Basic introduction to the writings of Confucius, his adversaries, and his successors, followed by a reading of several novels regarded as national classics.
East Asian Studies (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks
Archives
Dancing in the Here and Now: Making Dances, Knowing Bodies (ARTS-UG 1221)
Both dancing and everyday movement offer continual opportunities for embodied experience. Those who regularly dance or engage in movement practices such as yoga, jogging, cycling, and walking typically develop an appetite, even a need, for moving and the breadth of experience it brings. Whether you already feel this appetite or want to explore embodied experience for the first time, this Arts Workshop offers the opportunity for deep investigation of movement, focusing on active and contemplative exploration of bodies in space and time. We will be guided by several research strands linked to the existence and power of embodiment, noting experimental choreographer Susan Rethorst’s term, “the body’s mind”: ways of knowing (individually, culturally) through our bodies. Through many movement options, including dancing and somatic practices, walking and other everyday actions, and personal/cultural/political movement histories, we will encounter or create relationships between what we do and who we are. In the studio and elsewhere, we will consider how our lives as movers, and our sense of ourselves as embodied, bring us into contact with others—walkers, dancers, friends and family—and with our spaces, places, and sociocultural worlds. In this course (open to anyone with/without previous training), our research-in-action will be supported by interdisciplinary scholarship engaged with dance, embodiment, space, everyday culture, phenomenology, environmental studies, and life writing. Readings may include works by Thomas DeFrantz, Anna Halprin, Victoria Hunter, Einav Katan, Marcel Mauss, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Andrea Olsen, Steve Paxton, Georges Perec, Yvonne Rainer, Susan Rethorst, Kathleen Stewart, and Yi-Fu Tuan.
Arts Workshops (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 14 Weeks
Sections (Fall 2025)
ARTS-UG 1221-000 (9703)09/02/2025 – 12/11/2025 Wed11:00 AM – 1:00 PM (Morning)at Washington SquareInstructed by Satin, Leslie
Conserving Our Global Heritage through Science (CCOL-UH 1006)
What is “global heritage”? Is it simply our collective legacy as human societies – how we want to be remembered by future generations – or must we confront more difficult questions about identity, the ownership of culture, and conflicts between local and global stewardship of the cultural treasures and historical evidence? With time, negligence, and even military conflict working to erase the past, we must ask: Can a better understanding of our shared heritage assist us in addressing cultural differences in the present day? And how can science both help us understand the historic record and work to preserve it? This class examines ways in which scientific methods can help define “global heritage” and protect it for future generations. Students explore the history and the science behind the creation of paintings, frescoes, parchments, sculptures, ancient mummies, historical buildings, musical instruments, and other artifacts. They will also examine the methods used to differentiate between an authentic object and a fake and ask how some objects come to be valued more than others: distinctions that can lead, and have led, to cultural conflict in recent years.
Core: Colloquium (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks
Sections (Fall 2023)
CCOL-UH 1006-000 (17210)08/29/2023 – 12/15/2023 Mon,Wed11:00 AM – 12:00 AM (Morning)at Abu DhabiInstructed by Arneodo, Francesco · Parthesius, Robert
Cultural Appropriation (CCEA-UH 1069)
Virtually unknown outside of academic discourse until recently, the term cultural appropriation has become a commonplace in social and popular media, as activists and public intellectuals have highlighted what they see as problematic uses (or abuses) of cultural symbols, artifacts, or expressive modes connected to marginalized groups. But what exactly is cultural appropriation, and under what circumstances can it be said to constitute a form of exploitation or violence? This course approaches these questions both philosophically and empirically, asking, on the one hand: What is culture, and how can it be “owned” or “stolen”? and on the other: How have practices of adopting or using culture been implicated in processes of social subjugation or marginalization? Course readings are drawn from a range of disciplines across the humanities and social sciences, including cultural anthropology, art theory, music studies, and philosophy. By engaging with a rich corpus of ideas through in-class discussions, oral presentations, and written reflections, students will develop critical perspectives on cultural appropriation as well as the broader concepts of culture, race, and ethnicity.
