MS 053

Course Information

Course Title: Intro to Code & Media Art
Semester: Fall 2026
Weekly In-class Study Time: 5 Hours
Weekly External Study Time: 9 Hours

Instructor:

Vinny Roca, Scripps College
vroca@scrippscollege.edu

Office Hours:

By appointment on Tuesday/Thursday 4:00 - 5:00
Schedule Office Hours

Course Description

This interdisciplinary introductory course explores technical, artistic, and cultural aspects of programming. Using accessible and inclusive programming environments, students will learn the fundamentals of programming through making visual, interactive, and sound-based projects. Through readings and weekly discussions, students will engage with the political, economic, and cultural impact of code with a particular interest in code as an artistic medium and the power relations in programming.

Learning Outcomes

The objective of this course is to introduce the fundamental skills of programming for the arts and contextualize this technical knowledge within the cultural, social, economic, and political impact of programming. Through reading responses, projects, discussions, and technical tutorials, students will achieve the following learning outcomes:

Technical proficiency in the fundamentals of object-oriented and procedural programming.
Ability to analyze the role of programming in media art.
Ability to analyze programming as a cultural, historical, and technical object.
Gain a critical understanding of the history and cultural impact of programming.
Ability to create visual, interactive, and sound-based media art projects using programming.

Grading, Assignments, Course Policy

Course Breakdown

Points
10	Time
10	Text and Image
15	Performance
20	Game Ring
15	Participation
10	Reading Responses
20	Exercises

Letter Grading

Points	Letter
93-100	A
90-92	A-
87-89	B+
83-86	B
80-82	B-
77-79	C+
73-76	C
70-72	C-
67-69	D+
63-66	D
60-62	D-
0-59	F

Evaluation Criteria

Projects

Completed projects will be graded in the following areas:

Concept
Code
Craft

A rubric can be found on the page for each project.

Exercises

Exercises are mainly for student practice and experimentation. Exercises will be graded on their level of completion following the exercise prompt.

For all exercises, late work will not be accepted. Completing exercises on time is essential to the progression of the course. Not completing exercises will result in a student falling behind. In the situation that extra time is needed to complete exercises, students must reach out to the instructor as soon as possible.

Participation and Attendance

Active participation in all aspects of the class is crucial. In order to prepare for active participation, students are expected to engage with assigned material before each class session. Phones are strictly prohibited from being used in-class unless noted otherwise. Use of electronic devices during class will significantly impact the final participation grade.

Students are expected to be prepared for class by the start of our class meeting time. Students are allowed one free unexcused absence during the semester. Students may not use their one unexcused absence during critiques. Additional absences will only be excused for documented illness, emergencies, or religious observances. Students who arrive to the class after the class meeting time will be marked as tardy. Three late attendance will be considered an unexcused absence.

Each unexcused absence will decrease the participation grade by 3. 5 or more unexcused absences will result in a zero participation grade. Each unexcused absence beyond 5 will result in a 3 point decrease in the students final grade.

Reading Responses

Reading responses are due by 5 p.m. the day before discussions. Reading responses should be submitted to canvas and the class Discord.

Reading responses will be graded on the level of engagement the student has with the text. Is the student connecting the text to other readings or experiences? Is the student engaging with the text through questions, disagreements, or new lines of thought?

As reading responses are essential to the discussion section of the course, late reading responses will not be accepted.

Late Work and Extensions

Late projects not ready by their assigned crit day will automatically lose one letter grade. After three days, the project will not be accepted.

Class Materials and Communication

Class Website

Class website will serve as a live syllabus, schedule, and notes for this course. All exercises, projects and responses are described on the class website.

For those interested, this website is written in markdown using Obsidian with slightly off-beat syntax to get links working. Jekyll is used to compile the markdown into a static site, and custom layout and CSS is used to build on the Minima theme. The color scheme of this site is based on Flexoki. The website exist as a repository on GitHub and is hosted using GitHub Pages. The typeface if Funnel Sans by Kristian Möller

The class website is a living website and is maintained by a human (me.) With that in mind, if you notice any grammatical errors, missing links, or other bugs, please email me at the above address.

Class Canvas

Canvas will be used for grading, attendance, and tracking completed assignments. While all assignment descriptions exist on this website, we will use canvas to track what is submitted and when it was submitted.

Discord and Email

We will be submitting and sharing our exercises, reading responses and projects through Discord. Students will be invited to join the class Discord server on the first day of class.

