Diploma in Creative Computing at the Creative Coding Institute, Camberwell, University of the Arts, London

Lecture slides, wiki, notes and examples from units 4 and 6 of the Creative Coding Institute's Diploma in Creative Computing.

Info

• Lecturer: Joel Gethin Lewis.
• Location: Online only (UAL login required) via the Creative Computing Institute Diploma Moodle.
• All term dates.
• Office Hours are now NON optional, via a rota, every Tuesday, 1430-1800.
• Team check ins are every Monday, 1130-1330.
• Contact me via the UAL Creative Computing Institute Slack.
• Lecture Slides.
• Wiki for all homework, reading lists and other resources.
• You are expected to undertake independent study of about 25 hours per week.

Huge thanks to:

Alan Warburton, Alex Fefegha, Ben Kelly, Ben Stopher, Caitlin Morris, Cathy Hoste, Charlotte Webb, Daniel Shiffman, Everest Pipkin, Georgina Capdevila Cano, Golan Levin, Graham Bennett, Greg Smith, Harri Lewis, Jaap de Maat, Jessica Bland, Jonas Jongejan, Jonathan Harris, Joshua Goldberg, Julia Makivic, Jussi Ängeslevä, Kenneth Lim, Kyle McDonald, Lia, Liam Walsh, Mark Lundin, Matt Deslauriers, Matt Jarvis, Matthew Plummer Fernandez, Mick Grierson, Mike Golembewski, Paolo Pedercini, Parag Kumar Mital, Patricia Lewis, Pete Mackenzie, Phoenix Perry, Rebecca Ross, Rick Walker, Rollo Lewis, Rosa Menkman, Rune Madsen, Sheldon Brown, Tega Brain, Toby Milner-Gulland, Tom Lynch, Xiaohan Zhang and Zach Lieberman.

Code of Conduct

You can find the UAL Disciplinary Code For Students here: Disciplinary Code For Students

You can find our code of conduct, cloned from p5.js, here: CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md.

Golan Levin also offers a useful thought from his children's school:

When communicating, ask yourself:

• T – is it True?
• H – is it Helpful?
• I – is it Inspiring?
• N – is it Necessary?
• K – is it Kind?

Learning Outcomes and platforms for doing so

At the end of this block (the end of term 3) you should have the following outcomes, with subheadings for methods and platforms we will use to do so. To be clear, I want you to obtain knowledge and then use that to make projects. My aim is to have every student graduate with new creative computing core knowledge and a portfolio of projects that relate that new creative computing knowledge to their chosen BA subject elsewhere at University of the Arts London (UAL).

Unit 4 / Block 2: "Coding for Collaborative Web Development"

In this unit you will develop a web app concept using Javascript, primarily in p5.js. This will give you both an understanding of the development process using standard web-based development tools and introduce specific p5.js libraries such as p5.SceneManager and p5.gui. Importantly this unit will include an introduction to collaborative tools for software development and an introduction to the use of key cloud-based services for deployment and collaboration. You will also explore the ethics of software development and consider issues such as privacy and data handling.

The aim of the unit is to expose you to the team-based nature of software development and give you experience of development processes and platforms that are in high demand in the digital creative industries. With this experience you will be able to make an informed decision about what is required to work professionally in this area and what part of the development pipeline you potentially are best suited to.

Unit 6 / Block 2: "Creative Practice: Computational Environments for the Web"

This unit builds on the creative practice developed earlier in the course and explores scaling computational practice by developing spatial interventions via the web. You will explore geolocation, computer vision and sound tools to explore computational environments.

The aim of this unit is to build on your experience of using the creative computing tools and techniques you have developed to produce interactive experience and consider the potential of computational space. This process will enable you to understand better the potential of computer vision to capture multimodal user behaviours and build novel responsive environments that react to people in interesting ways. There is much demand for expertise of this kind in the digital creative industries and - documented well - the project outcomes for this unit could form a strong addition to your graduation portfolio and form part of the Institute showcase activity at the end of year in a web based show.

Block/Term Structure

Unit 5, "Working in the Digital Creative Industries" will be taught throughout by Alex Fefegha.

The second half of term two and entirety of term 3 (aka Block 2) will be spent on Unit 4 and Unit 6.

Weekly Structure

Mondays:

• 0900-0930: Slack chat, setting up Blackboard
• 0930-1130: Unit 4 "Coding for Collaborative Web Development" Blackboard lecture
• 1130-1330: Teams A,B,C and D check ins on Slack, 20 minutes each. Team details
• 1330-1430: Lunch
• 1430-1730: All staff meeting, email, planning

Tuesdays:

• 0900-0930: Slack chat, setting up Blackboard
• 0930-1130: Unit 6 "Creative Practice: Computational Environments for the Web" Blackboard lecture
• 1130-1330: Joel write and set Moodle quiz for EACH unit - 5 multiple choice questions, 4 options for each, to complete any time between Thursday 0900 - Saturday 0900 (London time)
• 1330-1430: Lunch
• 1430-1800: 7 20 minute individual check ins on Slack - rota, non optional!