Core: Cultural Exploration & Analysis (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks
Sections (Fall 2025)
CCEA-UH 1069-000 (20400)08/25/2025 – 12/10/2025 Tue,Thu11:00 AM – 12:00 AM (Morning)at Abu DhabiInstructed by Eisenberg, Andrew Jarad
Composing Music with Max (OART-UT 1097)
The foundations of Max, a powerful visual programming language for music and multimedia, will be covered in this course. We will examine how computers can be utilized to create situations for music creation, performance, and collaborative improvisation as well as applied to building interactive, generative music. In addition to learning Max’s fundamental building blocks, we will also use fundamental music theory as a tool to better understand music making. We will create programs that examine rhythm, melodies, chords, scales, and recognize other qualities of music like timbre, texture, and dynamics while taking into consideration the principles of harmony, melody, and rhythm defined in basic music theory. The final will require you to develop a collaborative piece of interactive computer music, a collaborative performance environment, or another final project that has been discussed and agreed upon together. This class does not require any prerequisite programming skills or prior music theory knowledge.
Open Arts Curriculum (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 14 Weeks
Sections (Fall 2025)
OART-UT 1097-000 (18705)09/02/2025 – 12/11/2025 Wed5:00 PM – 8:00 PM (Late afternoon)at Washington SquareInstructed by Aguilar, Gustavo
City Photography and Architecture: Discovering Urban Treasures (IPHTI-UT 1210)
City, territory and architecture have been, from the beginning of photography, privileged objects for its practice. Photography has become a tool to strengthen the understanding of architecture, to highlight aesthetic and design ideas and to critically interpret the space. This class focuses on architectural photography and the photography of urban space, both in relation to their historical roots and contemporary practice. Florence offers a perfect environment to develop one’s artistic talent while learning the art of photography and discovering the secrets of one of the most fascinating cities in the world. Assignments are designed to help explore options for technical control as well as visual experimentation and individual style. Keeping in mind the inseparability of photographic technique and expression, students are expected to articulate their particular choices in relation to the overall conceptual approach of the projects. Critiques of assignments are important to the progress of each individual in the class, to help verbalize visual concepts, and to learn to see actively. The final exam consists of the presentation of a portfolio of photographs and an artist’s statement. Students are expected to work on their projects to develop an aesthetic and coherent photographic language and a personal approach to the photographic medium in a different environment. An emphasis is also placed on refining craft in relation to ideas, and to research on an individual basis, since it is crucial in developing an artistic practice. The course includes lectures, shooting sessions and field trips, discussions and critiques of the photographs. Each student must have a camera with manually adjustable aperture and shutter speed.
Int`l Pgms, Photography (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 14 Weeks
Sections (Fall 2025)
IPHTI-UT 1210-000 (10835)08/28/2025 – 12/02/2025 Tue10:00 AM – 1:00 PM (Morning)at NYU Florence (Global)Instructed by Capodacqua, Alessandra
Shared Minds (ITPG-GT 3033)
“What capabilities does computational media have for depicting and conveying the experience of our minds? In this course we will start out using 3D graphics to depict the conventional physical reality that appears before us. Then we will turn inward to reflect the multidimensional reality of our minds, using artificial neural networks. Finally we return to embodied interfaces connected with cloud networking and databases to share with other people. The class will operate at a conceptual level, inviting students’ empirical psychological and philosophical investigations of the nature of their experience and how to convey it with art and story. It will ask students to look critically at existing computational media’s tendencies to bore, divide or inflame its users. But this is also very much a coding class where students will prototype their own ideas for new media first with 3D graphics using the threejs library, and then with machine learning models like Stable Diffusion using Huggingface APIs or Colab notebooks and finally with networking and databases using Firebase or P5 Live Media. Students can substitute other coding tools but game engines will not work for this class. The coding is in javascript, with a possible touch of python, and is a natural sequel to Introduction to Computational Media.” Prerequisite: ICM / ICM: Media (ITPG-GT 2233 / ITPG-GT 2048)
Interactive Telecommunications (Graduate)
4 credits – 14 Weeks
Sections (Fall 2025)
ITPG-GT 3033-000 (11392)09/03/2025 – 12/10/2025 Wed12:00 AM – 2:00 PM (Early afternoon)at Brooklyn CampusInstructed by O’Sullivan, Daniel
Fabricating Mechanical Automatons (Batteries Not Included) (ITPG-GT 3034)
How do we make things move, produce sounds, or maybe even emit light without batteries? Through this course, each student will design their own purely mechanical automaton. We will learn how to use simple materials and tools to hand prototype mechanisms in their early stages. CAD software will be used to refine the designs and then a series of traditional and digital fabrication tools (various wood shop tools, laser cutter, CNC, 3D printers, etc.) will be used to produce the final pieces. We will learn how to work iteratively in the shop through weekly exercises, and a midterm and final project.
