This course provides a high-level overview of the key ideas and technologies that lead to revolutionary changes in Artificial Intelligence and to the explosive growth in practical applications of AI. Taught by a team of NYU’s top experts in artificial intelligence lead by the Turing award winner Yann LeCun, the course will introduce students to a range of topics in fundamentals of AI and its key sub-areas including machine learning, natural language processing, computer vision as well as its applications in different domains.
The first wave of data science focused on accuracy and efficiency: on what we can do with data. The second wave is about responsibility: what we should and should not do. Accordingly, this technical course tackles the issues of ethics and responsibility in data science, including legal compliance, data quality, algorithmic fairness and diversity, transparency of data and algorithms, privacy, and data protection. An important feature of this course is its holistic treatment of the data science lifecycle, beginning with data discovery and acquisition, through data cleaning, integration, querying, analysis, and result interpretation.
Identity and representation are two of the most pressing and complex issues for contemporary video games, that without recognizing them an artist or critic would be missing a large part of how games are important in culture. With growing art and activist communities, video games are diversifying and grappling with a wide range of topics rarely seen before in the genre, and with it a greater need for informed perspectives on the topic of how marginalized people are depicted in media. This course discusses foundational theories of identity and encourages students to contribute their own ideas towards the design and interpretation of representation in games.
Technology is a weasel. Squeezing its way into art, culture and the everyday. It infiltrates our psyche, inspiring playful interactions, fantastical ideas, vengeance and drama. It brings us together while tearing us apart. In this project-based studio, we will focus on a collective approach to creating art, tools, performances, and experiences. Outer Space in the context of this course will be used as a metaphor for the future, the unknown, and the seemingly impossible. We will investigate disparate cultural moments and unravel narratives that are both historical and technological. Technology will serve as a structure with open-ended assignments in music, video, sculpture, electronics, kineticism, surveillance, interactive graphics, and performance. Combined collaborative exercises and individual projects will augment classroom discussions and inform the art that we make. A willingness to use your imagination and personal experience to derail preconceived notions of linear timelines will serve you well in this hands-on multidisciplinary course.
This course will combine a history of video art and experimental film with practical training in the use of live video performance art technology. Students will explore new ways to create and edit films and videos using VJ software, projections, and multi-channel video surfaces. Workshops will demonstrate concepts and software that can be integrated into the creative process of video performance art and video art installations. COURSE OBJECTIVES At the completion of this course, the student will be able to: Draw inspiration from the recent history of incredible video and multi-media artists. Develop an understanding of audio and visual hardware used by VJ’s. Use live VJ software to manipulate digital media in real time to create Video Performance Art. Use Projection Mapping techniques to project video art onto 3D surfaces. Create original video performance art, video installations, and other performance pieces. Utilize skills to make video art in the professional market.
This course will explore the basic tools of digital imaging. We will cover the three main Adobe products for creative imaging – Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign. Through a series of short assignments we will look at various graphic design and layout ideas using Illustrator and InDesign and will touch on the wealth of image enhancement techniques afforded by Photoshop. The short assignments introduce the basics of design, typography and compositing images. Students have the opportunity to complete a small project of their own for the end of the term. Class time will be divided between lectures, critiques, and work in class sessions. This course is not intended to completely cover the software listed, but will give students a fundamental understanding of the possibilities of digital imaging. While the majority of the class focuses on print media (images, books and magazines), we discuss the growing importance of screen output. We do not have time to cover specific web or media projects, but will address transferable skills and understanding. We will incorporate some Adobe apps to augment the desktop applications. Additional reading materials will be distributed during the semester. Students should have access to the Adobe Creative Suite through the NYU license.
Introduction to Virtual Production is a class composed of lectures, discussions, screenings, exercises, group critiques and presentations. The course is designed to expose students to the fundamental principles of storytelling through Virtual Production including writing, directing, cinematography, performance, editing, art direction, and technical direction. The course will explore emerging techniques utilizing software and technology. How do you tell a story in this new form of collaboration? How can students apply what is learned to their own creative work? History and theory of Virtual Production will be studied and used to inspire personal and creative work in order to better understand how story through Virtual Production can successfully be expressed and most effectively reach its audience.
