Course Description
In recent years, we have seen a proliferation of new technologies and techniques in the media industry. This has had a profound impact on most content creators: Film directors are now challenged to think in more dimensions, sculptors need thorough knowledge about 3D scanning and printing, and designers are increasingly taking advantage of machine learning to design for complex systems. However, the tools we use to produce these new types of content are still modelled on manual processes that existed before the computer.
This is a class dedicated to researching and developing new production tools for digital media. Over the course of the semester, students work in groups to identify an aspect of this theme to work on, lay out a plan for execution, and follow this plan to success. Students are expected to create roles within their group, come up with user stories, develop feature sets, perform user testing to validate their assumptions, and create documentation that explains how to use their tools.
Course Materials
Browse each week's reading, agenda, and supplementary materials below.
Final Group Projects
Students worked in groups throughout the semester to design, build, and document original production tools. The final projects were:
- Music Rethinking — An audio analysis web app that translates audio frequencies into approximate MIDI notation for use in music production software.
- DoCode — A tool that automatically generates media files (videos, GIFs, and screenshots) from a JavaScript sketch file.
- DiscovAR — An augmented reality tool to assist with administrative tasks.
- Image Ocean — A software tool that visualizes collections of images in 3D space and explores patterns in large image datasets.
- RunDown — A tutorial platform for beginners learning creative coding.