Interactive Telecommunications (Graduate)
4 credits – 14 Weeks
Sections (Fall 2023)
ITPG-GT 3034-000 (21893)09/07/2023 – 12/14/2023 Thu9:00 AM – 12:00 AM (Morning)at Brooklyn CampusInstructed by
Re-decentralizing the Internet (ITPG-GT 3032)
Decentralization has become a buzzword in the technology space, and there is much more to decentralized technology than NFTs and cryptocurrency. In this course, we will examine the fundamental concepts of the existing internet infrastructure, work to define what decentralization means, learn about the “why” of decentralization, survey the landscape of decentralized, distributed, and p2p protocols, and develop decentralized applications. We learn about will examine the implementation of decentralized technology and throughout the course, we will look at different use cases of decentralization such as evading censorship, protecting privacy, and creating resilient applications. We will also consider ethical questions about the decentralization movement—how will it grow, who benefits from decentralization, and whether a decentralized internet is even a good solution at all. We will examine the underlying technologies that enable decentralization, as well as looking at the current implementations of decentralized protocols and apps built on top of decentralized protocols. Finally, we will touch on adjacent topics such as local networks, mesh networking, and p2p networks. While this course will cover a breadth of decentralized and self-hosted applications, we will steer away from decentralized financing and NFTs and instead focus on decentralized information sharing. The goal of the class is to challenge students to think critically about the future of the decentralized web and develop applications that leverage these technologies. Students with or without a background in networking are both highly encouraged to enroll.
Interactive Telecommunications (Graduate)
4 credits – 14 Weeks
Sections (Fall 2023)
ITPG-GT 3032-000 (21891)09/08/2023 – 12/15/2023 Fri9:00 AM – 12:00 AM (Morning)at Brooklyn CampusInstructed by
Multisensory Design (ITPG-GT 3027)
Our users have senses that they use to perceive information in different ways. Some perceive best through sight, some through hearing, others through touch. Designers often prioritize visual information, excluding those who benefit from other sensory modalities. In this class, we’ll take a multisensory approach to design that makes interfaces more accessible to disabled and nondisabled users. Students will learn how to design for the senses (think tactile controls combined with atmospheric sounds and olfactory or taste experiences), while gaining an understanding of the assumptions we make about our users’ sensory preferences. Students should come with prior experience with physical computing and fabrication techniques and can expect to learn technical processes for the user research, usability testing, and iterative design of multisensory interfaces. Over the course of 14 weeks, students will design an interface for the 5 senses (sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell), culminating in one final project that includes at least 3 sensory modalities.
Interactive Telecommunications (Graduate)
4 credits – 14 Weeks
Sections (Fall 2024)
ITPG-GT 3027-000 (15736)09/05/2024 – 12/12/2024 Thu6:00 PM – 8:00 PM (Evening)at Brooklyn CampusInstructed by Race, Lauren
Game Design & the Psychology of Choice (ITPG-GT 3028)
“As game and interaction designers we create systems and choices that can either prey upon our psychological foibles or help us avoid decision pitfalls. It is our responsibility to understand how we decide, to consider the ethics of the systems we create and to practice designing systems in a purposeful manner. Game Design & The Psychology of Choice will provide interaction and game designers with an understanding of the factors that influence behavior and decision-making by looking at the intertwining of cognitive psychology and economics through the development of behavioral economics. These disciplines study behavior on the individual and group level, often revealing some of the why behind the rules of thumb and folk wisdom that game designers come to intuitively. But understanding the why—why we fall into decision traps; why certain tradeoffs tax our brain more than others; why we are overconfident about our abilities; why certain decisions make us uncomfortable—allows us to more purposefully apply our design craft, both in and out of games. Finally, as a class, we will take what we learn about how we think and create series of game experiences based around key cognitive science concepts. Assignments may include: •Mod a cognitive science experiment into a game or experience •Analyze and present a game through the lens of cognitive science and behavioral economics •Create game or experience based around a particular insight from cognitive science or behavioral economics”
Interactive Telecommunications (Graduate)
4 credits – 14 Weeks
Sections (Fall 2025)
ITPG-GT 3028-000 (11391)09/03/2025 – 12/10/2025 Wed6:00 PM – 8:00 PM (Evening)at Brooklyn CampusInstructed by Parker, Matthew
Outside The Box: Site-Specific Immersive Explorations (ITPG-GT 3029)
This course introduces students to modalities for creating site-specific and immersive art and performance. Assignments will examine the work of artists who challenge the limitations of the physical, psychological and transactional spaces that have come to define conventional production models. Students will regularly receive prompts from which collaborative work will be workshopped, generated and presented. The sites and practices explored will de-center script/text as spine, institutional space as gathering place, linear storytelling as narrative, and separation between audience and artist as social contract. Through group performance projects and presentations, students will investigate how Site evokes Narrative and Event differently in brick & mortar, virtual, historic, liminal, dead, found, contested, democratized and community spaces. Our work will unpack the challenges and opportunities presented when we relinquish creative control of such unfixed elements as serendipity, impermanence, improvisation, audience agency, public space, weather, and pandemic.
