Archives

Fall 2020

Population Infinite:The Future of Identity (ITPG-GT 2041)

Course description (optional): We are currently living in a society that operates under the principle that one body equals one agent, one vantage point, one identity. But emerging technologies may create a future in which the notion of a single personal identity becomes outdated. That future includes: machine learning techniques that make emulating the style and behavior of other people fast and easy; widely available AR/VR headsets that get people to identify with however many faces and bodies they choose, instead of just those they were born with; cryptocurrencies enabling the use of pseudonymous economic identities to transact across the planet in a permissionless manner. This is a course where we will get to explore and anticipate the utopian and dystopian aspects of this weird future of identity.

Interactive Telecommunications (Graduate)
2 credits – 6 Weeks

Sections (Fall 2020)

ITPG-GT 2041-000 (22623)09/02/2020 – 10/14/2020 Wed6:00 PM – 9:00 PM (Evening)at Brooklyn CampusInstructed by Germanidis, Anastasios · Oved, Dan

Graduate IMA Electives IMA Electives (Legacy Structure - Seminar/Studies)

Listening Machines (ITPG-GT 2043)

Credits: 2
Duration: 6 Weeks
Dates: Mon

This course will provide students with an introduction to the area of machine listening. Machine listening is the general field studying algorithms and systems for audio understanding by machine. It deals exclusively with general audio as opposed to speech recognition. The most basic goal of all machine listening systems is to reliably recognize and react to very specific sounds. Over the course of the semester, we will create our own unique machine listening systems that provide us with new and interesting ways to interact with our projects. We will use live coding and real-time data visualization to demystify some of the more daunting underlying topics like digital signal analysis, music information retrieval, and machine learning.

Interactive Telecommunications (Graduate)
2 credits – 6 Weeks

Graduate IMA Electives IMA Electives (Legacy Structure - Programming & Data) Spring 2026
Fall 2020

Prediction as Planning: Wayfinding for Future Thinkers (ITPG-GT 2033)

In an age of pressing and complex problems like climate change, extreme inequality, and surveillance capitalism, “problem solving” is a central feature of innovation, design, and planning. But can these wicked problems actually be “solved”? And why does the cutting edge of problem solving look so limited? Machine learning. Predictive analytics. Algorithmic decision-making…Is planning for the future being outsourced to machines? In this class, we’ll take back control of the future by learning how it has historically been predicted, planned, and produced in board meetings, think tanks, writers’ rooms, and policy circles, and how those methods are being impacted by new technologies. During a series of discussions and hands-on workshops, we will learn specific, tangible, and collaborative practices for prediction and planning that can augment and transcend computational capabilities, making for marketable future-proof skills that can help redefine the future for humanity.

Interactive Telecommunications (Graduate)
2 credits – 7 Weeks

Sections (Fall 2020)

ITPG-GT 2033-000 (22634)10/22/2020 – 12/10/2020 Thu6:00 PM – 9:00 PM (Evening)at Brooklyn CampusInstructed by Shevin, Michelle

Graduate IMA Electives IMA Electives (Legacy Structure - Seminar/Studies)
Fall 2020

Performing Reality (ITPG-GT 2032)

Time-based art, performance – and theater most specifically – should be perfect manipulators of experience. Many creators of time-based art look for the “universal” in content and overlook what we all have in common in form: brains. What happens in the minds of all truly happens (what happens in the lobby also truly happens). How can we use art to make our brains experience the same things? What behind-the-scenes work can we employ to manipulate experience. Film scoring works on us in ways we don’t perceive in the moment. Can we pay closer attention to this when making work? Sometimes what we have for lunch effects our experience of art more than the hours of labor that went into the most minuscule of decisions when making that art. Is empathy always ethical? Show don’t tell. How does the art take place in the room in front of us? How can public performance not be awkward? How do we experience a performance rather than watch it.

