Art & Design Concepts

Image Manipulation

Fundamentals of Interactive Media Design

Special Topics in Interactive Media Design

Syllabus

Student Work

Links

HCI Research Report

Write about an innovation in human-computer interaction that you expect to see in production in the next 3–5 years. Discuss your subject in a historical context, and explain how it relates to current technology. Address expected advantages and potential disadvantages of this new technology. How does this technology provide access to computation or information that was previously impractical?

If you like, you may correlate your report with your final project.

You must submit an annotated 3–5 page paper in support of a 10 minute presentation.

Assignment 01

Create a project in Flash that uses mouse input for something other than moving a pointer. Post the SWF to your project development web site.

Assignment 02

Re-create your Flash project in Processing. Export the sketch and post it to your project development web site. Also turn in the sketch folder to the Drop Off drive.

Download the Processing handout.

Assignment 03

Using Processing, create a sketch that displays a gallery of at least 20 images. Using the guts of your ball mouse, create a new input device designed to control the gallery. Both the device and the gallery should be designed with one another in mind. Here is my example. Also, a demo of the translate() function for positioning multiple objects in 2-D space.

Remember, to display images in Processing you have to define a variable of type PImage, load a file into the variable with the loadImage function, and finally, use the image function to display the picture. Images must be GIFs, JPGs, TGAs or PNGs, and must be stored in the sketch's "data" directory. See the Processing Reference for more details.

Assignment 04

Design and build a system that allows the user to interact with computation in a non-traditional way. This can take the form of an input device, an output device, a combination of both, an embedded system, or...

In class you will be introduced to some hardware and electronics that may help you achieve this. We will look at micro controllers, various sensor devices, and basic electromechanical actuators including solenoids and servomotors.

Some general directions for this project include:

You, of course, are not limited to these three options. We are on the fringe. This is not well explored territory. I am just here to show you the edge.

Think big, but don't over-extend yourself. We have four weeks remaining. An iterative process of experimentation and revision is the key to being successful in this assignment. If you canít have a working prototype each week, you need to simplify your project.

Document your work and progress: Keep a development journal or blog on you class project page. Post digital photos and record what gets done each time you work on your project. Also consider keeping a list of links to your influences and references.

Suppliers and Supplies

Materials

Ax-Man

Midwest Surplus & Electronics

Digi-key

Microcontrollers

Spark Fun Electronics (they sell the Arduino & Wiring boards)

Parallax (they sell the BASIC Stamps)

Links

Resources

Brendan Dawes — the author of Analog In, Digital Out

Processing.org

My YouTube playlist

information aesthetics (blog,YouTube)

Reading assignment: Don Norman's jnd website Follow the "The Invisible Computer" link in the right column and then read Chapter 1. (Chapter 2 is good, too, but optional.)

Emerging Digerati

Spark — Festival of Electronic Music and Art at the U of M

Pattern Language

Walker Telematic Table

The Walker Channel artist talk with Piotr Szyhalski

Technical References

Physical Computing:
Tom Igoe
Dan O'Sullivan

Electronics Info

Phys Comp Elec Def

Misc Inspiration

rhizome.org

Make magazine

Making Things

Processing Examples

Processing 101

translate( ), rotate( ), pushMatrix( ) and popMatrix( )

Image Gallery

My Processing Sketch Gallery

P{three-sixty}5 blog