Archives

Spring 2024 Spring 2025

Breaking the Code: Gender, Art, and Interactivity in the Digital Age (IM-UH 2517)

In this course, we will focus on gender as a central mode of identity exploration in contemporary art within the digital age, adopting a multidisciplinary and interactive approach. Over a course of six sections, we will analyze how contemporary artists, from diverse backgrounds, delve into various facets of gender identity within the context of digital art history. This exploration will encompass their interactions with new media styles, mediums, reception, and critical analysis. We will raise essential questions: How does technology in interactive art contribute to gender equality? To what extent does an artist’s gender identity influence the interpretation of their digital work? We will critically engage with gender studies, examine gender’s profound impact on digital creation, and explore the socio-cultural influences at play. Through weekly readings and group interactive activities, class discussions, and a final VR exhibition on a related topic of their choosing, students will explore gender’s relevance to digital art creation, examine materials highlighting how gender shapes digital art, analyze socio-cultural factors influencing gender and sexuality in digital contemporary art, and apply their insights to interactive media.

Interactive Media (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks

IMA Electives Undergraduate
Spring 2019

Software Art: ASCII to Algorithm (IM-UH 2321)

ASCII to Algorithm is an introduction to the history, theory and practice of computer-based artistic endeavors in the field of visual arts. It traces the path of early encounters with the computer as a tool for artists and surveys the computational foundation that positions contemporary software art as more system than object. We will be elaborating and discussing concepts and paradigms specific to computing platforms, such as data representation, generative art, image processing and computational creativity. Drawing on those, students will explore their own artistic practice through the exclusive use of their computers. This computational playground will highlight and reflect upon the broader impact of digital technologies on our relationship to art, and on our understanding of the artistic process. Programming experience in JavaScript is preferred but not required.

Interactive Media (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks

IMA Electives IMA Electives (Legacy Structure - Programming & Data) Undergraduate
Spring 2019

Network Everything (IM-UH 2112)

This course explores the possibilities and challenges of designing alternate physical network interfaces. Through weekly readings, class discussions, and a series of projects, students will create physical objects that talk to each other over distance. Various wireless communication mechanisms such as radio (Bluetooth, Zigbee, WiFi, and raw), infrared, and ultrasonic are used in the context of creating novel “smart” devices. Topics of discussion in this course include networking protocols and network topologies; network time versus physical time; mobile objects; and wireless networks. Opportunities to build collaborative and creative campus-wide networked projects and systems will also be explored.

Interactive Media (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks

Sections (Spring 2019)

IM-UH 2112-000 (24975)01/29/2019 – 05/16/2019 Tue11:00 AM – 1:00 PM (Morning)at Abu DhabiInstructed by

IM-UH 2112-000 (18392)at Abu DhabiInstructed by

IM-UH 2112-000 (24976)01/29/2019 – 05/16/2019 Thu11:00 AM – 2:00 PM (Morning)at Abu DhabiInstructed by

IM-UH 2112-000 (18550)at Abu DhabiInstructed by

IMA Electives IMA Electives (Legacy Structure - Programming & Data) Undergraduate
Spring 2019

Temporary Expert: Developing a Research-based Art Practice (IM-UH 1513)

What does it mean to become a “temporary expert?” How does one develop one’s own creative research-based practice? This course will address these questions by engaging with Abu Dhabi’s environmental and social dimensions as a subject for research, context and imaginative art and design opportunities. Students will adopt a wide variety of tools and strategies in order to lay the foundations for a research-based art practice that considers materials, media, context, and audience, as well as one’s personal strengths and desires. Over the course of the semester, students will develop art and design projects that interface with a multiplicity of other disciplines, and engage in idea exchange with experts in the field. Through hands-on practice, case studies, and readings on systems thinking, communication, and the idea of “the public,” we will explore method, documentation and presentation of research, as well as the merits of both success and failure.

Interactive Media (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks

Sections (Spring 2019)

IM-UH 1513-000 (24971)01/29/2019 – 05/16/2019 Tue2:00 PM – 3:00 PM (Early afternoon)at Abu DhabiInstructed by

IM-UH 1513-000 (18534)at Abu DhabiInstructed by

IM-UH 1513-000 (24972)01/29/2019 – 05/16/2019 Thu2:00 PM – 5:00 PM (Early afternoon)at Abu DhabiInstructed by

IM-UH 1513-000 (18535)at Abu DhabiInstructed by

IMA Electives IMA Electives (Legacy Structure - Art & Design) Undergraduate
Fall 2019 Fall 2020

Sensors, Body, & Motion (IM-UH 3114)

Using computer vision, machine learning, gesture recognition, wearable technology, projection mapping, a variety of sensors, and OpenFrameworks (C ), students will create interactive art and performances that leverage the full potential of the human body. Directly injecting “people-sensing” into an artwork via these readily accessible open source technologies, generates a unique feedback loop, or dialogue-like relationship, where a person and a computer are continuously reacting to each other’s senses. This course will examine this feedback loop, specifically how a person is directly integrated into the artistic expression of the work. Ultimately, students will create interactive installations and performances where the human body is the central component of the artwork.

