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Week 1 - 1/24 - Introductions, Theory, and Practice

• Class structure
• Introductions and project descriptions

Assignment:

1. Write a one page description of your project - list your influences, your goals, scenarios of use
2. Write project specs - this should be a high level description of how the system you plan to build will work and what it needs to do. How the system will be used will affect material and design choices and these should be reflected in the specs (i.e system needs to have minimum battery life of 5 hours and be waterproof)
3. Technical concerns - make a list of any specific concerns you might have about system implementation

Reading:

Fashion by Georg Simmel in The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 62, No. 6. (May, 1957), pp. 541-558(must login if outside campus)

Week 2 - 1/31 - Technology session

• Discuss progress and developments
• Technical considerations, themes, preliminary advice – direction
• Wireless technology lecture

Assignment:

1. Paper prototype Start thinking about and developing the physical form for your project. Using materials like cardboard, paper, muslin, and foamcore, experiment with size, shape, and placement of the different component parts of your design. The results shouldn't be functional, but they should represent as closely as possible the elements you plan to use. Think through how the finished garment or piece will look and how it will be used - for example, if you know that your project will be battery-powered, experiment with a cardboard stand-in the size of a battery pack to find a discreet place to mount it that still leaves it accessible for changing the batteries. Use this time to develop your ideas about why and how the user will interact with the system without the pressure of making it work - that comes soon enough. Come to class next week with your paper prototype, prepared to talk about your design decisions.
2. Project plan for staged development Write a rough plan for developing your project over the course of the semester. Make a list of your goals for the project as a whole and specify which goals you plan to achieve by the midterm as well as the major tasks involved. You will be asked to revisit and revise this plan over the next several weeks, but think about how long each development task will take and assign dates to them.

Week 3 - 2/7

• Concept 1: 1 – Embodiment | Themes
• Break-out sessions

Assignment

1. Refine project description (concept, implementation)
2. Research, inspiration, other projects, etc.
3. List of materials, part numbers
4. Technology assessment

Week 4 - 2/14

• Mini presentation, in-class critiques

Week 5 - 2/21

• Techniques & project updates

Assignment

1. Make a soft circuit

Week 6 - 2/28 – assignment review, break out groups

Week 7 - 3/6 – mid project review, outside critics:

Kate Hartman creates new tools for expression through innovative and playful applications of technology. Her individual and collaborative projects span the fields of video, electronics, fashion, and art. She holds a B.A. from Bard College and a Masters from New York University. Her work has been exhibited at O'Reilly's Emerging Telephony conference, SIGGRAPH, Sony Wonder Technology Labs, and the Future Fashion Show in Pisa and has been featured by the BBC, NPR, New York Times, and Reuters. She currently works as a producer for area/code games and as a Resident Researcher at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program.

Constance Hoffman has designed costumes for opera, dance and theatre regionally, internationally, and in New York City. Her credits include collaborations with theatre artists such as Mark Lamos, Julie Taymor, Eliot Feld, and Mikhail Baryshnikov, opera directors David Alden, Christopher Alden, and Keith Warner, and entertainer Bette Midler. Her work has been seen on many stages in New York City, including the Public Theatre, The New Victory Theatre, The Second Stage, The Theatre for a New Audience, Madison Square Garden, Radio City Music Hall, The Joyce, and The New York City Opera. On her Broadway debut, she earned a Tony nomination and an Outer Critics Circle Award for her designs for The Green Bird, directed by Julie Taymor.

Hoffman’s collaborations in opera have taken her to the Tel Aviv Opera, the Bayeriche Staatsoper in Munich, and Oper Frankfurt, and this Spring her work will tour to Tokyo. In the United States, she has designed costumes for the San Francisco Opera, the Houston Grand Opera, the Los Angeles Opera, the Minnesota Opera, the Portland Opera, the Opera Theatre of St.Louis, the Florida Grand Opera, the Virginia Opera, and she has had a long association with the Glimmerglass Opera in Cooperstown, New York, whose productions travel regularly to the New York City Opera. At the New York City Opera, Hoffman’s designs for the critically acclaimed Paul Bunyan, Tosca, and Lizzie Borden have been televised in the Live from Lincoln Center Broadcasts.

Regionally, she has designed in theatres such as the Guthrie, the Hartford Stage, The Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, DC, The Center Stage in Baltimore, The Alley Theatre in Houston, Goodspeed Musicals, and the Prince Music Theatre.

In addition to her Tony Nomination and Outer Critics Circle Award for The Green Bird in 2000, Hoffman was honored in 2001 with The Theatre Development Fund’s Irene Sharaff Young Masters Award, and in 2003 with an invitation to exhibit her work in the Prague Quadrennial.

An alumna of the Design program at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, Hoffman began teaching there in 2000. From 2000 to 2004, she co-taught, with Susan Hilferty, the Third Year Costume Design course. In Fall 2005, Hoffman returned to teach a course in advanced costume design as an adjunct professor, and is currently engaged at NYU as a full time professor for the 2005-2006 school year, teaching Costume II, an advanced costume design course; Collaboration, a class in Director-Designer collaboration; Explore, a five week introduction to costume design for designers in other fields, and Costume Studio, a course that focuses on the practical aspects of costume design. Additional responsibilities have included the advisement of student costume designers in production, assisting in interviewing prospective students, and the establishment of costume design curriculum. Since 2002 she and designer Ming Cho Lee have co-taught the Master Class, a summer design intensive at the Kennedy Center that focuses on designer and director collaboration.

Week 8 - 3/13 – review feedback > integration, response | break-out sessions

Power for wearables lecture

Week 9 - 3/27 – directed topics, class discussion, break-out session

Design lecture, design discussion in pairs

Assignment:

Work with your partner to prepare a skit to demonstrate one or more use cases for your project. Consider where your project will be experienced, by whom, how your users will initially react to the project, how long a typical encounter will last, and the user's response. Each person will have ten minutes during the next class to present their skit and talk about how their project will be used.

Think of this as an improvisational exercise to think through a typical use case or cases. Please incorporate your project in whatever state of completeness as well as any other props or costumes that help tell the story.

Week 10 - 4/3 -- directed topics, class discussion, break-out session

Presentation of use-case skits in class

Assignment:

Elevator pitch (present in-class next week) - Continue working on the way you will present your project, both to your fellow students and our outside guests for the final presentations as well as during the ITP show (if you will be exhibiting) and in other situations. A key part of this is having a clear, concise explanation of (1) what you did/are doing, (2) why you did it, (3) and why it is important and why people should care. Prepare a very short explanation (this is often called an elevator pitch) and come to class ready to tell us all (again) about your project. In preparing the pitch, talk about the central points of your project - those things that make it unique, that make it important, and that make it interesting. Leave everything else out - the point of this pitch is to get your audience excited and ready to hear more. See the ITP Spring Show site for an idea of important things to include.
Project plan (do, but no need to present) - Now that you have a list of the things that are central and important to your project, think about how you will reach your goals in the two weeks left before presentations start. Think about what you want to and can accomplish in that time and plan accordingly.

Week 11 - 4/10 - directed topics, class discussion, break-out session

Remaining use-case skit presentations (Armanda and Cynthia), elevator pitches, and one-on-ones.

Week 12 - 4/17 - directed topics, class discussion, break-out session

Week 13 - 4/24 – Final Presentation

Week 14 - 5/1 – Final Presentation