IS52020B: Perception and Multimedia Computing

This page contains a reading list, slides, lab notes, and other materials for IS52020B (Perception and Multimedia Computing) for the 2011-12 academic year.

For Christophe Rhodes' contact details, please see his home page or his departmental web page.

Slides

Slides, lab sheets, and other lecture material will be made available here after the corresponding lecture.

Autumn 2011

Monday 3rd October, 16:00–18:00 [Little Harmonic Labyrinth]
Monday 10th October, 09:00–11:00 & 16:00–18:00 [labsheet with annotations]
Monday 17th October, 09:00–11:00 & 16:00–18:00 [labsheet with annotations Benham's disk sketch Stroop effect sketch]
Monday 24th October, 09:00–11:00 & 16:00–18:00 [labsheet with annotations Sadowski illusion sketch RGB / HSB Colour sketch]
Monday 31st October, 09:00–11:00 & 16:00–18:00 [labsheet with annotations sRGB / XYZ Colour sketch]

Monday 14th November, 09:00–11:00 & 16:00–18:00 [labsheet with annotations β / φ sketch Gestalt figures sketch linear interpolation (POVRay source) Hermite interpolation (POVRay source)]
Monday 21st November, 09:00–11:00 & 16:00–18:00 [labsheet with annotations keyframe sketch weights & springs physical model sketch]
Monday 28th November, 09:00–11:00 & 16:00–18:00 [labsheet]
Monday 5th December, 09:00–11:00 & 16:00–18:00 [coursework]
Monday 12th December, 09:00–11:00 & 16:00–18:00 [labsheet with annotations]

Monday 9th January, 14:00–16:00
Monday 16th January, 09:00–11:00 & 14:00–16:00 [labsheet with annotations beat.R deutsch.R]
Monday 23rd January, 09:00–11:00 & 14:00–16:00 [labsheet with annotations]
Monday 30th January, 09:00–11:00 & 14:00–16:00 [labsheet with annotations scale.wav classroom.wav toccata.wav]
Monday 6th February, 09:00–11:00 & 14:00–16:00 [coursework]

Monday 20th February, 09:00–11:00 & 14:00–16:00 [labsheet]
Monday 27th February, 09:00–11:00 & 14:00–16:00 [labsheet with annotations]
Monday 5th March, 09:00–11:00 & 14:00–16:00 [labsheet]
Monday 12th March, 09:00–11:00 & 14:00–16:00 [labsheet with annotations constq.R scratch.R]
Monday 19th March, 14:00–16:00

Coursework

There will be two courseworks, each worth 15% of the total credit for this module:

Due Friday 20th January: Animation
Due Friday 23rd March: Images [image bundle for part A]

Syllabus

Visual perception: cones, rods and the eye; optical illusions; colour vision; colour spaces and profiles; motion perception and Gestalt psychology.
Animation: approaches to animation; perception in video and film; making animations; visualisation.
Sound, hearing and music: sound and the ear; frequency, pitch and harmony; melody; rhythm; digital audio formats and compression.
Signals: the nature of signals; special signals; audio signals and sampling; frequency, amplitude and phase; the Fourier representation.
Systems: linearity and time-invariance; impulse responses and convolution; spectral analysis; convolution by spectrum multiplication.
Audio and image filtering: EQ; filter design; subtractive synthesis; echo and reverberation; resampling; image representation; two-dimensional convolution and image effects.
Multimedia information retrieval: retrieval, fingerprinting and similarity; features and distance measures; systems for multimedia information retrieval.

Reading List

Essential Reading

The essential material in the course is based around two subject guides, shared with the University of London External Programme. Final drafts of the two subject guides can be downloaded here:

M. Casey with S. Rauchas, Creative Computing II: interactive multimedia (vol. 1: Creative signals and systems);
C.S. Rhodes with S. Rauchas, Creative Computing II: interactive multimedia (vol. 2: Perception, animation and information retrieval).

In addition, substantial excerpts and some extra materials are available at the External Programme's news page, and on the External Programme's page for volume 1.

In addition to the guides, it is essential that students remain familiar and extend their skills with Processing, and additionally gain fluency with either R, an environment for statistical, numerical and signal processing and visualization; the following titles may be of assistance:

C. Reas and B. Fry, Processing: A Programming Handbook for Visual Designers and Artists;
D. Shiffman, Learning Processing;
W.N. Venables and D.M. Smith, An Introduction to R

Additional Reading

In addition to the core technical material, it will be helpful for understanding (technical or cultural or both) to read around the subject. Some suggestions:

J.D. Foley, A. van Dam and others, Introduction to Computer Graphics;
A.V. Oppenheim and A.S. Willsky with S. Hamid Nawab, Signals and Systems;
R. Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker;
R.P. Feynman, Lectures on Physics, Chapters 35-36;
M. Stokes, M. Anderson, S. Chandrasekar and R. Motta, A Standard Default Color Space for the Internet – sRGB;
S. Handel, Listening;
D.M. Howard and J. Angus, Acoustics and Psychoacoustics
D.J. Levitin, This Is Your Brain On Music
O. Sacks, Musicophilia
I.H. Witten, A. Moffat and T.C. Bell, Managing Gigabytes: Compressing and Indexing Documents and Images
C.J. van Rijsbergen, Information Retrieval

Office Hours

Feedback and Consultation Hours for Christophe Rhodes in Autumn 2011 are 13:00–14:00 on Mondays. If you are planning to come and ask questions, please try to e-mail him in advance.