Spring 2014 Capstone Assignment 1

= Purpose =
 * idea generation
 * defining your general CITA or DATA research area
 * providing 3 representative (related) examples
 * describing your particular contribution to this area

= Assignment =
 * 1) Identify and describe your general CITA or DATA research area. There are many possibilities for synthesizing your knowledge, so concentrate on a specific area
 * 2) Provide 3 examples of related works (e.g., videos, project web sites, etc.). These examples should capture the technical, algorithm (DATA), database (DATA), and artistic (CITA) aspects of your specific area. Each example must have some primary references (i.e., peer-reviewed articles or pieces of work) in addition to the links you can collect.
 * 3) Describe your particular contribution and how it differs (hopefully, substantially) from these example. Your contribution should be original.

CITA 295: Although you may not have all the pieces yet, you should have a good idea what your interests are, and where you are heading. This will allow me to provide formative feedback.

CITA 495: At this point, you should have a clear picture of where you are heading, and should have already made significant progress in that direction (this is your last semester of the year-long capstone project). Accordingly, your ideas should be much clearer, and more precise that those of 295 students. This will allow me to provide (more fine-grained) formative feedback.

DATA 495: You will land somewhere in between. You have not spent a semester thinking about your capstone formally, but you should have an idea of where you want to take this experience. Your ideas should be much clearer, and more precise that those of 295 students. This will allow me to provide (more fine-grained) formative feedback. It is OK at this point to have a few different ideas. Formalizing them will allow us to refine them.

= Details =
 * Your project area should be related to your concentration or cognate
 * It is OK if there are more than one area represented (e.g., visual art and music, or economics and finance)


 * There should be a synthesis of computing and art (CITA) OR computing, data, statistics, and cognate (DATA).


 * Art and computing should be equal partners for CITA students. This means that an interesting artistic result or outcome is made possible through a code base and/or technology that you develop.


 * Data science should incorporate statistics, computer science, data mining, etc and apply those techniques to your cognate.


 * It is OK to (re)use open source software
 * You should explain what open source software you (plan to) use, and get permission from the instructor.


 * CITA: Do NOT focus on a purely technical project that has artistic elements only on its periphery. Similarly you should NOT focus on an art project that uses technology only as a tool (e.g., Photoshop).


 * DATA: Do NOT focus on just using prepackaged software. This capstone is designed to create something novel.

= Submission = Submit the following in your assigned Google Drive folder (coming shortly):
 * 1) CITA 295/CITA 495/DATA 495: A type, one-page document containing the following:
 * 2) Your name, course, assignment no., date
 * 3) Tentative name of your project
 * 4) Idea/objective/concept of the project (1-3 sentences providing a high-level, yet complete description of your idea).
 * 5) Three representative examples - for each provide:
 * 6) Title (and URL),
 * 7) A short description
 * 8) A primary source (journal, conference paper, etc) supporting this area
 * 9) A short description explaining how your idea departs from these examples, and how it creates something related, original, and possibly transformative.
 * 10) Feel free to incorporate a photograph, image, diagram, or figure, as long as this provides substantive information (e.g., visual example) - not something just for decoration or visual appeal.
 * 11) Aim for simplicity and elegance
 * 12) CITA 495: A typed, two-page paper, where the first page is same as above. The second page describes:
 * 13) How much you have accomplished towards your vision
 * 14) What remains to be accomplished. Feel free to identify problem areas (roadblocks you may have run into, or anticipate you might run into), or related concerns. If you do not include anything along those lines, I will assume you are making good progress towards your objective.
 * 15) Your ideas should be much clearer, and more precise that those of 295 students.
 * 16) DATA 495: A typed, two-page paper, where the first page is same as above. The second page describes:
 * 17) How much you have accomplished towards your vision
 * 18) What remains to be accomplished. Feel free to identify problem areas (roadblocks you may have run into, or anticipate you might run into), or related concerns. If you do not include anything along those lines, I will assume you are making good progress towards your objective.
 * 19) Your ideas should be much clearer, and more precise that those of 295 students.