behavior. Students will learn how to manipulate media with Max/MSP/Jitter and how to connect electronics to the computer via the Teleo Modules.

In this course students will develop advanced skill sets central to the creation of dynamic installation and sculpture. We will focus on advanced fabrication and programming for actuation, control, and feedback. The objective is to create kinetic art that can manifest complex variable motion and behaviors with mechanical precision. We will explore both industrial and consumer solutions to this problem.

Learned skills or strategies will include basic metalworking and fabrication techniques, power-transmission design, and mechanical movement and mechanical component construction. The incorporation of found elements will be explored with off-site visits to salvage yards.

Students will learn how to program and control kinetic art while working with sophisticated motors and sensors. Learned skills in this arena will include programming stepper and servo motors, interfacing these systems with Max/MSP/Jitter (a graphic programming environment), scavenging for these systems, designing and implementing feedback for orientation and position, designing and implementing electronic circuits that condition and amplify sensor signals, and performing complex behavioral emulation.

This class will explore the dynamics of collaboration. Students will build their own projects, then combine them together into a massive chain reaction. Kinetic sculpture, media projections, dynamic architecture, sound, or any media that has interactive sensibilities will be arranged so that when activated, a domino effect will ensue. The catalytic agents could range from the primordial to the digital. Water, fire, and air could be dispensed by electromechanical devices and interleaved with data packets and algorithms to induce a society of reactive agents. The governing principles or group behavior will be decided through class collaboration and informed by research into such topics: as swarm intelligence, missile guidance, alchemy, dominos, and artificial life. The resulting chain reaction could resemble an exquisite corpse, an anarchist wet dream, ant colonies, the Mouse Trap game, or a premeditated sequence of events that would of made Hitchcock green with envy.

Pixels, Patterns & Prints

In this course students will learn computer design skills for printing on fabric. The course will use Photoshop, Illustrator and other print design programs to design prints suitable for industrial production, small-scale production and/or individual works of art. There will be an opportunity to explore both repeat patterning and non-repeating images. Students will be able to produce prints on cloth using a large-scale digital printer, as well as prints on paper, and will be able to adapt these designs for silk screen on fabric.

Zeroes & Ones Advanced

Invented in the early 19th-century, jacquard weaving has a strong connection with the development of computers through the use of punch cards that store binary information. Historically the process was used for weaving intricate imagery and complex repeat patterns. Students work first in the computer lab learning JacqCAD and Pointcarr. Used in conjunction with Adobe Photoshop, these textile design programs allow for the transfer of drawings, photo imagery, text, and patterns into weave structures that can then be woven using CCA's state-of-the-art computerized jacquard loom. Students are encouraged to explore both technical and conceptual concerns in their designs, and each will have the opportunity to do hands-on work to realize their projects.

DT: Going Digital

DT: Going Digital, Computer Rendering for Textiles and Fashion. This course is collaboration between the textile and fashion programs and is specifically intended for students from both majors wishing to develop digital design skills. Using Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, students learn to translate drawings and ideas into digital renderings for design, presentation and production purposes. The emphasis of this course is the creative use of software to produce industry and portfolio quality textile designs, basic garment renderings and professional quality presentations. Students learn to use drawing software to digitize and manipulate images, create and develop an original line of industry quality textile designs, and to scale and create repeats and colorways for production purposes. Additionally, the course introduces students to computer rendering of basic flat technical garment silhouettes and construction detailing for presentation boards and spec sheets.

"M" DS: Graph Production 1

This class is designed for fine arts majors interested in the fundamental principals and techniques of graphic design, typography, layout and production for application to community art and education contexts. Students will learn to flexibly employ standard design and production tools and techniques, i.e., Photoshop (scanning, picture cropping and clean-up, image manipulation), Illustrator (graphic design layout, typographic manipulation) and Quark Xpress (page layout, copyediting, grid/design templates) and Production (pre-paring files for output/pre-press, putting together presentation comps). The course will be a partnership with BayCAT, and will include high school students. The course will also include media literacy and analysis skills, emphasizing nuanced, non-stereotypical, representation of cultural vernaculars - in terms of group specific typefaces, color, materials, etc. Students will learn to design and produce graphic materials that are informed by a respectful understanding of the group, client and/or audience being addressed. Instruction will include in-class demonstrations with real-world examples, projects relevant to community art and education contexts, guest artists and visits to community sites.

Remixing

Remixing, Sampling, Appropriation: Over the last decade, the rise of file-sharing sites such as Napster, Flickr or YouTube has sharpened our awareness of a global redistribution of content via the Internet. An analysis of contemporary practices in social networking and mass media tools reveals a need to formulate our understanding of the ways that visual culture is formed and perceived. In this class, historic artistic practices of collage, found footage, and appropriation are discussed from a new perspective within the context of art and media. This course will offer a forum for deepened analysis of our contemporary remix society and provide examples of artistic strategies in media art, from Bay Area pioneering artist Bruce Conner to contemporary artists such as DJ Spooky, Cory Arcangel or Candice Breitz, from the technological to cultural implications of remixing (most recently addressed by Stanford professor Lawrence Lessig). The course includes museum visits to relevant media exhibitions, among others to that of the work of Candice Breitz on view at SFMOMA in the fall 2009. Our exploration of the development of art in the age of reproduction will include all media but will focus specifically on text, photography, film, and video. The media historic paradigm shift from analog to digital as a major force that shapes today's artistic practice will thus be analyzed in its media theoretical but also art historic relevance. Students will be asked to write an analytical paper.

Game On

This course focuses on the history and socio-cultural impact of videogames. We will examine the design, production, consumption, and artistic implications of interactive entertainment. Specifically, Game On will try to answer some key questions, such as: What is the role of gaming in society? What makes a videogame different or similar to existing forms of play? How are videogames used as part of storytelling? In what social contexts are games played? How do issues of gender, race and sexuality play out in gaming culture? Can games be considered art? What is the relationship between contemporary art and gaming? Through a series of critical readings, case studies, and group discussions, we will attempt to discuss these complex issues and consider what role games play in our understanding of visual culture. In addition to essays included in books, edited anthologies, and online publications, the course content will be supplemented by-class analyses of key games. Students should come away from the course with an understanding of the history of this medium, as well as insights into design, and socio-cultural impacts of interactive entertainment. Students will develop the ability to recognize and suggest connections between the medium of the videogame and the broader field of visual studies.

Music, Sound and Media

This course considers the history and theory of the relationship between music, sound, recording technology, and media. Beginning with Plato's early suggestion that written events are somehow less primary than the live, spoken word and that representing an absent voice in writing can only lead to problems of authority, identity, verification and knowledge, students question how this idea has been both promoted and critiqued by musical practice and discourses surrounding the recording of audio events since the phonograph. The class considers early literary and philosophic responses to the phonograph (which suggested it was a "mad" machine stealing the voice), asking how those responses have changed with available technology and media. Students explore the history and theory of early and contemporary radio practice, sound and cinema (both pre-talkie and sound film), documentation and ethnography, musique concrete, minimalism, the birth of studio music, hip hop and the art of the mix, dub and sound-clash, automated and computer composition, site specific sound-installation, and digital media, paying close attention to how discourses of identity, history and knowledge have shifted alongside of media throughout the 20th century.