Brett Ian Balogh

A rapidly increasing variety of objects in everyday life are acquiring an awareness of their environments, a repertoire of behaviors, and the ability to communicate with other objects, their owners, or, through networks, with more comprehensive integrated systems. This class explores the design processes, skills, and tools necessary to thrive in this exciting creative domain. The course incorporates substantial hands-on development experience in a lab environment. Students will conceptualize, prototype, and build working objects that respond to and cooperate with their owners and with each other.

Even though we live in a primarily analog world, most of our experience of modernity is digital. We will examine the similarities and differences of these two worlds through the lens of electronics, focusing on the role of analog systems in art-making. The course provides a hands-on exploration of analog sound and video circuit elements and systems as well as a survey of relevant artists, artworks and practices. Students will be able to make a variety of works, including performance, interactive objects and environments, still images, audiovisual instruments, audio pieces, and video, to name a few.

Course activities will be supported by the purchase of a kit of resources to facilitate hands-on exploration. Each student will research a topic of interest and will respond to it through the lens of their own practice in the creation of a final project. No prior skills in electronics or art and technology studies are required; however, curiosity and a willingness to learn are a must.

Much of our everyday experience is mediated by electronics. From toasters to smart phones, the devices we interact with vary widely in their function and complexity, but all are composed of a set of common electronic components and function in ways determined by the connection of these components. This course provides an introduction to electronic theory as it relates to the connection of these components.

Topics to be covered will include but are not limited to reading schematics, DC and AC circuits, passive and active devices, filters, amplifiers and oscillators. Students will not only learn theory, but will also learn by constructing their own circuits by hand and by using circuit simulation and analysis tools in this laboratory course.

Student learning will be assessed through weekly homework and laboratory assignments as well as several exams.

This course provides an introduction to the physics of sound and how it is percieved by the ear. We produce and store sound in many different ways, using it in medicine, environmental studies and even in new methods of refrigeration. This course covers the concepts and application of acoustics, including sound wave theory, sound in music and musical instruments, recognition of musical sound qualities, auditorium acoustics and electronic reproduction of sound.