Yale Curriculum at CCAM
Each semester CCAM collaborates with faculty from programs and departments across Yale to host classes that have content related to CCAM’s mission of bridging interdisciplinary research with emerging technology. Here is a list of recent classes taught at CCAM. Please email ccam@yale.edu if you are Yale faculty interested in teaching your class at CCAM.
FALL 2021 CLASSES
ARCH 2222a, The Mechanical Eye
This course explores how machines see our environment, with emphasis on the role of human subjectivity. With their ability to see at resolutions, scales, and spectrums outside of the human eye, mechanical eyes can open new ways of inscribing information into our material world and also reveal our own biases and habits. The course will be a cumulative series of studies, beginning with material excavation, exploring the materials through virtual reality and motion capture techniques, creating a final object via milling and fabrication, and displaying the final object in a group exhibition at The Center for Collaborative Arts and Media (CCAM).
ART 184, 3-D Modeling for Creative Practice
Through creation of artwork, using the technology of 3D modeling and virtual representation, students develop a framework for understanding how experiences are shaped by emerging technologies. Students create forms, add texture, and illuminate with realistic lights; they then use the models to create interactive and navigable spaces in the context of video games and virtual reality, or to integrate with photographic images. Focus on individual project development and creative exploration. Frequent visits to Yale University art galleries. Materials fee: $150.
ART 442 / FILM 483, Advanced Film Writing and Directing
A yearlong workshop designed primarily for majors in Art and in Film & Media Studies making senior projects. Each student writes and directs a short fiction film. The first term focuses on the screenplay, production schedule, storyboards, casting, budget, and locations. In the second term students rehearse, shoot, edit, and screen the film. Materials fee: $150. Enrollment limited to 8. Priority to majors in Art and in Film & Media Studies.
CPSC 334, Creative Embedded Systems
Ubiquitous computing is creating new canvases and opportunities for creative ideas. This class explores the use of microprocessors, distributed sensor networks, IoT, and intermedia systems for the purposes of creative expression. The course is delivered in a mixed lecture and lab format that introduces the fundamental concepts and theory behind embedded systems as well as issues particular to their creative employment. The key objective of the course is for students to conceive of and implement creative uses of computation. To this end, skills to be obtained during the course are as follows: (1) appreciate the current efforts and motivation to push the limitations of computation for creative expression, both in new application and new foundational research; (2) weigh factors such as cost, power, processing, memory, I/O capabilities, and networking capabilities when choosing a set of embedded devices and sensors; (3) contextualize unfamiliar hardware and languages through examples, documentation, and familiar design pattern; and (4) manage communication between multiple languages, devices, and protocols. Additionally, at the end of the course students will have a portfolio of their work in the form of writing, code, video, audio, and physical artifacts.
FILM 735, Documentary Film Workshop
This workshop in audiovisual scholarship explores ways to present research through the moving image. Students work within a Public Humanities framework to make a documentary that draws on their disciplinary fields of study. Designed to fulfill requirements for the M.A. with a concentration in Public Humanities.
DRAM 172 a/b, Digital Imaging for Designers
A comprehensive introduction to two-dimensional computer graphics as it applies to designing for the theater. Students develop a working understanding of a digital workflow that includes input (scanning and digital photography), computer-aided design (Adobe Photoshop), and output (printing). The course focuses on the possibilities the computer offers scenic, lighting, and costume designers in professional practice. Open to nondepartmental students with permission of the instructor.
DRAM 244, Motion Graphics and Film Production
Digital video and motion graphics have become a central asset in the theater, and this course covers a diverse set of topics relating to video capture and delivery formats, compression fundamentals, utilization of graphics elements in motion graphics animation, nonlinear video editing techniques, special effects, and the digital video production pipeline. Students primarily utilize Adobe After Effects and Apple Motion to create motion graphics and animation content and Adobe Premiere to edit and produce finished assets, with an emphasis on the technical and creative challenges of projection in a theatrical environment. Open to nondepartmental and non-School of Drama students with permission of the instructor.
ART 185, Principles of Animation
The physics of movement in animated moving-image production. Focus on historical and theoretical developments in animation of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries as frameworks for the production of animated film and visual art. Classical animation and digital stop-motion; fundamental principles of animation and their relation to traditional and digital technologies. This course is a curricular collaboration with The Center for Collaborative Arts and Media at Yale (CCAM).
DRAM 364a, Animation Studio
A hands-on workshop aimed at creating expressive animations. From a simple movement to an expressive action, how do we create the appearance of intention, emotion, and materiality in moving images? The class is focused on experimentation: after reviewing the fundamentals of a particular style of animation, such as hand-drawn animation, stop-motion, cutouts, pixilation, or digital animation, students apply the concepts to exercises resulting in short films. The course emphasizes fundamental animation tools—timing interpolation, arcs, eases and squeezes, storyboarding, animatic—as well as animation software and basic camera techniques. Students learn how to use appropriate techniques to portray personality, create fluid body motions and organic movements, staging gesture, thought, material, weight, and lip-synch. The sessions consist of demonstrations, viewing of related works, hands-on experimentation, and critique. Computer editing and the use of digital cameras, scanners, and Wacom tablets are critical skills that provide the foundation for this class.
