BSc (Hons) Creative Computing

This module will introduce you to the fundamentals of programming and object orientation, including the following basic ideas of programming:

• variables
• memory and assignment statements
• control through conditional statements, loops
• functions and procedures
• objects and classes
• instance variables and methods
• arrays
• user interaction
• interaction between objects. 

This module will introduce you to the basic concepts essential in the design and implementation of client-side web-based applications. We'll cover a basic introduction to the Web, followed by more detailed lectures and labs on current good practice with technologies such as HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript.

This module gives a broad introduction to the creation of digital media and rich media websites and applications. It covers both the technical issues of programming with media, and the contextual topics of project management and designing applications to a particular commercial (or other) brief.

In this module, you'll explore the perceptual and technical fundamentals of graphics computing.  

Topics include: 

• fundamentals of visual perception: basic colour theory, perspective, and animation 
• manipulating images for creative contexts 
• image processing 
• the application of 2D and 3D geometry for animation and interaction 
• creating simple physics simulations. 

You'll apply this knowledge through a series of practical and creative exercises undertaken throughout the module using an appropriate programming environment with supporting graphics libraries.

This module covers the perceptual and technical fundamentals of sound and music computing. 

Topics include:  

• fundamentals of auditory perception: frequency/pitch, amplitude/loudness, and timbre 
• applying and manipulating digital audio media for interactive contexts 
• sound synthesis theory and fundamentals 
• basic signal analysis and visualisation techniques 
• rudimentary digital signal processing. 

You'll apply this knowledge through a series of practical and creative exercises undertaken throughout the module using an appropriate programming environment with supporting audio libraries.

This module is intended as an introduction to creative practice. Students work individually or in groups to conceive, develop and produce finished practical software projects in creative computing, making the fullest possible use of their creative and coding skills. Each project is uniquely specified to allow students the fullest possible creative choice, and projects are mentored by module leaders to ensure that they are at the appropriate level, and to provide students with specific programming and practical suggestions where required. All student projects must feature the creative use of digital media technologies through applied programming

In addition to allowing students to develop their skills in a chosen area of interest, this module encourages students to make coherent judgments regarding the application of their computing skills as they develop and reinforce their technical knowledge through creative projects.

In this module, subtitled ‘Everything is a Text’, you will consider the value of different types of texts and ways of imparting knowledge and ideas. You will reflect upon your identities as learners and future professionals in the world, considering a range of contexts: the academic/educational context, personal settings and the eco-systems that you live and work in. These reflections will be used to inform your practices as academic learners.

You will explore academic literacies, different ways of knowing and consider what counts as ‘legitimate’ knowledge. You will engage with critical thinking, making arguments and establishing criteria to defend intellectual positions and these skills will be acknowledged as social practices that produce and reinforce meaning and frameworks of understanding and knowledge.

Furthermore, you will engage with a wide range of academic and non-academic material, individuals and environments in order to contribute to discussions regarding attitudes and assumptions about ideas and experience, including within labour markets, cultural hegemonies, distributions of power and the relationship between the individual and society. In this way, the social interactions, relationships and contexts that underpin academic literacies in higher education will be made explicit.

You will discuss these ideas with students and tutors from the different subjects at Goldsmiths, and learn to be part of the wider university community. You will also be able to submit an assignment which could be a written, graphically designed, audio, video, or negotiated project. You will get to choose the assessment that best shows what you can do.

This module, subtitled ‘Researching Our World & Lives’, builds on the conceptual and contextual foundations of Identity, Agency and Environment 1.

You will learn how to conduct academic research and will be offered the opportunity to broaden and deepen your understanding of the relationship between your own interests, skills, values, career and non-career aspirations, the concepts, theories and contexts of your discipline, and the world.

You will reflect upon your identities as researchers, and learn how the research skills you’ve acquired both within your studies and the world more generally can be related to problem-solving in a wide range of contexts. You will consider your agency as researchers, what you can and cannot research, the ethical issues involved, and think reflexively about your position as a researcher in a range of environments and eco-systems.

Formal conventions of academic research and writing will be integrated into your individualised contexts and goals, enabling the expression of ideas and perspectives that may challenge the status quo. The module will encourage creativity, activism, decision-making and the formation of judgements leading to action-planning in relation to research topics and types of evidence, and professional planning.

You will learn to critique your own subject disciplines. Interdisciplinary sharing of knowledge will ensure that assessment and learning practices provide you with the opportunity to develop new lines of thinking and knowing, within formative collaborative learning and research communities.

Creative embedded systems and the use of microcontrollers are of increasing interest to artists, musicians, choreographers, and other creative practitioners for the creation of artworks and other forms of novel computational interaction.

There are many potential applications, for example, in museums, ubiquitous and embedded computing, robotics, engineering control systems and human computer interaction. A physical environment may be sonic, tangible, tactile, visually dynamic, olfactory or any combination of these.

This module will provide a starting point for you to develop an understanding of microcontrollers and how they fit into a wider computing and artistic context. You'll learn basic physics, electronics, programming with a strongly typed compiled language, and software engineering.

This module will lead to an extended project, giving you the opportunity to develop and implement new creative ideas utilising computation for creative expression. 

This module focuses on the technology underpinning client-server applications. This includes relational database systems, mainly from a development perspective, offering an introduction to data modelling and database implementation in SQL and alternatives such as No SQL The focus is on applications of relational and non-relational databases and techniques relevant to the creation of dynamic web applications such as form handling and templating. It includes practical work related to programming client-server web applications with a focus on principles and up to date practices.