Interactive Telecommunications (Graduate)
2 credits – 6 Weeks

Graduate IMA Electives IMA Electives (Legacy Structure - Media & Entertainment)

Design Research (ITPG-GT 2997)

This course will focus on a range of human-centered design research and innovation workshop methodologies including Design Thinking, LEGO Serious Play, Lean UX, Google Ventures Sprints, Gamestorming, Futurecasting, and Service Design. Students will look for design opportunities within the unprecedented challenges that we are currently facing as global citizens. Students will define a problem space based on the drivers that they’re most interested in exploring and will have the option to work alone or form small design research teams. They will learn how to conduct primary and secondary research, creating deliverables such as personas, journey maps, concept canvasses, and prototypes. Students will be required to apply design research approaches and workshop methodologies, develop and test a rapid prototype and then share their work in a final presentation.

Interactive Telecommunications (Graduate)
2 credits – 6 Weeks

Sections (Fall 2025)

ITPG-GT 2997-000 (11359)10/24/2025 – 12/05/2025 Fri9:00 AM – 12:00 AM (Morning)at Brooklyn CampusInstructed by Derby, David · Brant, Heidi

Fall 2025 Graduate IMA Electives IMA Electives (Legacy Structure - Art & Design)
Fall 2020 Fall 2021

Hello, Computer: Unconventional Uses of Voice Technology (ITPG-GT 2988)

Computers are able to understand human speech better than ever before, but voice technology is still mostly used for practical (and boring!) purposes, like playing music, smart home control, or customer service phone trees. What else can we experience in the very weird, yet intuitive act of talking out loud to machines? The goal of this course is to give students the technical ability to imagine and build more creative uses of voice technology. Students will be encouraged to examine and play with the ways in which this emerging field is still broken and strange. We will develop interactions, performances, artworks or apps exploring the unique experience of human and computer conversation. Students will learn how to use text-to-speech and speech-to-text technologies, voice assistant devices, generative text techniques, open speech APIs, Node.js, and conversational UI design. There will be weekly assignments leading up to a final project. ICM or comparable programming experience required.

Interactive Telecommunications (Graduate)
2 credits – 8 Weeks

Sections (Fall 2021)

ITPG-GT 2988-000 (22644)09/02/2021 – 10/26/2021 Thu3:00 PM – 6:00 PM (Late afternoon)at Brooklyn CampusInstructed by

Graduate IMA Electives IMA Electives (Legacy Structure - Physical Computing & Experimental Interfaces) IMA Electives (Legacy Structure - Programming & Data)
Fall 2020

Faking the News (ITPG-GT 2151)

“Lies. Hoaxes. Conspiracies. Rumors. Propaganda. Fake news is an age-old phenomenon—but the internet is making targeted misinformation cheap and scalable. That is affecting politics, public opinion, and the everyday experience of the internet. In this 6-week class, we will explore the cutting edge of “fake news” by engaging in ethical research and fabrication. Participants will manufacture and observe a controlled “fake news” event. We will experiment with command-line tools for doctoring video, neural nets and deepfakes to fabricate reality, Twitter bots, behavioral psychology, and the dark underbelly of the ad economy.”

Interactive Telecommunications (Graduate)
2 credits – 5 Weeks

Sections (Fall 2020)

ITPG-GT 2151-000 (22632)09/09/2020 – 10/12/2020 Mon6:00 PM – 9:00 PM (Evening)at Brooklyn CampusInstructed by Moskowitz, Benjamin

Graduate IMA Electives IMA Electives (Legacy Structure - Media & Entertainment) IMA Electives (Legacy Structure - Programming & Data)
Fall 2020

Immersive Listening: Designing Sound for VR (ITPG-GT 2022)

Until recently 3D sound was a novelty reserved for special uses and reaching a limited audience, no medium in popular culture has been as inherently dependent upon spatial audio as virtual reality. The widespread and standardized implementation of surround sound in film brought cinema to a new level of immersion, but is limited to theatrical exhibition and home theater systems. Today a considerable amount of content is consumed on mobile devices and laptops which excludes the cinematic experience of spatial sound. With the current rise of cinematic VR and the blurring line between gaming and experiential VR, spatial audio is no longer just an added bonus, but rather a necessity in designing immersive VR experiences. In this course we will explore the emerging field of 3D sound design and for both 360 video and game engine-built VR using a digital audio workstation, Unity, and 3D audio plugins.

