UCSD COSMOS Cluster 1: Adventures in Media Computing

"Media computing" is the exciting use of computers to creatively manipulate graphics, audio, video, and text, in an integrated way, through programming. In this cluster, students will master media programming concepts, and ultimately through this experience, get a taste for some of the great ideas in computer science.

This cluster will be organized as a single course, with three interwoven threads of learning. In the first thread, students will develop programming skills to produce their own video creations; student creativity and ownership of the media materials will drive the learning process. In the second thread, students will learn how researchers at the UCSD Department of Computer Science and Engineering, the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Cal-IT2), and the San Diego Supercomputer Center, are pushing the envelopes of hardware technology and software systems design to deal with the high-fidelity capture, processing, storage, communication, and presentation, of digital audio and video. The crescendo of the cluster is reached in the third thread, which focuses on creative multimedia authoring. Students will work in teams with the goal of creating multimedia final projects to be presented in spectacular form in UCSD's state-of-the-art Cal-IT2 Digital Theater.