university of california, santa cruz / department of film & digital media

foundations of digital media

f i l m  &  d i g i t a l   m e d i a   1 7 0 a

   

professor: 

warren sack <professor_fdm170a@yahoo.com>

course list: 

<fdm170a-subscribe@yahoogroups.com>

place: 

porter college rooms d245 (mondays) & d140 (wednesdays)

times: 

mondays & wednesdays: 9:30am - noon
mondays (lab): noon - 1:30pm

   

06.01.2003 

introduction

  • topic: course overview
  • assignment one: put up a webpage and subscribe to the class list.
   

08.01.2003 

collective authorship

   

13.01.2003 

what is a computer?

  • topic: bits, bytes, boolean circuits and code
  • reading: daniel hillis/chapters 1-6
  • due: assignment two
  • assignment three: design a letter and implement it in the dbn programming language
   

15.01.2003 

how to do things with computers

  • topic: programming and the (art) history of procedures, routines, and so forth
  • reading: john maeda/chapters 1-7
  • due: assignment three
  • assignment four: design an alphabet of 26 letters and implement it in the dbn programming language as a set of 26 commands. ...more
   

20.01.2003 

no class

   

22.01.2003 

how to do things with computers -- again, and again

  • topic: programming loops and abstractions
  • reading: john maeda/chapters 8-12
  • due: assignment four
  • assignment five: write a program in dbn to recursively draw a tree -- like the one defined by hillis...more
   

27.01.2003 

recursion

  • topic: programming recursion & iteration; arrays & dots
  • reading: maeda/chapters 13-20 & hofstadter on recursion
  • due: assignment five
  • assignment six: after reading the resnick and silverman essay, write a two dimensional grammar for conway's game of life; and, develop a new form of "still life"...more
   

29.01.2003 

de-coding

   

03.02.2003 

debugging and re-presentations of code: pseudo-code and algorithms

   

05.02.2003 

guest lecture: sharon daniel et al.

  • topic: collective authorship and projects in digital media
  • reading: read professor daniel's website; pay particular attention to the description of the project entitled "subtract the sky"
  • reading: (for the assignment) turtle geometry by abelson and sussman
   

10.02.2003 

bitmap images and filters

  • topic: algorithms for image filtering
  • reading: william mitchell on images, specifically the chapter "electronic tools" from his book the reconfigured eye
  • due: assignment eight
  • assignment nine:create a collage from at least ten images that you find with google-images
  • ...more
   

12.02.2003 

network protocols

  • topic: how does a network work?
  • due: assignment nine
  • assignment ten: modify maeda's collective drawing program so that (a) only one person can draw at a time; and, (b) each successive person starts their line drawing at exactly the point where the last person left off...more
   

17.02.2003 

no class

   

19.02.2003 

browsers

  • topic: network clients
  • reading: protocols tutorial (listed off of the page for assignment ten), i/o/d webstalker, potatoland, carnavor & the society for new and old media's browser competition
  • due: assignment ten
  • assignment eleven:build a special-purpose web client that downloads a set of images from google and assembles them into a collage...more
   

24.02.2003

transcoding

   

26.02.2003 

image processing

  • topic: image processing and transcoding continued
  • due: assignment twelve
  • assignment thirteen: write in dbn three of the convolution filters explained in the java text; convert some JPGs into DBN code and draw on top of them; create an applet from from DBN code
   

03.03.2003 

overview of final project

  • topic: the project timeline: from proposal to (final) version(s)
  • due: assignment thirteen
  • assignment fourteen: develop and post your portion of the final project proposal, including a description of a portion of the architecture of the system
  • ...more
   

05.03.2003 

design session

  • topic: final project design session
  • due: assignment fourteen
  • assignment fifteen:as designed collectively by us, the final project will entail the development of four interdependent pieces: (a) the design and writing of the webpages; (b) the design and implementation of a special-purpose web client; (c) the design and implementation of an image filter; (d) and, the design and implementation of several cgi scripts. meet with your group to finalize the design of one or more of these pieces.
   

10.03.2003 

design review

   

12.03.2003 

design review

  • topic: integrating the pieces: perl, java, and html
  • due: assignment sixteen
  • assignment seventeen: modify and extend your part of the design to address the weaknesses uncovered in the design review
   

17.03.2003 

final crit