Interactive Telecommunications (Graduate)
4 credits – 14 Weeks
Sections (Fall 2023)
ITPG-GT 3029-000 (21888)09/11/2023 – 12/11/2023 Mon6:00 PM – 8:00 PM (Evening)at Brooklyn CampusInstructed by Rovegno, Mia
BioDesigning the Future of Food (ITPG-GT 3030)
For centuries, food production practices such as permaculture fostered ecosystems intended to be sustainable and self-sufficient, while producing nutrient-dense food. Modern farming has introduced harmful monoculture practices proven to cause collateral destruction of biodiversity and seasonal harvesting, distancing us from our food ecosystems. The future of food can be regenerative or continue to contribute to massive health and environmental issues. How can we challenge ourselves to regain connection to our food system? How might we use innovation, personal prowess, design, and biotechnology to reimagine healthier ecosystems? This course examines the historical context of the food ecosystems and encourages students to identify with these systems that we (in urban settings) are disconnected with. Students will build a project around exploring innovative approaches to the future of food and our relationships with it. These projects will incorporate design, technology, science, and research elements.
Interactive Telecommunications (Graduate)
4 credits – 14 Weeks
Sections (Fall 2024)
ITPG-GT 3030-000 (15738)09/06/2024 – 12/11/2024 Fri3:00 PM – 5:00 PM (Late afternoon)at Brooklyn CampusInstructed by Huggins, Nikita
Seeing Machines (ITPG-GT 3031)
A programming course where we’ll explore various techniques and solutions for tracking and sensing people or objects in space. Students will get familiar with the terminology and algorithms behind many sensing topics such as computer vision, depth cameras, positional tracking, and coordinate mapping. As these subjects are explored, we will also dig into communication, and how this information can be transmitted from one tool to another, for example using OSC, Spout/Syphon, MIDI, DMX/ArtNet. The goal being to use the right tool for the job and not limit ourselves to a particular piece of software.
Interactive Telecommunications (Graduate)
4 credits – 14 Weeks
Sections (Spring 2025)
ITPG-GT 3031-000 (11434)01/27/2025 – 05/05/2025 Mon6:00 PM – 8:00 PM (Evening)at Brooklyn CampusInstructed by Zananiri, Elie
Alter Egos: Assuming New Identities Through Costume and Performance (ITPG-GT 3024)
Throughout history, musicians have channeled their creativity into outrageous fashion statements and invented personas: think MF DOOM, Sun Ra, Ghostface Killah, Daft Punk, Leikeli47 and Rammellzee. By embracing their alter egos in extreme and outlandish ways, artists have found their authentic creative voices. This course will introduce participants to the art of masquerade using their resourcefulness to create costumes from found materials, and performance as an exploration in creative expression using new media and technology. Students will be introduced to ideas surrounding abstract storytelling, experimental audio video production, and A/V performance using a combination of technical and hands-on approaches. This course requires CL: Hypercinema or equivalent experience. Prerequisite: CL: Hypercinema (ITPG-GT 2004)
Interactive Telecommunications (Graduate)
4 credits – 13 Weeks
Sections (Fall 2025)
ITPG-GT 3024-000 (11388)09/08/2025 – 12/08/2025 Mon12:00 AM – 2:00 PM (Early afternoon)at Brooklyn CampusInstructed by Santana, Ali
Hedonomic VR Design: Principles & Practices (ITPG-GT 3025)
To be a VR creator, it’s not enough to learn the hard skills—it’s also our responsibility to prime ourselves for the human impact of our work. As a means to design VR that is both enjoyable and accountable, this class proposes we borrow design principles from Hedonomics, a branch of ergonomic science that facilitates pleasurable human-technology interaction. Through the Hedonomic Pyramid, we’re able to section our thinking off into regions (Safety, Function, Usability, Pleasure and Individuation) and map out industry-tested VR design guidance for each. The result is a hierarchical checklist of proven principles, specifications and practices—that promote a culture of inclusive and holistic design—built to serve as a quickstart guide to designing accountable VR interfaces and systems. This class, divided into units that represent each level of the Hedonomic pyramid, will unpack both technical and conceptual strategies for creating VR, from visual interface fidelity to avoiding locomotion cybersickness to designing safer social VR spaces.