I will respond to community Discord messages and email within 24 hrs of receipt. I will respond to messages sent over the weekend on the following Monday.

For course communication, please send me an email rather than a direct message on Discord. I will not respond to friend requests or direct messages.

Readings, Videos, Etc.

All external readings and videos will be provided using Box.

This link is password protected. The password will be distributed on the first day of class.

Class Readings & Resources

Lab Hours

Students are expected to work on exercises and assignments outside of class. To complete some assignments, students will need to make use of their personal computer.

Students enrolled in this course will have 24/hr access to the class computer lab. If you have any issues accessing the lab outside of the course hours, please contact me. The lab is not available when other classes are in session.

Note, some parts of this class will require:

A personal computer with a camera, microphone, and sound output
Headphones, wired or wireless

If you do not have access to this technology please contact me as soon as possible.

Use of Generative AI

Large Language Models, including Claude or CoPilot, can write code. As new programmers, this will be very helpful for you. However, it can also be detrimental.

The goal of this course is to teach you the fundamentals of programming and to explore how these fundamentals have drastically changed how one might approach being an artist. LLM’s can allow us to skip over these fundamentals, moving us to an endless cycle of copy, paste, test, copy, paste, test, and so on…

Coding, or the act of writing code, is always the last step. Before comes an intensive process of thinking, testing on paper, sketching, diagramming, or whatever approach you choose. Programming is not about writing code; it is about thinking and creating with our computers, knowing how changing variables or creating objects can give us both the results we aimed for, but also unexpected results.

In this way, LLMs can be harmful to the beginner programmer. It removes the need for a fundamental understanding and replaces it with the illusion of knowledge. I strongly suggest that over this course, LLMs becomes a last resort. There are many other resources available to you: In-class help, Discord messages, your peers, office hours, p5 examples, online videos, and much more. If you find yourself moving to type in a prompt, I suggest first asking yourself, “Is there more I can do to work towards this problem?”

Class Policy

Any code found to be copied and pasted from LLMs will be considered plagiarism.

Examples

Some bad uses of prompt-based AI:

Write a p5 sketch to do x.
Make this p5 sketch look more interesting.

Some good uses:

How do I calculate points across the circumference of a circle?
How do I find the distance between two vectors?
How does a computer change the value of a variable in memory?

What these examples above tend to demonstrate is that good uses of LLMs assist us in our learning process as we write our programs.

There will be a temptation to make more complex projects with the use of LLMs. I urge you all to acknowledge your level of knowledge and abilities, and to trust that as you continue to make more art with code, as you write more and more complex programs, your knowledge of programming will grow, and so will your ability to know when LLMs and similar tools are supporting your learning.

Scripps College Land Acknowledgement

We would like to respectfully acknowledge that Scripps College sits within the historic homeland of the Tongva people. We acknowledge the painful history of genocide and colonization in our area. We acknowledge the strength and resilience of the Tongva people of the past, present, and future as the original caretakers of the land, water, and air, and we recognize our responsibility to be respectful stewards of the Scripps College campus. Today, this area and this campus are home to many Indigenous people from across the globe and we are proud that they are part of our community and institution.

Statement on Inclusion

We understand the classroom as a space for practicing freedom; where one may challenge psychic, social, and cultural borders and create meaningful artistic expressions. To do so we must acknowledge and embrace the different identities and backgrounds we inhabit. This means that we will use preferred pronouns, respect self-identifications, and be mindful of special needs. Disagreement is encouraged and supported, however, our differences affect our conceptualization and experience of reality, and it is extremely important to remember that certain gender, race, sex, and class identities are more privileged while others are undermined and marginalized. Consequently, this makes some people feel more protected or vulnerable during debates and discussions. A collaborative effort between the students and Instructor is needed to create a supportive learning environment. While everyone should feel free to experiment creatively and conceptually, if a class member points out that something you have said or shared with the group is offensive, avoid being defensive; instead approach the discussion as a valuable opportunity for us to grow and learn from one another. Alternatively, if you feel that something said in discussion or included in a piece of work is harmful, you are encouraged to speak with the Instructor.

Statement adopted from voidLab at https://github.com/voidlab/diversity-statement.

Accommodations

The instructor will work individually with each student on reasonable accommodations.

If you have questions about accommodations for the course, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Campus Disability Coordinators