On Wednesdays and Thursdays I am working for Universal Everything.

On Fridays I am working for CCI on research and course development.

Team check ins and Individual Check ins

Team check ins are every Monday, 1130-1330. Team details.

Individual check ins are every Tuesday, 1430-1800. Individual check ins details.

Assessment

At the end of block 2 (at the end of this summer term), you will be assessed individually.

Unit 4 and Unit 6 are assessed in different ways:

• Unit 4 - "Coding for Collaborative Web Development" - this unit will be assessed in two ways - via multiple choice test (Monday 1st June 2020) and practical coding exam (Monday 8th June 2020). In the multiple choice test you will be presented with a series of questions relating explicitly to course content. You must choose between up to 4 potentially correct answers per question. In the Practical Exam you will be individually asked to write a basic program to demonstrate the application of creative coding to a set problem. Each part is worth 50% of the unit mark. You will be given 1 hour to complete 20 multiple choice questions. You will be given 2 hours to complete the practical coding exam.

• Unit 6 - "Creative Practice: Computational Environments for the Web" - this unit will be assessed via the presentation of a project (Tuesday 9th June 2020) that you will work towards throughout the block. This unit is about putting skills from all units to use in a project. You will be assessed on your presentation and the ‘slide deck’ from the presentation, which may contain elements you didn't present. You will be given 5 minutes to present, with 5 minutes of discussion.

End of year Online Show 🥳

Due to C19, the show will be happening online this year. How shall we exhibit? Which domain name? I'm happy to host on my own server. I was thinking a structure similar to this list of examples by Matt DesLauriers: http://dfpi-demos.glitch.me/.

After discussion we are going to create an online show in the style of the LikeLike arcade. Joel has set up a Glitch clone that we are going to develop on Glitch. The plan is to build our own pixelated gallery, with each picture on the wall/prop clickable to launch each students end of year project in another browser window, similar to the way that LikeLike has individual arcade machines that launch browser based games when clicked.

Summer term schedule

1. Tuesday 14th April 2020 - Unit 6 - "Creative Practice: Computational Environments for the Web" - Lecture 0: Introduction.
2. Monday 20th April 2020 - Unit 4 - "Coding for Collaborative Web Development" - Lecture 1: Node.js and JSON.
3. Tuesday 21st April 2020 - Unit 6 - "Creative Practice: Computational Environments for the Web" - Lecture 1: Images and video.
4. Monday 27th April 2020 - Unit 4 - "Coding for Collaborative Web Development" - Lecture 2: Websockets and Socket.IO.
5. Tuesday 28th April 2020 - Unit 6 - "Creative Practice: Computational Environments for the Web" - Lecture 2: Tracking.
6. Monday 4th May 2020 - Unit 4 - "Coding for Collaborative Web Development" - Lecture 3: Geolocation and databases.
7. Tuesday 5th May 2020 - Unit 6 - "Creative Practice: Computational Environments for the Web" - Lecture 3: Classifying.
8. Monday 11th May 2020 - Unit 4 - "Coding for Collaborative Web Development" - Lecture 4: Networked face and body tracking.
9. Tuesday 12th May 2020 - Unit 6 - "Creative Practice: Computational Environments for the Web" - Lecture 4: Faces.
10. Monday 18th May 2020 - Unit 4 - "Coding for Collaborative Web Development" - Lecture 5: Networked environments.
11. Tuesday 19th May 2020 - Unit 6 - "Creative Practice: Computational Environments for the Web" - Lecture 5: Bodies.
12. Tuesday 26th May 2020 - Mock Unit 6 presentation rehearsal, mock exams for Unit 4 multiple choice and programming exam issued.
13. Monday 1st June 2020 - EXAM - Unit 4 - Multiple choice exam on Swift.
14. Tuesday 2nd June 2020 - Final Unit 6 presentation rehearsals
15. Monday 8th June 2020 - EXAM - Unit 4 - Two hour exam in p5.js.
16. Tuesday 9th June 2020 - EXAM - Unit 6 - Presentations of web based computer vision project.
17. Monday 15th June 2020 - Prize day! 🏆
18. Tuesday 16th June 2020 - End of year Online show opening party! 🎉

Retakes and other activities to be announced will take place after Tuesday 16th June 2020. Do you have any suggestions? Area of interest? Message me via the CCI Slack.