Interactive Telecommunications (Graduate)
2 credits – 6 Weeks

Graduate IMA Electives IMA Electives (Legacy Structure - Media & Entertainment) IMA Electives (Legacy Structure - Physical Computing & Experimental Interfaces)
Spring 2020

INTRO TO COMPUTER ENGINEERING (ECE-UY 1012)

This course helps students to understand computer engineering as a balance among hardware, software, applications and theory, the notion of abstraction, computer layers and how they relate to various aspects of computer engineering, implementation of abstract and physical computer layers: Number systems, digital logic, basic processor structure, instruction set architecture, machine languages, assembly languages and high-level programming in C. Other computer concepts, including compilers, operating systems and algorithms, are presented, along with the simulator concept and its usage for understanding computer design, testing and analysis. Experts present special topics in the area. Also discussed are invention, innovation, entrepreneurship and ethics in these topics and in Computer Engineering. Cross listed as CS-UY 1012. | ABET competencies: e, h, j | Prerequisite: Only first-year students are permitted to enrol in this course.

Elect. Engineering – ECE UGRD (Undergraduate)
2 credits – 15 Weeks

IMA Electives IMA Electives (Legacy Structure - Programming & Data) Undergraduate

Introduction to Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE-UY 1002)

Credits: 2
Duration: 15 Weeks
Dates: Wed

This course introduces numerous subject areas in Electrical and Computer Engineering (power systems, electronics, computer networking, microprocessors, digital logic, embedded systems, communications, feedback control, and signal processing). Through a series of case studies and examples, the course demonstrates how each subject area applies to practical, real-world systems and devices and discusses how the areas interact with each other to implement a complete functioning system or device. Students make presentations in teams on case studies based on articles from the IEEE Spectrum Magazine and other sources. The IEEE Code of Ethics and ethics-related issues are discussed. | ABET criteria: i, h. | Prerequisites: First-year standing

Elect. Engineering – ECE UGRD (Undergraduate)
2 credits – 15 Weeks

Spring 2026 Undergraduate
Spring 2020

INTRODUCTION TO BIOMOLECULAR SCIENCE (CM-UY 1032)

This is a one-semester overview course in chemistry, providing examples of important discoveries and important chemical innovators, with a strong emphasis on cutting-edge research. Field opportunities are developed to allow students to contribute to the discipline. | Prerequisite: Only first-year students are permitted to enroll in this introductory level course.

Chemistry (Undergraduate)
2 credits – 15 Weeks

Physical Science OR Life Science Undergraduate
Fall 2020

The Visual Music Experience (REMU-UT 1228)

Can you listen to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” without envisioning the zombie transformation? What about Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” without seeing the accompanying choreography? Both of those songs, along with countless others, have benefited from the groundbreaking visuals that have accompanied them. From the Classic Rock films of the 1960’s to the MTV revolution of the 1980’s and 1990’s to the innovations of YouTube and Virtual Reality, this class will examine how the convergence of visual and auditory mediums has created some of the most impactful art. We’ll extract the great lessons from the pieces we study and utilize our production skills to create videos, on-stage visuals, and songs of our own. We’ll also investigate how the creation of videos alongside songs has disrupted the marketing and sales fates for the music industry multiple times. The weekly class structure will alternate between one 90min lecture/discussion course and one 90min production course where we will be collaborating on creating new content for each assignment together.