Students in this class will be asked to embrace Theodor Adorno’s notion that, “All art is an uncommitted crime.” First, we will explore the vibrant history of dissent in art, comics, design, film, literature, music, and emerging media through the consideration of work by artist dissidents such as Ai Weiwei, Cindy Sherman, Henry David Thoreau, Henry Rollins, Howard Cruse, Jenny Holtzer, Maya Angelou, Michael Moore, Václav Havel, and more. The work of these people is aimed at raising awareness, at disrupting the status quo, and at holding people, organizations, nations, and / or society itself accountable for wrongs committed. Next, students will individually create bold responses to something of concern for them by adopting the methods of a dissident from history or contemporary practice. Finally, we will form an artist collective and create a campaign of dissent aimed at creating positive change within the organization that we are all part of.
We have all played and enjoyed games, but how do people actually design and develop them? How to describe a game from a professional standpoint? What are the basic elements and structure in video game development? How do game designers create an interactive experience for the player? What about prototyping and iterating in development? This course explores these questions and others through playing, analyzing and making games over 14 weeks. Students will understand game not only as an entertaining production and business model but a form of interactive media impacting current life and future. Students will be introduced to game design concepts, emphasizing the development: paper and digital prototyping, develop iteration, interactive narratives design and embedment, object-oriented programming, 2D/3D game art design, sound effects composition and user testing. For the course project, students will work in teams and create games in multiple projects, from board game focusing on gameplay prototype to digital playable experience with creative game art designs. This course leverages Unity, a game engine that uses C# based programming language. Basic knowledge of any programming language will come in handy. Prerequisite: Creative Coding Lab, Interaction Lab or equivalent programming experience. Fulfillment: IMA Major Electives; IMB Major Interactive Media Elective.
From the history of visual music and abstract film to the contemporary notion of live cinema, this course will be an exploration of the synesthetic relationship between sound and visuals in a real-time performance setting. Dating back as far as the 18th century, systems have been invented to produce images alongside music linking the two through formalized arrangements. Current media technologies make developing such systems both more approachable and more expansive in their scope. Through readings, viewings, and case studies students will gain an understanding of the history and theory of live audiovisuals. During the course students will team up to develop and master a real-time audiovisual system of their own invention. The class will culminate in a show in which they will present their work through a live performance.
With the rise of mobile computing platforms such as smart phones and tablets, location has suddenly become a key element in the production and consumption of media. In this online course, designed for NYU Shanghai Interactive Media Arts majors studying abroad, students will be encouraged to simultaneously explore their unique study away site, as well as to consume, research, critique, and create location-based media for mobile devices. Students will be introduced to GPS (Global Positioning System) technologies through activities such as geocaching and GPS drawing. We will next investigate geocoding, geotagging, and geofencing through the application of JavaScript mapping platforms CartoDB and Google Maps. Students will then explore an emerging technology known as Bluetooth Beacons, which can be used to create custom positioning systems and to facilitate location awareness in mobile devices. Students will be asked to then produce, as a final project, a game that engages participants in a location or locations, as well as in locative media in any number of forms. Note: This is an online course featuring both synchronous and asynchronous learning opportunities. Registration is limited to IMA Majors studying at NYU’s global sites other than New York or Abu Dhabi.
“The smartphone is not only the primary site for digital communication and consumption, it also hosts emerging forms of media production. Let’s investigate the potential of the mobile touchscreen as a creative instrument! This is a project based course, and we will explore by creating and testing a series of functioning web-based toys – including drawing apps, character creators, and writing tools. You can expect to sharpen your skills in javascript and design. “
In this course, students will be exposed to different qualitative research methodologies and disciplinary approaches to those methods (in terms of technique, ethical standards, approaches to citation, etc.). Students will practice using research methods to study subjects of their choosing and produce reflections, sketches, or prototypes based on weekly research findings. By practicing the act of “doing research” students will think about ways to incorporating research into their practice and better understand and articulate how research is already part of their practice.
