New York University 4 credits Open Arts Curriculum
TouchDesigner is a powerful software hub for live audiovisual performance and installation art. With a cutting-edge buffet of inputs and outputs at our disposal, what new, evolved, or remixed types of art can we create? If you’re a musician, you’ll make and play an instrument that didn’t exist before. If you’re a dancer, your movements will become the music and visuals, instead of the other way around. If you’re a visual artist, you’ll collage with code, sculpt with magic, and create installations that respond to your audience instantly. If you’re all of the above, you’ll have fun in this class. The course starts with video art — live camera feeds, visual effects, and projection mapping — then weaves in audio reactivity and sound generation for DJ/VJing. We will use the MediaPipe plugin to detect our faces, bodies, and objects and use that data to make music, control systems, and modulate visual effects. We will scan objects, people, and environments with our phones to create virtual scenes and 3D animations rendered live. We will learn communication protocols — MIDI to send input and receive output from MIDI controllers or DAWs such as Ableton; OSC to wirelessly connect to other computers, software, and livecode environments; and NDI to send high-resolution and low-latency video feeds between devices. By the end of the course, students will be able to use TouchDesigner to connect and control any modern art/performance/game software. Assignments are time-intensive: creating original work to be shown in class and watching recorded lessons of the next week’s concepts. Classtime is a mix of homework performances, collaborative exercises, concept walkthroughs, and studio time. The final is a small group performance or interactive installation that is a part of a public show. No previous coding, fabrication, or performance experience necessary. Note: There is no longer mandatory use of Arduino in this course, though students with interest in Arduino microcontrollers can still create custom hardware interfaces that send sensor input or receive command signals and turn TouchDesigner into a hub for interactive installations or performance props.
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