Recorded Music (Undergraduate)
2 credits – 15 Weeks

Sections (Fall 2020)

REMU-UT 1228-000 (16036)09/02/2020 – 12/13/2020 Thu12:00 AM – 3:00 PM (Early afternoon)at Washington SquareInstructed by

IMA Electives IMA Electives (Legacy Structure - Media & Entertainment)
Fall 2020

Creative Experiments with Emerging Music Technologies (REMU-UT 9815)

This unique course introduces students to innovative and cutting-edge technologies sound, video, and interfaces that are changing the way music is performed, produced and received. Music and creative technologies have shifted in the last years from preset-focused black-box devices to open and hackable hard- and software. Examples are MaxMSP (Ableton), the Kinect Motion sensor, VR Platforms or open source music instruments like Korg’s Mono series, little bits or bastl. This shift enables artists today to understand the inner workings of instruments better and engage a very different working process: these days, devices can more easily be created and manipulated, forming future tools and creating a rich variety of different media. The course consists of both a theoretical and a hands-on part, and has a workshop component. No special knowledge like programming or electronic skills is presupposed. As this course is intended for students from different disciplines, the content will flexibly be adapted to the level of knowledge of the students, especially for students with little or no technical background.

Recorded Music (Undergraduate)
2 credits – 14 Weeks

Sections (Fall 2020)

REMU-UT 9815-000 (15182)08/31/2020 – 12/10/2020 Thu3:00 PM – 6:00 PM (Late afternoon)at NYU Berlin (Global)Instructed by

IMA Electives IMA Electives (Legacy Structure - Media & Entertainment)
Fall 2021 Spring 2020 Spring 2021

Popular Music in Germany: History (REMU-UT 9811)

From Karlheinz Stockhausen and Kraftwerk to D.A.F. and the Euro disco of Snap! – the first seven weeks of class considers the history of German electronic music prior to the Fall of the Wall. We will particularly look at how electronic music developed in Germany before the advent of house and techno in the late 1980s. One focus will be on regional scenes such as the Düsseldorf school of electronic in the 1970s with music groups such as Cluster, Neu! And Can, the Berlin school of synthesizer pioneers like Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze and Manuel Göttsching or Giorgio Moroder’s Sound of Munich. Visits will be made to experience Oskar Sala’s Trautonium – an early proto-synthesizer with which he created the sounds for Hitchcock’s The Birds – at the Musikinstrumenten Museum and the location of the Zodiak Free Arts Lab, an experimental club founded by Conrad Schnitzler and Hans-Joachim Roedelius. Students will be expected to competently identify key musicians and recordings of this creative period. The second half of the course looks more specifically at the arrival of Techno, a new musical movement, and new technology in Berlin and Germany in the turbulent years after the Fall of the Berlin Wall, up to the contemporary moment. Indeed, Post-Wall East Berlin, full of abandoned spaces and buildings and deserted office blocks, was the perfect breeding ground for the youth culture that would dominate the 90s and led Techno pioneers and artists from the East and the West to take over and set up shop. Within a short space of time Berlin became the focal point of a new culture, attracting enthusiastic followers from all over the world to clubs such as ‘Tresor’ and ‘E-Werk’. Among those early techno aficionados were writers, artists, photographers, musicians and fashion designers. Techno quickly developed into a lifestyle and mass movement, finding its most exhilarating expression in the Love Parade and, recently, the club/movement Berghain. As students consider Berlin’s slow transformation from divided city in those anarchic and pioneering days of the early 90s into the bustling, world-class nightlife capital it is today, they will also consider the changing and controversial cultural and socio-economic landscape of the city, and how Berlin continues to retain its uncompromising, avant-garde ethos. Students will be expected to write final research paper drawing on issues discussed in class and in the readings.

Recorded Music (Undergraduate)
2 credits – 15 Weeks

Expressive Culture Liberal Arts & Sciences - Electives Undergraduate
Spring 2020

Pro Capture (ITPG-GT 2065)

This advanced experiential production course will introduce students to the latest techniques for stereoscopic 360 video, manual 360 video stitching and depth map creation, camera-paired Depthkit volumetric video, and mixed-format photogrammetry. Techniques introduced in the class will presume some working knowledge of more basic forms of these capture methods as well as how to integrate them into Unity. Alongside an intense technical focus, the course will also deconstruct recent groundbreaking experiential works that utilize similar experimental production designs. The format of each class will combine lectures and workshops with the ultimate goal of introducing students to the expectations demanded by professional productions. All of the techniques introduced are being employed by top experiential creators and creative studios. The course will try to show viable paths for students to engage with immersive media pipelines, at an expert level, with an expanded sense of possibility and inspiration. Topics heavily examined throughout the course include: surveillance, race, socioeconomics, carceral capitalism and technoscience, algorithmic bias and oppression, and post-work societal structures.

