Administrative Info

Carnegie Mellon requires faculty to author a “course profile” which summarizes the subject matter of each course. This information is reproduced here. 

Course Numbers

Experimental Capture is a 12-unit IDeATe course. There are four sections that meet simultaneously:

  • 60-461 (Undergraduate section in the School of Art)
  • 54-461 (Undergraduate section in the School of Drama)
  • 60-761 (Graduate section in the School of Art)
  • 54-661 (Graduate section in the School of Drama)

Required Course Materials

  • Laptop. Students should have access to a personal laptop. Recent, well-updated installations of Mac OSX, Windows and Linux are all acceptable operating systems. However, although nearly all of the programming toolkits with which we work are free and cross-platform, it is possible that example projects may only be provided for Mac OSX. The programming environments used for some example projects may include Unity (C#), Processing (Java), Python, OpenFrameworks (C++), and p5.js (JavaScript). 
  • Camera. In general, students must have access to a camera to document their work. A smartphone with a camera is acceptable.
  • Sketchbook. It is wise to plan your projects on paper. You are therefore required to maintain a paper sketchbook for this course.

Communication Tools

This course uses the following software systems to share information:

Key Topics

What are the key subject topics that this course will cover?

  • The course introduces a wide range of experimental and expanded reality capture techniques including photogrammetry, volumetric video, motion capture, multispectral imaging, machine vision, and more.

Prerequisite Knowledge

What prior knowledge must students have in order to be successful in this course?

  • Students are expected to have at least basic familiarity with software workflows for editing and distributing video, audio, and images.
  • Although coding skills are not required, they can be helpful; it is recommended that students already be comfortable with the basics of programming, as taught in courses like 15-104, 15-110, 15-112, or an equivalent. Students who are inexperienced in coding should be prepared to fake it.

Course Relevance

How is this course relevant to the targeted student populations?

This course is relevant to students who are interested in:

  • Exploring the affordances of unfamiliar, forgotten, and nascent image capture technologies in revealing unseen or alternative realities
  • Exploring the use of computation in expanding our expressive vocabulary for representations of people, objects, environments, and events
  • Questioning the practical and epistemological assumptions that underpin the project of capturing representations of reality with devices

Assessment Structure

How will students be assessed in this course: assignments, exams, final, presentation, project, etc.?

  • There are three main assignments due at approximately monthly intervals, including a Capstone (final) project with a proposal, check-in, and public exhibition phase.

Learning Resources

What resources will be available for students: web pages, learning applications, texts, case studies, etc.?

  • Available resources include specialized hardware, GitHub repositories, a course web site, and a Discord server.

Extra Time Commitments

Are there extra time commitments required outside of the regularly scheduled course meeting times?

  • No. However, students may wish to attend the optional Wednesday evening work sessions which are sometimes held in the STUDIO.

Accommodations

If you have a disability and have an accommodation’s letter from the Disability Resources office, we encourage you to discuss your accommodations and needs with us as early in the semester as possible. We will work with you to ensure that accommodations are provided as best we can. If you suspect that you may have a disability and would benefit from accommodations but are not yet registered with the Office of Disability Resources, you are encouraged to contact them at access@andrew.cmu.edu.

Course Tags

Keywords referencing general topics and/or course structure. 

  • IDeATe
  • Interdisciplinary
  • Lab Component
  • Research
  • Maker