FALL 2019 CLASSES
ARCH 2222a, The Mechanical Eye
This course explores how machines see our environment, with emphasis on the role of human subjectivity. With their ability to see at resolutions, scales, and spectrums outside of the human eye, mechanical eyes can open new ways of inscribing information into our material world and also reveal our own biases and habits. The course will be a cumulative series of studies, beginning with material excavation, exploring the materials through virtual reality and motion capture techniques, creating a final object via milling and fabrication, and displaying the final object in a group exhibition at The Center for Collaborative Arts and Media (CCAM).
ART 184, 3-D Modeling for Creative Practice
Through creation of artwork, using the technology of 3D modeling and virtual representation, students develop a framework for understanding how experiences are shaped by emerging technologies. Students create forms, add texture, and illuminate with realistic lights; they then use the models to create interactive and navigable spaces in the context of video games and virtual reality, or to integrate with photographic images. Focus on individual project development and creative exploration. Frequent visits to Yale University art galleries. Materials fee: $150.
AMST 349 / THST 427, Technologies of Movement Research
An interdisciplinary survey of creative and critical methods for researching human movement. Based in the motion capture studio at the Center for Collaborative Arts and Media, the course draws movement exercises and motion capture experiments together with literature from dance and performance studies, art, anthropology, sociology, philosophy, cognitive science, and the history of science to investigate the ways that artists and scholars conceive of human movement as a way of knowing the world. Students will develop their own projects over the course of the semester. No prior experience in dance required.
ART 442 / FILM 483, Advanced Film Writing and Directing
A yearlong workshop designed primarily for majors in Art and in Film & Media Studies making senior projects. Each student writes and directs a short fiction film. The first term focuses on the screenplay, production schedule, storyboards, casting, budget, and locations. In the second term students rehearse, shoot, edit, and screen the film. Materials fee: $150. Enrollment limited to 8. Priority to majors in Art and in Film & Media Studies.
CPSC 334, Creative Embedded Systems
Ubiquitous computing is creating new canvases and opportunities for creative ideas. This class explores the use of microprocessors, distributed sensor networks, IoT, and intermedia systems for the purposes of creative expression. The course is delivered in a mixed lecture and lab format that introduces the fundamental concepts and theory behind embedded systems as well as issues particular to their creative employment. The key objective of the course is for students to conceive of and implement creative uses of computation. To this end, skills to be obtained during the course are as follows: (1) appreciate the current efforts and motivation to push the limitations of computation for creative expression, both in new application and new foundational research; (2) weigh factors such as cost, power, processing, memory, I/O capabilities, and networking capabilities when choosing a set of embedded devices and sensors; (3) contextualize unfamiliar hardware and languages through examples, documentation, and familiar design pattern; and (4) manage communication between multiple languages, devices, and protocols. Additionally, at the end of the course students will have a portfolio of their work in the form of writing, code, video, audio, and physical artifacts.
FILM 735, Documentary Film Workshop
This workshop in audiovisual scholarship explores ways to present research through the moving image. Students work within a Public Humanities framework to make a documentary that draws on their disciplinary fields of study. Designed to fulfill requirements for the M.A. with a concentration in Public Humanities.
DRAM 172 a/b, Digital Imaging for Designers
A comprehensive introduction to two-dimensional computer graphics as it applies to designing for the theater. Students develop a working understanding of a digital workflow that includes input (scanning and digital photography), computer-aided design (Adobe Photoshop), and output (printing). The course focuses on the possibilities the computer offers scenic, lighting, and costume designers in professional practice. Open to nondepartmental students with permission of the instructor.
DRAM 244, Motion Graphics and Film Production
Digital video and motion graphics have become a central asset in the theater, and this course covers a diverse set of topics relating to video capture and delivery formats, compression fundamentals, utilization of graphics elements in motion graphics animation, nonlinear video editing techniques, special effects, and the digital video production pipeline. Students primarily utilize Adobe After Effects and Apple Motion to create motion graphics and animation content and Adobe Premiere to edit and produce finished assets, with an emphasis on the technical and creative challenges of projection in a theatrical environment. Open to nondepartmental and non-School of Drama students with permission of the instructor.
SPRING 2018 CLASSES
ART 145b, Introduction to Digital Video
AFAM 220b / FILM 434b, Archive Aesthetics and Community Storytelling
ART 184b, 3D Modeling for Creative Practice
FILM 355b / ART 341b, Intermediate Film Writing and Directing
DRAM 172a/b, Digital Imaging for Designers
DRAM 244a/b, Motion Graphics and Film Production
FILM 483a and FILM 484b / ART 442a and ART 443b, Advanced Film Writing and Directing
FILM 455/ FILM 735: Documentary Film Workshop
Charles Musser, John Lucas