Interactive Telecommunications (Graduate)
2 credits – 5 Weeks

Sections (Spring 2020)

ITPG-GT 2065-000 (23513)03/25/2020 – 04/29/2020 Wed12:00 AM – 3:00 PM (Early afternoon)at Brooklyn CampusInstructed by Niederhauser, Matthew

Graduate IMA Electives IMA Electives (Legacy Structure - Media & Entertainment)
Spring 2020

The Revolution Will Be Digitized (ITPG-GT 2064)

What is the relationship between American musician and poet, Gill Scott-Heron and cybernetics? Heron’s “The Revolution Will Not be Televised” was created in hopes to wake-up 1970’s America from complicity in societal oppression to then realize the revolution begins in your mind and something created through active participation, not passive media consumption. While, iterated forms of cybernetics also challenge the notion that “technology [or society] is self-correcting”, through fostering design thinking and systems theory through a meta-scale analysis of computational practices, essentially promoting being an observer of systems through conversation with process and feedback loops. Both ideologies center intention and holistic design within innovation — concepts vital to the equitable well-being of society in a technocratic era. In this course, students will explore the origins and history of the internet and HCI technologies as stemming from hippie communes, counterculture and warfare; survey historical and current social relations in the U.S.; study how these social relations have been replicated and embedded into everyday technologies; and consider potential futures in tandem with rapid technological advancements. We will study the works of pioneering designers and thought-leaders from Norbert Wiener, Stewart Brand, and Victor Papanek to Alondra Nelson and Ruha Benjamin. Phenomena discussed throughout the course range from the power of Black Twitter, the social media revolution of Egypt’s Tahrir Square, to cryptocurrency being used in bail reform. After in-depth historical analysis of societal structures, geo-political dissent, and algorithmic patterns, students will engage with futurism and speculative practices, techno-culture manifestos, and design and systems theory to develop a variety of research-driven projects. We will conclude with using both second-wave cybernetics as a design framework, and an anthropological lens to imagine, innovate and design more equitable technocratic futures. Topics heavily examined throughout the course include: surveillance, race, socioeconomics, carceral capitalism and technoscience, algorithmic bias and oppression, and post-work societal structures.

Interactive Telecommunications (Graduate)
2 credits – 8 Weeks

Sections (Spring 2020)

ITPG-GT 2064-000 (23447)01/27/2020 – 03/23/2020 Mon12:00 AM – 2:00 PM (Early afternoon)at Brooklyn CampusInstructed by Melenciano, Ari

Graduate IMA Electives IMA Electives (Legacy Structure - Art & Design) IMA Electives (Legacy Structure - Seminar/Studies)
Spring 2020

Critical Communications (ITPG-GT 2056)

The ways in which we communicate has changed radically in the last 100 years. As the communication systems we use have increased in complexity, so has the effort it takes to understand how they work. Most of us use protocols like LTE, HTTP, TCP/IP, and BLE every day. We take them for granted, almost like we do the laws of nature. But there are more than the laws of physics, more than techniques of engineering, embedded in the design and implementation of our protocols of communication. To understand their role in our lives, we need to look into the societal and economic contexts in which they came to be. In this class, we will examine communication protocols using Raspberry Pi’s, Arduinos, Software Defined Radios, and other connected devices. We will look closer at organizations like iSOC, ICANN and IEEE to better understand how protocol designs are implemented and standardized. Through readings, research and hands-on work we will build an understanding of how these protocols work, how their designs incorporate the physical, technical, cultural, corporate and political assumptions of the actors behind them. In the first half of the class readings and assignments will help familiarize students with some of the different protocols we rely on every day. In the second half, students will work in groups to investigate a communications protocol and consider its impact from a technical, societal and environmental perspective. Final projects will communicate their findings in whatever form students deem appropriate – explanatory blog posts, physical or digital installations, or even videos and podcasts.

