8 January – 12 April, 2024
Section A: Tuesdays, 13:15 – 17:15
Section B: Thursdays, 13:15 – 17:15
Classroom (check your Schedule) / Discord / Email
Pippin Barr
Associate Professor and Chair
Department of Design and Computation Arts
pippin.barr@concordia.ca
www.pippinbarr.com
Office hours: Thursdays, 15:00-16:00 (subject to discussion)
Teaching assistant: Mathilde Davan
Lee Wilkins
Department of Design and Computation Arts
l.wilkins@concordia.ca
www.leecyb.org
Office hours tbd.
Teaching assistant: Stephen Friedrich
We acknowledge that Concordia University is located on unceded Indigenous lands. The Kanien’kehá:ka Nation is recognized as the custodians of the lands and waters on which we gather today. Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal is historically known as a gathering place for many First Nations. Today, it is home to a diverse population of Indigenous and other peoples. We respect the continued connections with the past, present and future in our ongoing relationships with Indigenous and other peoples within the Montreal community.
The Department of Design and Computation Arts is committed to fostering an equitable and positive learning experience for all students, staff and faculty, free from discrimination based for example on race, gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, ability, religion, ethnicity, age, etc. We value diversity and difference, and strive together to create safer spaces in our classrooms, studios, and labs, where all students can fully engage in scholarly and artistic pursuits, knowing that harmful behaviour (e.g. harassment, microaggressions, intolerance, disrespectful language, etc.) is unacceptable. We believe that celebrating difference is fundamental to supporting an academic community where innovation, creative exploration, and intellectual freedom can flourish.
Programming isn’t just about knowing the syntax of your chosen programming language, it’s also about leveraging the code already written by others in your quest to create truly interesting software. In this course we shift our focus from syntax to libraries as a way to extend on our capacities and to open up new avenues for creative expression through code. Students will spend their time encountering and learning to use a variety of libraries suited to creative coding while producing their own original work in a studio environment.
After completing this course, students should be able to:
Each week will include a number of lecture videos and notes covering a specific topic in JavaScript programming and libraries for students to follow in their own time before that week’s class time.
Each topic will include a short programming activity covering the topic of the week. Students will complete the activity themselves (optionally alongside a video of the instructor doing the same work).
Each class will being with a discussion period. The instructor will briefly recap the week’s material and lead a live-coding session along with Q&A.
After the start of class period, there will be studio time during which the instructor and TA will be available for specific student requests for assistance either online or in person.
Attendance of the studio period is technically optional, but students are highly encouraged to take the time to connect with the instructor and TAs, even if only to show their work in progress.
Each major topic will have an associated “jam” project to spend time developing a creative work. Each will be used as an opportunity for students to practice and develop their programming skills with room to express their own ideas using a specific JavaScript library.
There will be a single final project in which students will develop one of their jam projects into a larger and more coherent work.
The instructor will be live on Discord or in person for further hours during the week explicitly to support students with questions about programming topics, activities, exercises, projects, and anything else of relevance.
Students are expected to already be familiar with the core elements of JavaScript programming (including project setup, variables, conditionals, loops, functions, arrays, and classes) and p5.js, although a review will be conducted in the first class. Some basic knowledge of HTML and CSS will be advantageous, but are not strictly required and can be learned during the course.
Students are further expected to be fully committed to engaging with programming as not just a technical but as a creative practice, constantly working to see ways in which the technical skills they are learning can be deployed in expressive and interesting ways and articulating those ideas both in code and speech/writing.
Moodle will be used to host lecture videos as well as to receive and submit assignments and grades.
GitHub be used for all other course content. The course GitHub repository will contain example code, lecture notes, course information, and more. Students will be able to post questions and issues with GitHub’s issue tracker as needed.
Students will create their own repository on GitHub to save, track, and present their coursework. (Actual submission will be via Moodle, for privacy.)
Discord will be used as a common space for this course, for offering online teaching where needed and also online support for students’ work. Everyone will use their real name (or recognizable nickname) as their nickname on the Discord. Ideally, everyone will include their pronouns at the end of their Discord nickname.
Specific evaluation requirements will be provided when assigned.
Students have the right to write in French at Concordia. Pippin can read French relatively well, but cannot offer substantive feedback on writing skill itself. Given that this is a programming course, you are welcome to name variables and functions in French as well as to write comments in French.
The most common offense under the Academic Code of Conduct is plagiarism, which the Code defines as “the presentation of the work of another person as one’s own or without proper acknowledgement.” This includes material copied word for word from books, journals, Internet sites, professor’s course notes, etc. It refers to material that is paraphrased but closely resembles the original source. It also includes for example the work of a fellow student, an answer on a quiz, data for a lab report, a paper or assignment completed by another student. It might be a paper purchased from any source. Plagiarism does not refer to words alone – it can refer to copying images, graphs, tables and ideas. “Presentation” is not limited to written work. It includes oral presentations, computer assignments and artistic works. Finally, if you translate the work of another person into any other language and do not cite the source, this is also plagiarism.
In Simple Words: Do not copy, paraphrase or translate anything from anywhere without saying where you obtained it. (Source: Concordia’s Academic Integrity Website)
When creating projects in code, make sure you attribute all elements that are not your own work, including images, sounds, and especially other people’s code (provide notes and links to the original work either in a README, at the top of your script, on inline with the usage)
Please refrain from using these tools in this course. This course completes an introductory cycle of learning programming from the ground up, one advantage of which is to better be able to use machine learning programming assistants. But you simply won’t be able to learn these ideas if you create your work with an AI assistant.
The practical work done in this class will take place on your own computer (with course software installed on it by you) or on the computers in the computer labs at Concordia. The instructor is significantly more experienced with macOS, but will work to support Windows and even Linux as needed. This course does not require a significantly powerful machine beyond the ability to run a web browser.
(Click through for week-by-week information about what we will cover in the course.)
(Click through for the standardized information from D/CART that is included as part of all course outlines.)
All individuals participating in courses are expected to be professional and constructive throughout the course, including in their communications. Concordia students are subject to the Code of Rights and Responsibilities which applies both when students are physically and virtually engaged in any University activity, including classes, seminars, meetings, etc. Students engaged in University activities must respect this Code when engaging with any members of the Concordia community, including faculty, staff, and students, whether such interactions are verbal or in writing, face to face or online/virtual. Failing to comply with the Code may result in charges and sanctions, as outlined in the Code.
Content belonging to instructors shared in online courses, including, but not limited to, online lectures, course notes, and video recordings of classes remain the intellectual property of the faculty member. It may not be distributed, published or broadcast, in whole or in part, without the express permission of the faculty member. Students are also forbidden to use their own means of recording any elements of an online class or lecture without express permission of the instructor. Any unauthorized sharing of course content may constitute a breach of the Academic Code of Conduct and/or the Code of Rights and Responsibilities. As specified in the Policy on Intellectual Property, the University does not claim any ownership of or interest in any student IP. All university members retain copyright over their work.
In the event of extraordinary circumstances and pursuant to the Academic Regulations, the University may modify the delivery, content, structure, forum, location and/or evaluation scheme. In the event of such extraordinary circumstances, students will be informed of the changes.