/ExperimentalCapture

A Curriculum for a Semester Course in Computational & Expanded ███ography

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Experimental Capture

Computational & Expanded ███ography

Golan Levin & Nica Ross, Carnegie Mellon University
Curricular Materials for CMU Course 60-461/761, 54-461/661

This is an interdisciplinary studio course in expanded media practices that arise from using devices and algorithms to "capture" the world. We will explore experimental workflows, ranging from no-tech and low-tech to emerging and state-of-the-art techniques, in order to capture, model, and share new representations of people, objects, places and events. Through self-directed research projects, students will develop systems to capture a wide variety of phenomena, and creatively share the media they collect. We will cover a wide range of techniques and artistic practices that incorporate immersive, panoramic, high-speed, multiscopic, and multispectral imaging; depth sensors and 3D scanners; motion capture systems for gestures of the face, body, hand, and eye; computer vision and machine learning techniques for detection, tracking, recognition and classification; and other unusual, forgotten, and nascent technologies for transducing the unseen, ephemeral, and otherwise undetectable.

Learning Objectives

This course is concerned with the creation of systems to enable new ways of seeing.

This is an interdisciplinary course in experimental media practices that arise from using devices to "capture" the world. In particular, we are concerned with how we can understand and build representations of the world using devices that sense beyond the limits of human perception. In this course, we seek:

  • To explore the affordances of exotic, forgotten, and nascent image capture technologies in revealing unseen or alternative realities.
  • To explore the use of computation and other technological media in expanding our expressive vocabulary for representations of people, objects, environments, and events.
  • To question the practical and epistemological assumptions that underpin the project of capturing representations of reality with devices.

At the conclusion of this course, students will be able to:

  • Recognize and identify the use of expanded capture techniques (such as photogrammetry, motion capture, multispectral imaging, binaural audio, stroboscopy, etc.) in popular and experimental media.
  • Demonstrate understanding of the scientific principles and/or engineering foundations underlying such techniques, in revealing phenomena beyond the limits of ordinary human perception.
  • Demonstrate understanding of the poetic and elucidative potentials of such techniques, and their application to the production of expressive and provocative new culture.
  • Command the practical use of one or more such techniques.

Course Logistics

Lectures

This is a partial and mostly unordered list of some of the technologies and techniques we will discuss this semester.

Introductions

Capturing Nouns (People, Places, and Things):

Capturing Phenomena in Time:

More:

Editions, Credits & Acknowledgements

This syllabus contains contributions by Golan Levin and Nica Ross; James George and Alexander Porter (of Scatter/Specular), Pablo Garcia, Jeffrey Hinkelman, Kyle McDonald, Matt Gray, Yaser Sheikh, Suzie Silver, Claire Hentschker, and others.

Helpful Information

Other Documents and Resources

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