Interactive Telecommunications (Graduate)
2 credits – 6 Weeks

Sections (Spring 2020)

ITPG-GT 2056-000 (22886)03/30/2020 – 05/11/2020 Mon6:00 PM – 9:00 PM (Evening)at Brooklyn CampusInstructed by Mattu, Surya

Graduate IMA Electives IMA Electives (Legacy Structure - Programming & Data)
Spring 2020

Machine Learning for Physical Computing (ITPG-GT 2050)

With Machine Learning models are getting smaller, and microcontrollers are getting more computing power, Machine Learning is moving towards edge devices. This class explores the idea of how machine learning algorithms can be used on microcontrollers along with sensor data to build Physical Computing projects. In this class, we will learn about TensorFlow Lite, a library that allows you to run machine learning algorithms on microcontrollers. We will talk about common machine learning algorithms and techniques and apply them to build hands-on interactive projects that enrich our daily lives. Students will learn to use pre-trained models, and re-train the models with sensor data. We are going to talk about Image Classification, Transfer Learning, Gesture and Speech Detection. For each topic, we will first discuss its history, theory, datasets, and applications, and then build simple experiments based on the topic. Prospective students are expected to have taken Introduction to Physical Computing and Introduction to Computational Media course, or have equivalent programming experience with Arduino and JavaScript.

Interactive Telecommunications (Graduate)
2 credits – 6 Weeks

Sections (Spring 2020)

ITPG-GT 2050-000 (22889)03/24/2020 – 05/05/2020 Tue6:00 PM – 9:00 PM (Evening)at Brooklyn CampusInstructed by Shi, Yining

Graduate IMA Electives IMA Electives (Legacy Structure - Physical Computing & Experimental Interfaces) IMA Electives (Legacy Structure - Programming & Data)
Spring 2020

Introduction to Synthetic Media (ITPG-GT 2054)

Generative machine learning models open new possibilities for creating images, videos, and text. This class explores the idea of how artists, designers and creators can use machine learning in their own design process. The goal of this class is to learn and understand some common machine learning techniques and use them to generate creative outputs. Students will learn to use pre-trained models, and train their own models in the cloud using Runway. For each week, we will discuss the history, theory, datasets, application of the machine learning models, and build experiments based on the model. In addition to Runway, we will be using JavaScript libraries like the p5.js, ml5.js, and TensorFlow.js, and software like Photoshop, Unity and Figma. Students are expected to have taken ICM (Introduction to Computational Media), or have equivalent programming experience with Python or JavaScript. A list of ML models we will be covering: Image generation: StylanGAN: https://github.com/NVlabs/stylegan BigGAN: https://github.com/ajbrock/BigGAN-PyTorch Style Transfer Fast-style-transfer: https://github.com/lengstrom/fast-style-transfer Arbitrary-Image-Stylization: https://github.com/tensorflow/magenta/tree/master/magenta/models/arbitrary_image_stylization Semantic Image Segmentation/Synthesis Deeplab: https://github.com/tensorflow/models/tree/master/research/deeplab Sapde-coco: https://github.com/NVlabs/SPADE Image-to-Image Translation: pix2pix: https://phillipi.github.io/pix2pix/ pix2pixHD: https://github.com/NVIDIA/pix2pixHD Text Generation LSTM gpt-2: https://github.com/openai/gpt-2

Interactive Telecommunications (Graduate)
2 credits – 6 Weeks

Sections (Spring 2020)

ITPG-GT 2054-000 (23367)01/31/2020 – 03/13/2020 Fri9:00 AM – 11:00 AM (Morning)at Brooklyn CampusInstructed by Shi, Yining

Graduate IMA Electives IMA Electives (Legacy Structure - Media & Entertainment)