Interactive Media (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 14 Weeks

Sections (Fall 2020)

IM-UH 3114-000 (19156)

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

Desert Media Art (IM-UH 3315)

How does bringing an artwork outside change its interaction with people and the environment? What new possibilities exist if we create an electronic artwork that can travel with us and be installed anywhere? Desert Media Art is a production-based course where students research, propose, produce, install, and document an electronic artwork designed for Abu Dhabi’s desert. The desert is an iconic landscape with a rich history of use by artists as an alternative to the white box of the gallery. We will study historical and contemporary outdoor art practices as well as local ecology and culture. Students will work in groups to create an Arduino-based project that is battery powered and ready to be taken into the field. The project will be installed in the desert, documented, and then presented in an indoor exhibition. Technologies used will include Arduino, 3D printing for enclosure design, rapid prototyping using laser cutting, battery power, and video production. Students will not just build a project and install it in the field, but also learn how to communicate their work to the public using video documentation and indoor exhibition.

Interactive Media (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks

Sections (Fall 2025)

IM-UH 3315-000 (13628)

Fall 2025 IMA Electives IMA Electives (Legacy Structure - Art & Design) Undergraduate
Summer 2022 Summer 2023

Interactive Media in the World (IM-UH 1114J)

This course explores the principles of Interactive Media put to use in the real world. Interactive Media is technology in the service of inventors, artists, designers, developers, educators, and other creatives, who use it to create experiences and devices that are insightful, critical, and thought provoking. Participants will learn the principles of Interactive media (programming, electronics, and design) and how to build projects using the Arduino prototyping platform. We will visit galleries, museums, studios, workshops, classrooms, and labs. We will hear from artists, designers, inventors, teachers, and other practitioners. Israel/Palestine’s art, design, and technology scene and community of artists, educators, museums, designers, inventors, and entrepreneurs is an opportunity to explore the contemporary world of Interactive Media. Visits will include many diverse locations, and students who speak the local languages – Hebrew and Arabic – are especially encouraged to join; however, English will be used everywhere we go. Students will work both individually and in groups. Technical and critical readings and discussion will culminate in a production project that will respond to what we’ve learned. This course will be held in Tel Aviv for the J-Term 2023 session.

Interactive Media (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 2 Weeks

IMA Electives IMA Electives (Legacy Structure - Physical Computing & Experimental Interfaces) Undergraduate
Spring 2022

Connections Lab (IM-UH 2324)

From intelligent chat-bots and video-sharing apps to social media platforms and virtual reality hubs, our world is infused with mediated, networked systems for communication. While these tools were a luxury a couple years ago, today they are almost a necessity. Every day we are knowingly or unknowingly using a handful of connected applications to communicate with people across the world. With this course we want students to be more than participants in these tools, but also become active creators. In this course, students will design and develop their own creative connected web applications. By coding (using JavaScript) and producing original online experiences that bring people together in playful yet purposeful ways, students will gain valuable insight into the inner-workings and implications of our connected world. The course will culminate in students creating their own connected applications that can be used by peers.

Interactive Media (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 16 Weeks

IMA Electives IMA Electives (Legacy Structure - Programming & Data) Undergraduate
Fall 2021 Spring 2025

Data: Code It, Make It (IM-UH 2323)

Data Physicalization is an emerging research area. It explores new techniques to design and encode data into physical artifacts through geometry or material properties. Recent advances in Computational Design and Fabrication offer novel opportunities to complement traditional screen-based visualizations enhancing people’s ability to discover, understand, and communicate data. This course uses a data visualization approach to define new methods of computational design and digital fabrication. Students will create unique, data-driven, everyday objects and sculpt meaning into them. Through the use of platforms such as Rhinoceros: a 3D modeling software, and Grasshopper: a visual programming language, students will be introduced to fundamental computational methods for designing and fabricating, as well as the understanding of digital fabrication strategies for parametrically generated design.

Interactive Media (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks

Sections (Spring 2025)

IM-UH 2323-000 (18515)

IMA Electives IMA Electives (Legacy Structure - Physical Computing & Experimental Interfaces) Undergraduate

Live Coding (IM-UH 2322)

Credits: 4
Duration: 15 Weeks
Dates:

Live coding is a performing arts form and creativity technique where music and visuals are improvised through live edits of source code. Live coding is most visible in performance, however the ’live’ in live coding refers not to a live audience but to live updates of running code. Working across genres, live coding has been seen in algoraves (events where people dance to music generated from algorithms), jazz clubs, and concert halls. Code is projected during performances, exposing the underlying algorithms at work, and thus the patterns of creative thought the performer is developing in real time. Programs are instruments that can change and algorithms are thoughts that can be seen as well as heard. This course explores this new art form and the related themes of algorithmic thought, pattern transformation, artificial language, information theory, improvisation, listening, perception, and structural composition. Students will learn how to create music with code, as well as how to create advanced computer graphics. Students will develop algorithmic audio/visual pieces individually as well as in groups. The course culminates in an algorave.

