Coding Music Fundamentals, Coding Art Fundamentals, and Intro to TouchDesigner are three separate courses taught in the same semester, each meeting on its own weekly schedule. Each course covers its own material and has its own weekly work. They share a common calendar, and each course’s final project must connect to at least one of the other two.
All three courses are 3 credits, and follow CalArts’ standard credit-hour policy: 45 hours of work per credit for BFA students, 60 hours per credit for Masters students. That’s 135 total hours for BFA students and 180 for Masters students across the semester, per course. On top of class time, that works out to roughly 7.8 hours of independent work a week for BFA students, and roughly 11 hours a week for Masters students. This workload is per course; it doesn’t shrink for a student taking more than one of the three in the same semester.
A pre-recorded video series paired with a weekly class. Students learn ChucK by building sound step by step, then perform a final piece as a group.
Starts in p5.js, moves into openFrameworks and C++ halfway through. The same ideas, taught twice, in two different languages.
A weekly hands-on class in TouchDesigner, building from a simple color palette up to real-time, audio-reactive visuals.
Each course teaches its own weekly material. But at the midterm, and again from Week 11 through the end of the semester, all three classes are doing the same thing at the same time.
Week 7 is the shared midterm. Week 9 is the deadline for final groups. Weeks 12 through 14 are the shared closing run: a remote CCRMA visit during Fall Break (Thanksgiving), the in-person final performance, and digital submission day.
Artists and studios worth knowing across all three courses, working in the same territory this program does: data, sound, light, and immersive systems.
An AI art museum that merges human imagination with machine intelligence. It uses datasets, spatial algorithms, and sensor environments to transform data into dynamic multisensory exhibitions.
An art collective and production company creating large-scale, interactive immersive experiences. Their walk-through environments blend sculpture, storytelling, light, and sound to invite visitors into surreal, narrative-driven worlds.
A sound artist, technologist, and educator working across video, interactive performance, and sound installations. Their work explores human-machine interfaces, hardware design, and experimental audio-visual systems.
A media artist and creative technologist specializing in wave field synthesis, mechatronics, custom PCB design, and responsive light installations. His work sits at the intersection of spatial sound, physical computing, and kinetic art.
A Japanese visual artist and electronic composer known for orchestrating raw data, sound, and light with mathematical precision. His immersive visual-sonic installations and performances use stark, high-contrast monochrome projection systems, sine waves, and pure digital noise to explore physical phenomena and complex algorithms.