ITP Camp 2022

WELCOME TO THE UN-UNIVERSITY

Applications for the next ITP Camp will open in mid-January 2023!

A photo of ITP Campers holding LED light boxes. A photo of an ITP Camp session leader with green hair leading a demonstration of how to use a sewing machine for four campers.

ITP Camp is a crash course/playground for creative and techy people who want to shake things up. Every June, we invite non-student makers, artists, musicians, programmers, fabricators, and creatives of all sorts, to join the ITP community to make stuff, hear speakers on the cutting edge, collaborate with people from diverse disciplines.

Camp activities and events in the afternoons, evenings, and weekends, NYC-time. Some people take the month off and immerse themselves fully in the culture and experience of ITP Camp. Others freelance or work remotely part time while attending sessions in between. And many of our participants maintain day jobs outside of ITP Camp and join us for the evening activities.

ITP was founded and is grounded in the belief that making is fundamental to thinking. Like any summer camp, the atmosphere is playful, cooperative and collaborative but there’s a serious purpose. We’re looking for people who are seriously motivated… to save the world, their industry, their career or just their sanity by being creative; who are dying to make something or just make sense out of what they are doing.

The creative charge of ITP Camp comes from the community of participants sharing their ideas, skills, criticisms and passions with each other in small, informal groups. We’re creating a flexible structure, an Un-University, that is responsive and supportive to the group we select. The structure is based on “unconferences” such as foocamp or barcamp, where presentations and discussions form in response to participants’ interests and projects.

Here are some articles about ITP Camp:

SESSIONS

A photo of 3 people brainstorming next to a whiteboard. A photo of an ITP camp session - a large room of people with laptops in conversation with an instructor at the right side of the image.

The sessions reflect the interests of the members of the camp. You can see the ideas for sessions starting to form on the schedule. Once you’ve registered, you can suggest ideas for sessions you’d like to see included (for ITP staff to organize, if possible) and schedule a session or two you’d like to lead.

Because ITP camp is for busy, working professionals, you don’t have to come to every session– come to as many or as few as you like.  You are required to sign up for the sessions that you want to attend in advance, though, because sessions will be added or dropped based on enrollment. Workshop sessions will be limited in size, first come first served.

Because of its experimental structure, the content of camp changes every year. We don’t know what this year will bring but here are some examples of sessions from previous years:

  • Designing Play for the Gamer in All of Us
  • Accessibility and Net Art
  • Soft Sensing: Materials As Sensors
  • ML5.js: A Friendly Introduction to Machine Learning
  • Kinetic Energy
  • Hacking Sensors for Climate Change
  • Big Picture : Tiny Screens
  • Metal 3d printing to get to space
  • Design for Speculative Worlds
  • Urban Farming Microgreens
  • If you would like to check out full calendars from previous years, go to the link and click "View Past Sessions":

    PROJECTS

    A photo of a person working on a knitted QR code on the back of a shirt. A photo of one person on a ladder adjusting a folded piece of paper with an image projected onto it and another person reaching up to help.

    Some may develop a fully functioning prototype. Others will come up with new ideas and start to identify tasks and acquire skills for longer term projects. Your idea might come from your job: for example, your media publishing company is looking to develop ideas to survive technological change. You might already be in the thick of managing new technological possibilities for corporate clients and want a summer camp to apply some of this new thinking to other projects of more artistic or social benefit. In all cases the project is owned by you, we only ask that you be completely open about your work with fellow campers while participating.

    PEOPLE

    Campers are experienced, motivated and generous people.  ITP is a “hands on” place, but prior technical skills are not required. More important than technical skills is the diversity of people and project ideas. Connecting to people outside your field and comfort zone is always a boost for creativity. We think the ITP Camp environment will benefit projects spanning a wide range, including sociological experiments, art installations, new advertising models, health technologies, DIY biology, automatic window shades, cell phone games and dance performances. This is a non-credit program; it’s not designed for full-time students.

    A photo of three people conversing in a wood shop. A photo of two people facing a screen with arms raised in a dance-like motion, responding to an interactive project.

    Session Leaders can be pretty much anyone. Campers lead sessions. Invited experts lead sessions. ITP faculty lead sessions. Counselors lead sessions. The Un-University provides the opportunity to learn bottom-up, top-down, and side-to-side.

    A photo of a session leader with hands raised in a descriptive gesture with a screen behind them and session attendees in the foreground. A photo of a session leader leaning over a campers shoulder, looking at a laptop screen together.

    Counselors are your new best friends. The Counselor Headquarters (HQ) is a cross between Lucy’s Advice Booth and the Apple Genius Bar and is staffed by knowledgeable recent ITP graduates whose superpowers include electronics, programming, digital fabrication, mechanics, materials, and beyond.

    A photo of camp counselors and staff lined up wearing ITP Camp hoodies and smiling at the camera.

    ABOUT ITP

    ITP is a two-year graduate program located in the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University whose mission is to explore the imaginative use of communications technologies — how they might augment, improve, and bring delight and art into people’s lives. Perhaps the best way to describe us is as a Center for the Recently Possible. For over 30 years ITP has been a hub of experimentation in art, media and technology.

    ITP Camp is like ITP Classic put in the blender and squeezed into a month. It is ITP’s test kitchen, its R&D arm, its back of the napkin. It’s the place were we encourage you, our faculty, former students, colleagues, and community to experiment, challenge, and play.

    ITP’s community will be made accessible to you through Camp activities. The creative atmosphere will help you generate ideas and implement projects and possibly broaden your own network and community of innovators and thinkers.

    A photo of multiple people sitting in front of soldering irons in a shop environment. A screenshot of a zoom call where the session leader is doing a software demonstration that is manipulating their video.