Topic outline

  • Physical Interaction Design

    Physical Interaction Design course aims to explore and investigate the tools, concepts and practices for planing and building new interactions with digital environments.The course focuses on multimodal interaction as lenses to discuss approaches and methodologies for the creation of interactive installations, physical media/image/sound projects and artistic strategies for the creation of experimental musical compositions.

    With a hands on approach this course invites students to experiment with sensor technologies, micro controllers and thus confront fundamental concepts and technical issues faced during the design of digital products, services and interactive arts.

    Equally important part of the course is that we dedicate half of the contact hours for project work in the classroom where the lecturer supports students by giving sufficient guidance, feedback and tutoring. The students submit their project ideas / proposals and during this course they develop; their problem solving abilities, design decisions, depth of understanding through the challenges they face in developing and implementing their projects, aesthetic and originality of their projects’, analysis of their project components, user interface design strategies in relation to the production of the project, code design quality in terms of the ways they use physical-interaction understanding to come up and develop alternative solutions for their idea generation and project implementation. At the end of the course, students present their projects and they receive feedback / comments both from the lecturer and students. Each student project work is assessed with the criteria on the above-mentioned objectives of the course.


     Location:

    Väre Workshop



  • Assignments

    Student Project Assessment Methods and Criteria:

    The students submit their project ideas / proposals and during this course they develop; their problem solving abilities, design decisions, depth of understanding through the challenges they face in Bela environment, aesthetic and originality of their projects’ sound synthesis and / or audio analysis implementation, analysis of their project components, user interface design strategies in relation to the production of the project, code design quality in terms of the ways they use data-flow understanding to come up and develop alternative solutions for their idea generation and project implementation. At the end of the course, students present their projects and they receive feedback / comments both from the lecturer and students. Each student project work is assessed with the criteria on the above-mentioned objectives of the course.


  • Schedule

    ------------------------------- WEEK 1------- w/ Robert Jack -------------------
    Tue 23/12/2021  09:00 – 12:45

    • Human Computer Interaction applied to musical projects 
      • Examples, introducing Bela

    • What tools do we have available? 
      • Microcontrollers and embedded computers
      • Sensors and actuators
      • Bela
    • Getting started with Bela 
      • Bela 101
      • Building our first project and making our first sound
      • Familiarising ourselves with the hardware and pin labelling
    • Digital output 
      • LEDs
      • Working with Pure Data and Bela
      • Pure Data recap
      • Patterns of flashing
    • Digital input 
      • Button
      • Receiving feedback: printing
      • Debouncing
      • Simple drum machine
    • Analog input 
      • Potentiometer
      • Handles and buttons, discrete and continuous control
      • Treating analog sensors as audio rate signals
      • Receiving feedback: printing, scope


    Wed 24/11/2021  09:00 – 12:45 

    • Variable resistance sensors: 
      • Pressure and light sensors
      • Map and constrain
      • Filtering sensors
      • Using the differential of sensor signal to change its behaviour
      • Controlling physical models
    • Controlling an FM synth with a pot, FSR and button: 
      • Creating abstractions on Bela
      • Scope and look at waveform and FFT of sidebands

    • Analog output
      • Fading LEDs in time with an LFO
      • RGB LEDs
    • Audio input
      • Connecting Microphones
      • Controlling a Delay effect
      • Using audio as a control signal
      • Feature extraction from audio input


    Thu 25/11/2021  09:00 – 12:45  
    • Audio input: piezo discs and karplus strong synthesis
      • Building a virtual guitar

    • Audio input: microphone capsules and sampling
      • Building a sampler
    • Capacitive sensing with Bela
      • Conductive materials
      • Reading from capacitive breakout board in Bela

    • Introduction to velostat pressure sensors
      • Sensor manufacture
      • Signal treatment




    Fri 26/11/2021  09:00 – 12:45
    • Communication with Bela
      • Receiving MIDI
      • Using Bela as a MIDI device
      • OSC

    • Preparing projects for standalone operation
    • Project ideas pitch ( 1min / student ) 
    • Advanced topics:
      • Using Pure Data in combination with c++
      • Connecting Bela to wi-fi


    ------------------------------- WEEK 2--------- w/ J. Camilo Sanchez Carranco & Janne Ojala -----------------

    Mon 29/11/2021  09:00 – 12:00

    Workshop Facilities w/ Janne Ojala


    Tue 30/11/2021  09:00 – 12:00

    • Wekinator Machine Learning exercises – Types of algorithms and Wekinator.
      • Classification Explorer
      • Regression Explorer
      • DTW Mouse Explorer

    Wed 01/12/2021  09:00 – 12:00
    •  Project work and Tutoring


    Thu 02/12/2021  09:00 – 12:00
     
    • Project work and Tutoring

    Fri 03/12/2021  09:00 – 12:00

    • Project work and Tutoring

    ------------------------------- WEEK 3------------------  w/ J. Camilo Sanchez Carranco & Janne Ojala --------------


    Tue 07/12/2021  09:00 – 12:45
    • Project work and Tutoring

    Wed 08/12/2021  09:00 – 12:45
    • Project work and Tutoring

    Thr  09/12/2021  09:00 – 12:45

    • Project work and Tutoring

    Fri 10/12/2021  09:00 – 12:45

    • FINAL PROJECT PRESENTATIONS
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------


  • Materials