This course is for anyone who would like to apply their technical skills to creative work ranging from video games to art installations to interactive music, and also for artists who would like to use programming in their artistic practice.
Creative Programming for Digital Media & Mobile Apps
Creative Programming for Digital Media & Mobile Apps
Instructors: Prof Marco Gillies
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4.1
(55 reviews)
25 hours to complete
3 weeks at 8 hours a week
Flexible schedule
Learn at your own pace
92%
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Assessments
27 assignments
Taught in English
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There are 5 modules in this course
This week we are getting up and running with the Processing IDE. We will show you the basics of writing Processing sketches then move onto some graphics and audio concepts. Mick will then introduce our first audiovisual example - SonicPainter, which allows users to interactively paint with synchronised graphics and sound.
What's included
11 videos4 readings6 assignments1 peer review
This week we are looking at using images and video, and also finding out how to control sound more fully in an interactive way. We're going to be showing you a really basic interactive VJ/DJ app called 'DJTube', which is a very simple example of how to create and load video, images and animations on desktops / mobile devices, and also use them as a basic user interface.
What's included
8 videos2 readings5 assignments
This week is all about creating an Audiovisualiser. This is a really popular and interesting topic that has lots of applications, from music players, to game engines, to more complex things such as DSP. We'll be learning about algorithmic graphics, audio analysis, and also about using the accelerometer features of your phone. Remember that many desktops don't have accelerometers, no matter how much you shake them!
What's included
8 videos2 readings6 assignments1 peer review
This week we will be creating a physics based game using a Physics engine based on Box2D. Physics engines are a fantastic way of creating dynamic gameplay that models the real world. Box2D is one of the most popular because it is optimised to be fast for 2D games that don't need the heavy processing of a 3D engine. It is used in many important 2D games, most famously Angry Birds. We will be using boxwrap2D which is a Java port of the original C++ version of Box2D, that is designed to work with Processing. Since boxwrap2D is java only we have created our own port to JavaScript, which interfaces to the javascript version of Box2D, but provides an almost identical interface to the Processing version.
What's included
9 videos2 readings6 assignments
Welcome to the final week of Creative Programming for Digital Media and Mobile apps. This week, we are going to move back to one of our favorite areas of app development - music apps. We have a very special guest this week - Martin Roth from RJDJ. Martin has lots of experience working on consumer mobile music applications, including the amazing Inception app, and The Dark Knight Rises. He shares his views on the expanding space in mobile music applications, and offers us his opinion on the WebAudio API. Meanwhile, Matt will be showing you how to create a very basic drum sequencer, and Marco will take you through the basics of sliders and multisliders, which are particularly useful for controlling parameters in music apps. Mick will then be taking you through some synthesiser examples in WebAudio, and talk you through the Music Machine example, which is a great place to kick off making a professional interactive music app for mobile.
What's included
6 videos1 reading4 assignments1 peer review
Instructors
Recommended if you're interested in Software Development
University of Maryland, College Park
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Learner reviews
4.1
55 reviews
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Showing 3 of 55
VA
5
Reviewed on Nov 5, 2016
Awesome course. It's packed with tons of information on how to get started making cool interactive programs, especially if you are a music junkie like myself. Great work!
RP
5
Reviewed on Feb 22, 2022
This was a great class that shows that programming can still be fun.
LA
5
Reviewed on Jun 10, 2017
Having so much fun programming with processing, the programming concepts and animation is simple to understand with this programming environment
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