Department of Design & Computation Arts
CART 370: Real Time Video

Section AA

Thursdays   13:30-15:30   SGW EV-5.815   Class
Thursdays   15:30-17:30   SGW EV-5.815   Lab

Instructors: Sha Xin Wei,  sha@alcor.concordia.ca
                     Freida Abtan, freida.abtan@gmail.com

Please make sure you indicate CART 370 in your email subject lines.    

Office Hours: Wednesdays 15:30-17:00 SGW EV-6.769 or by appointment. Request for appointments should be made in person during class time or by email at least 48 hours in advance.

Course Website: http://hybrid.concordia.ca/~cart370_xinwei_11

Course Overview

Prerequisite: 24 credits in a Computation Arts, Electroacoustics, or Intermedia/Cyberarts program; or written permission of the Department.

CART 370 is a studio-based course in the creation and real-time processing of moving textures and video. This course surveys computer-based video art, particularly as applied to installation and performance arts practice. It provides an introduction to mathematical approaches for the real-time processing of 2D and higher-dimensional arrays, image and video filters, motion segmentation, and tracking blobs, optical flow, faces, and shapes.

NOTE: Students who have received credit for this topic under a CART 498 number may not take this course for credit.

NOTE: Students should have experience or knowledge in videography and video editing.

Class Policies

Attendance is required for this course. Unjustified absences will result in a loss of participation points. As per departmental policy, a maximum of 2 absences per term is tolerated, after which a medical certificate or documentation of another valid reason for the absences must be provided.  Three unjustified absences per course will result in an automatic failure. Written notification will be sent to students after 2 missed classes. Please arrive on time for class. Late students will loose participation points. Class arrivals that are late by more than 15 minutes will be considered as an absence for the offending student.

In all cases, students are responsible for any material they have missed through absence. Material from lectures and labs will not be repeated due to absence or tardiness. Exceptions to this policy might be made in the case of a legitimate medical (or other) emergency.

Students must turn off their cell phones during class time.

Assignments are due at the start of each class. Handing in assignments late will lower your grade by one full letter grade per day unless an extension is requested at least 24h in advance. Extensions will only be granted for reasonable excuses, such as an illness with a valid doctor’s note.

The Department of Design and Computation Arts complies with the Code of Conduct of Concordia University. Students are expected to be familiar with it.  Among other things, this code specifies that plagiarism will not be tolerated in any form. All patches (or algorithms) used by students in their assignments must be properly attributed by source, failure to do so counts as plagiarism as per university policy.

Deliverables

Assignments must be submitted to the CART370 class_shares folder on the fine arts hybrid server by the beginning of class time on the assignment due date. Each student should create a directory with their name, and submit all their assignment’s patches and necessary included files within that directory. The patch to be executed to ‘start’ the assignment must be named start.maxpat. Specific and clear instructions to begin the patch must be included as documentation within the patches comments! A small rendered video of the program’s output should also be included with each submitted video processing assignment, as should a text document that includes written documentation on your project’s intention and implementation.

It is preferable that start.maxpat begins with a single ‘bang’ command, as my failure to operate your patch when marking will mean a reduced grade! Please remember that internal documentation is an important part of every patch. Not only is it specifically part of my marking scheme, it will it help you to implement your ideas clearly and will allow me to understand what you are trying to do when I examine your code afterward!

Resources

Cycling 74’s Max, MSP, and Jitter Documentation includes fantastic tutorials on all aspects of the software. These are highly recommended, and many will be assigned as homework for the class.

All Patches demonstrated in class will be available from the course website. I will also maintain a useful list of externals and resources there.

Marking Scheme

Letter G.P.A. Rating A+, A, A- 4.3, 4.0, 3.7 Outstanding B+, B, B- 3.3, 3.0, 2.7 Very Good C+, C, C- 2.3, 2.0, 1.7 Satisfactory D+, D, D- 1.3, 1.0, 0.7 Marginal Pass

 

Lecture and Presentations 1:30 – 3:30 Break 3:30 – 3:45 In class work session 3:45 – 5:30