Interactive Telecommunications (Graduate)
4 credits – 14 Weeks
Sections (Fall 2025)
ITPG-GT 3025-000 (11389)09/04/2025 – 12/11/2025 Thu9:00 AM – 12:00 AM (Morning)at Brooklyn CampusInstructed by Cortese, Michelle
Multisensory Storytelling in Virtual Reality and Original Flavor Reality (ITPG-GT 3026)
“In this course, we will explore how to create narratives that leverage our lesser used senses like touch, taste and smell as well as lesser-known ones like space, time, balance and scale. We will dig into the history of experiential storytelling, starting from immersive theater and Smell-O-vision to cutting-edge haptics and mind-bending illusions of proprioception. To help center this back in practical applications, we will also explore how this evolving art is commonly used in exhibition design, experiential marketing and brick and mortar retail. The class will be a healthy mixture of game theory as well as experienced based learning (meaning there will be a couple field trips and multisensory VR projects to explore). A basic knowledge of game engines is ideal but not mandatory because we will be using predesigned templates in Unreal engine to be experienced and manipulated in real-time through virtual reality hardware.”
Interactive Telecommunications (Graduate)
4 credits – 14 Weeks
Sections (Fall 2025)
ITPG-GT 3026-000 (11390)09/04/2025 – 12/11/2025 Thu3:00 PM – 5:00 PM (Late afternoon)at Brooklyn CampusInstructed by Porter, Winslow
Text-to-Image Ais (ITPG-GT 3020)
“Over the past few years, the unprecedented advancement in text-to-image artificial intelligence models has sparked widespread attention, discussion, and mainstream adoption of these innovative co-creative interfaces, which has resulted in novelty, excitement, and curiosity, as well as concern, anger, and insult. Alongside this, the booming open-sourced text-to-image model development contributes to expanding access to working with AI tools beyond experts, tech giants, and professional technologists. In this 14-week course, we will go over the landscape of text-to-image AIs and dive deep into some of the most well known ones (such as Stable Diffusion and its variants), to see what potential they have in terms of exploring new modes of content creation and helping us re-examine our language pattern. This will be a practice technique course – in the first half, we’ll focus on building good prompting practices, and in the second half, we’ll explore different image synthesis skills related to text-to-image AIs, use Python to train our own models to create customized visuals, and create animations from text. We’ll also discuss how such tools could intervene in the workflows of artists and technologists, what they can provide for researchers, and what are the caveats and things we should look out for when we’re creating with these AIs. Pre-requisites: Introduction to Computational Media (ICM) or the equivalent.” Prerequisite: ICM / ICM: Media (ITPG-GT 2233 / ITPG-GT 2048)
Interactive Telecommunications (Graduate)
4 credits – 14 Weeks
Sections (Fall 2024)
ITPG-GT 3020-000 (15729)09/06/2024 – 12/11/2024 Fri3:00 PM – 5:00 PM (Late afternoon)at Brooklyn CampusInstructed by Zhang, Yuguang
Augmented Hacking (ITPG-GT 2356)
With recent advances in hardware and software, millions of us now carry unprecedented spatial computing and world sensing technologies in our pockets. With these technologies in hand, how do we design AR experiences that are contextual at the core – that are sensitive to the spaces we inhabit and the behaviors of people in those spaces? How do we augment this better understanding of reality? This course will be a hands-on workshop where we create spatially aware, contextually driven AR applications unique to particular situations. We will examine the opportunities and challenges when designing for site-specific experiences – museums, live events, retail, medical settings, industrial environments, schools, and others. Topics will include image and object recognition, world mapping, people tracking, location anchors, the ARKit “depth api” (LiDAR enabled features), spatial audio, scene understanding and semantics, and more. For design and development, we’ll primarily use Apple technologies – ARKit, RealityKit and RealityComposer. We’ll also tap a variety of cloud services to store, move, process, and bring intelligence to the data generated and consumed in our experiences. 3D modeling skills are helpful but not required. While we’ll cover the basics, students should expect to spend additional time outside of class learning Swift and other related programming concepts. Full-time access to an iOS device (LiDAR-enabled is ideal but not required) and a Mac laptop running the latest operating systems are required. As part of the design process, we’ll host workshops and guest critiques with designers from top studios around New York City as well as directly interfacing with various teams at Apple.
Interactive Telecommunications (Graduate)
4 credits – 14 Weeks
Sections (Fall 2023)
ITPG-GT 2356-000 (21868)09/07/2023 – 12/14/2023 Thu3:00 PM – 5:00 PM (Late afternoon)at Brooklyn CampusInstructed by Lam, Nien · Buys, Sebastian