The class will teach how to architect and lead a virtual production by creating a dialogue between the Producer, Director, and Cinematographer in filmmaking with the Technical Producer and Director in creative technology. The class will cover an overview of all of the technical skills required to produce a remote virtual production through the lens of a project manager making administrative and creative decisions. This class will culminate in a real-time 3D project exploring motion capture and virtual production that will adapt a pre-existing cinematic work with the class themes in mind.
When technology advances, teaching styles regress. Every new wave of technology touted as a boon to education — radio, TV, DVDs, the internet — has tended to revive the idea that the ideal class structure is the lecture, where faculty broadcast information to disconnected student recipients. Yet we’ve known for decades that lectures are poor ways to create learning experiences, and that actively involving students–with the class, the teacher, each other–is far more effective. The thesis of Imagination and Distributed Learning is that the range of possible experiences available online is larger, more varied, and more interesting than most of what is on offer from colleges and universities’ online courses. Students will read teaching and learning research, and do field work where they set out to learn something online and reflect on the experience, and then set out to teach something online, and reflect on that experience. The goal of the course will be for students to build up alternatives to existing (and often quite dull) online educational practices today. The final project will be a proposal, plus designs or partial implementation, for online tools or experiences that will create experiences users can learn from. These proposals will be presented to a panel of people managing existing online programs at NYU and elsewhere.
Today’s internet, made up of mostly text documents and two-dimensional images and videos, is the result of historical limitations in bandwidth, graphics processing and input devices. These limitations have made the internet a place where the mind goes, but the body cannot follow. Recent advances in motion capture devices, graphics processing, machine learning, bandwidth and browsers, however, are paving the way for the body to find its place online. This course will explore embodied interactions in the browser and across networks. Specifically, we’ll explore TensorFlow.js models like PoseNet and BodyPix, and Microsoft Kinect in p5.js and Three.js. Assignments will consider designing engaging embodied experiences for individual and social interactions online. Experience with Node, HTML and JavaScript is helpful but not required. ICM level programming experience is required. The course will have weekly assignments that explore embodied interaction online. Assignments will begin with exploring single points of interaction (i.e. one mouse or one joint), and progress to considering full bodies and multiple bodies in one browser. Students will have a 2-3-week final project with which they will delve more deeply into the subject matter in one piece of work. Students will have readings/watchings focused on embodied and networked user experience. Some influential works that will likely be assigned/discussed are Laurie Anderson’s “Habeas Corpus,” Todd Rose’s “The End of Average,” and Myron Krueger’s “Artificial Reality.” The course examples will be taught in Javascript using web technologies/frameworks. However, students are welcome to work in their preferred medium.
In this class students learn how to use data. If you can learn to live with uncertainty, you can make something beautiful and true. Students will learn about data as another form of evidence. We will collect our own datasets to learn about challenges and opportunities. We will explore sources of uncertainty, and how imagination and empathy can help uncover ways that data can lead to insight or alternatively, lead one astray. We cover basic stats principles to show how even properly collected data may lead you astray; we cover design principles, we introduce technical tools for visualizing data. Students collect their own data set, share reactions to assigned readings, and find their own examples of data usage that are positive or misguided.
What can cybernetics, the study of how we shape and are shaped by systems, teach us about the sexual and social reproduction of gender and sexism? How does sex become gender and what are the politics surrounding who gets reproduced? We will explore how social regulatory systems are encoded into technological platforms and disentangle how they produce social pressure and govern behavior through somatic exercises, discussion, and project making. In this class, we will not shy away from difficult conversations and work closely together to cultivate a space of openness and mutual support. Discussion and project-making is core to this class. Together we will read the work of scholars such as Donna Haraway, Ruha Benjamin, Paul Preciado, Silvia Federici, & Audre Lorde. Along with lecture, discussion, and in class activities, students will be encouraged to explore their own research interests and personal histories. When projects are discussed, we will practice communicating ideas through presentation as a medium and will co-create a culture of constructive feedback.