This module will introduce you to the process of running an independent research project in Creative Computing. It aims to prepare you for the independence of your final year, self-initiated research project. You'll be provided with direction, structure and a given theme that you'll research and explore through a series of workshops and formative projects, leading to an assessed exhibition and final project report in the style of your final year project. 

Example projects include a software tool for creative work, portfolio of creative studies, an installation, a digitally enabled performance, a digital game or toy. The project outcomes should inspire you in your future projects and might be developed further in your final year. 

Increasingly, computer systems in research and industry, and particularly the machine learning systems that underpin modern Artificial Intelligence, are designed to leverage large amounts of data.

This data is rich and various and may include anything from the results of clinical trials to information gleaned from analysing millions of tweets to understanding how people talk positively and negatively about politics.

In this module, you'll learn how to develop systems that operate in, and make use of such data-rich environments. This module builds on other material in the programme such as mathematics and databases. 

This module will show you how to work with data in various ways:

• Capturing data from a variety of sources
• Visualising data in compelling, informative ways
• Processing data to make it useful and shareable
• Reasoning with data to test hypotheses and make parameterised predictions

You'll also implement and apply basic machine learning methods. The module will also introduce you to a new language and programming environment that is well-adapted to languages for these applications.

This module will allow you to develop an intuitive understanding of the expressive power of computation and reinforce important mathematical and programming concepts through engaging and creative work.  

You'll be introduced to a variety of generative techniques by analysing the work of other artists and studying code examples. Possible techniques include phase modulation, uses of the sine function, additive synthesis, stochasticism, perlin noise, and extensive variation through parameterization.

You'll then develop a deeper understanding of these topics through a number of challenging creative exercises using a suitable programming environment.

This module gives you the opportunity to learn the basics of creating multi-platform interactive experiences with a modern game engine. 

You'll be grounded in the fundamentals of game engine development with an emphasis towards exploring the potential of game engines for creating interactive or narrative-driven visual experiences.  

At the end of the module, you'll be able to create simple games and interactive experiences and publish them across platforms. 

Students will study advanced topics in generative graphics with a focus on understanding and applying effects using shaders:

• Generating 3D environments from 2D perspective models with matrix transforms
• Understanding Geometry, Textures, Lighting
• Complete OpenGL pipeline
• Frag Shaders
• Vertex shaders
• Procedural rendering methods

In doing this they will apply perceptual knowledge acquired in Perception and Multimedia and mathematical skills acquired in Numerical Maths.

You'll explore a range of topics relating to sound, perception, signal processing and music information retrieval:

• Advanced audio and music perception: frequency, pitch, and harmony; melody; rhythm; spatial perception
• Audio signals: sampling, aliasing, quantising, compression
• Fourier analysis and working the frequency domain
• Digital signal processing: signals and systems, linearity and time-invariance, convolution, filters, reverb, EQ, filter design
• Signal processing programming
• Perceptually-motivated features for audio analysis, information retrieval, and recommendation

Topics will be practically explored through a series of lab assignments and a final project in which you'll apply what you have learnt to creative ends.

This module covers the basics of working with interactive and generative sound in the context of computer games and immersive experiences.

You will learn how fundamental concepts in sound design and digital audio, such as audio samples, signal generators, mixers and audio effects can be used within a modern game engine to create rich and immersive sonic and/or musical experiences.   

At the end of the module, you will be able to create simple sound-oriented games and interactive experiences and to publish them on different platforms. 

Our academic departments are developing exciting elective ideas to allow you to broaden your education, either to develop vocationally orientated experiences or to learn more about contemporary society, culture and politics. You’ll be able to choose safe in the knowledge that these modules have been designed for non-subject specialists and to bring students from different disciplines together. For example, you may want to take introductions to areas such as Law, Education, the digital industries, the creative industries,think like a designer or understand the history and politics behind our current affairs.

Lots of students join Goldsmiths because they want to make a difference in society, to bring about positive change and develop skills and experiences which will allow them to access exciting careers. Goldsmiths’ Social Change module will allow you to do work on group projects with students from other departments to bring about change. You’ll be introduced to the UN’s Sustainable Development goals and core project management theories and practices allow you to work across a number of weeks towards a final Festival of Ideas where you’ll report work back to the academic and local community.

The final year project is organised into stage 1 and stage 2 modules.

The project modules provide an opportunity for you to apply the skills, knowledge and expertise that you have acquired throughout the course to a single and coherent body of work.

You can focus on any area of work that interests you, as long as it is related to the creative industries and is a substantial project with clear objectives.

This stage of the project - the prototyping module - supports ideation, research, scoping and proof-of-concept stages of the project. In stage two (see next module for detail) you'll focus on developing the final project deliverables.

Deliverables for this prototyping module may include a proposal, project plan, literature review, and the presentation of a working prototype.

Example projects include a software tool for creative work, portfolio of creative studies, an installation, a digitally enabled performance, a digital game or toy. The project outcomes will serve as a showcase for your talents and could launch a professional career in industry. 

You'll have to manage your own time and set regular objectives relating to background research, methodology, software design, implementation, testing and evaluation. 

Final Project in Creative Computing is an opportunity for students to apply the skills, knowledge and expertise that they have acquired whilst studying Creative Computing to a single and coherent body of work. The project allows students to follow an initiative that appeals to them, but the project must remain relevant to the Creative Industries; the outcome will be the most substantial project that they have had to develop as part of their studies. Example projects include a software tool for creative work, a portfolio of creative studies, an installation, a digitally-enabled performance, a digital game or toy. The project outcomes will serve as a showcase for student’s talents and could launch a professional career in industry. Students will have to manage their own time and set regular objectives, undertaking project analysis, design, implementation and evaluation.