CIS/COM S/ENGRI/MUSIC/PYSCH/FILM/DANCE 1610
  Computing in the Arts
   Fall 2008

Instructor:  Professor Graeme Bailey

  • Time: TR 1:25 - 2:40
  • Place: Lincoln B21
  • Tentative syllabus: Fall 2008
    • Office Hours
    Prof. Graeme Bailey (bailey [at] cs [dot] cornell [dot] edu )
  • Monday-Thursday: 3:00-4:00, Upson 4107B

    • Ainur Yessenalina (ainur [at] cs [dot] cornell [dot] edu )
  • Wednesday: 2:30-3:30, Upson 328
  • Friday : 2:00-3:00, Upson 328


  • Class discussions so far ...
    1. basic probabilty and stochastic composition in poetry ... experiments, and tuning the probabilities for effect.
    2. Presentations of student Markov poems, and discussion of ways of embodying 'poetic content'. Exercise in analysing a pre-existing poem to acquire a Markov structure, and then using that to create a viable 'fake'.
    3. Presentations of 'faked' poems. Intro to music notation, intervals, and harmonics. Initial discussion of harmony and cognitive aspects, and ways of manipulating expectations.
    4. Gentle discussion of harmonics for ideal strings, inharmonicity, and related cognitive aspects. Use of chords (triads) on the notes of a scale to create sets from which to harmonise a given tune. Reversal of this process to construct a tune by first building (stochastically?) an underlying harmonic flow, exploiting relative distances between chords based on numbers of notes in common.
    5. Introduction to Java programming. Integers and Strings, Math.random(), writing a simple program using an 'if/else' conditional, and playing with arrays.
    6. An intro to using 'for loops' writing a simple program using an 'if/else' conditional, and playing with arrays goofy.java.
    7. Generate Markov poem using Java MorePoetics.java.
    8. Drawing lines and 'blobs' in a drawing pane Drawing.java.
    9. Using Java to create midi tunes PlayerPiano.java.
    10. Example of animation using the timer Ball.java.
    11. First thoughts on groups, illustrations with symmetries of planar objects and gentle discussion on use in animation
    12. More careful discussion of groups, with examples: integers mod 12, rotations+reflections in the plane about the origin (non-Abelian), permutations as operations on a set of objects.
    13. NOVEMBER, 6 : Midterm

    • Articles and Examples