Interactive Media (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks

IMA Electives IMA Electives (Legacy Structure - Programming & Data) Spring 2026 Undergraduate
Fall 2021 Spring 2020

Bioart Practices (IM-UH 2514E)

In this course we will take a tour of the materials and techniques utilized by artists in the emerging field of biological art – that is art which uses life itself as a medium. This hybrid art and science class will introduce concepts in genetic engineering, personal genomics, the microbiome, epigenetics, microscopic imaging, tissue culture/bioprinting, biopolitics, and bioethics as sites for artistic exploration. Organized in thematic modules students will learn basic lab techniques while studying the work of artists in this interdisciplinary field. The three core areas are: Input/Output (imaging and printing with biology, tissue culture), identity after the genome (genetics, personal genomics, microbiome, epigenetics, portraiture), and final projects. Weekly readings and written responses will supplement lab activities. The course will culminate in the creation of original biological artworks by each student, which will be exhibited in the Interactive Media Showcase at the end of the semester.

Interactive Media (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks

Sections (Fall 2021)

IM-UH 2514E-000 (20014)

IMA Electives IMA Electives (Legacy Structure - Physical Computing & Experimental Interfaces) Undergraduate
Fall 2021 Spring 2023 Spring 2024 Spring 2025

A.rt I.ntel (IM-UH 3312)

Artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms affect many aspects of our lives whether we realize it or not: banking transactions, healthcare treatments and diagnoses, entertainment recommendations, smart car functionality, customer service agents, financial trading… the list goes on and on. The power of these algorithms lies in their ability to leverage computers to “study” and “learn”. Instead of programming a computer to do a specific task, we program the computer to train and teach itself how to do any number of tasks. As artists, how can we harness the power of these algorithms and apply them towards creative endeavors? This class will explore that basic question. Through a combination of high level applied machine learning techniques, speculative design of artificial intelligence, and some basic understanding of how these algorithms work at a low level, students will explore this rich new field. With their machine counterparts, they will create images, sounds, text, intuitive interactions, chatbots, and more.

Interactive Media (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks

IMA Electives IMA Electives (Legacy Structure - Programming & Data) Undergraduate
Spring 2021 Spring 2022

Robota Psyche (IM-UH 3313)

What can machines tell us about the human condition? Is something that appears to be intelligent, really intelligent? Is a device that appears to have likes and dislikes “alive”? As robots and Artificial Intelligence become more powerful and prolific, what makes us unique? This course will address these questions by exploring a series of increasingly complex software “creatures” which seem to have qualities usually associated with living beings. This course will primarily follow a classic text that proposes “experiments in synthetic psychology”, with excursions into cybernetics and how it relates to art. Course material will incorporate both theoretical and practical components. Readings include critical analysis regarding the historical and contemporary theories and practices in these fields. Students will develop software “vehicles” which will embody the ideas being explored. By creating and simulating multiple and increasingly complex vehicles, interactions and behaviors will be explored.

Interactive Media (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 16 Weeks

Sections (Spring 2022)

IM-UH 3313-000 (18591)

IMA Electives IMA Electives (Legacy Structure - Seminar/Studies) Undergraduate
Spring 2021 Spring 2022

Software Art: Image (IM-UH 2315)

An introduction to the history, theory and practice of computer-aided artistic endeavors in the field of visual arts. This class will focus on the appearance of computers as a new tool for artists to integrate in their artistic practice, and how it shaped a specific aesthetic language across traditional practitioners and newcomers alike. We will be elaborating and discussing concepts and paradigms specific to computing platforms, such as system art, generative art, image processing and motion art. Drawing on those areas, students will explore their own artistic practice through the exclusive use of their computers. The course will also serve as a technical introduction to the OpenFrameworks programming environment to create works of visual art. As such, Software Art: Image will be an art history and critical studies course with a studio component. Software Art: Image is a complement to Software Art: Text, a 7-week course approaching software and computation from the perspective of poetry and fiction. The two courses can be taken in series or independently.

Interactive Media (Undergraduate)
2 credits – 8 Weeks

Sections (Spring 2022)

IM-UH 2315-000 (18522)

IMA Electives IMA Electives (Legacy Structure - Art & Design) Undergraduate
Spring 2021 Spring 2022

Software Art: Text (IM-UH 2316)

An introduction to the history, theory and practice of computer-aided artistic endeavors in the field of prose and poetry. This class will focus on the appearance and role of computers as a new way for artists to write and read both programming and natural languages. While elaborating and discussing concepts and paradigms specific to computing platforms, such as recomposition, stochastic writing and ambiguity, students will be encouraged to explore their own artistic practice through the exclusive use of their computers, by writing their own programs. As such, Software Art: Text will be a literary history and critical studies course with an active writing component (in both Python and English). Students will be exposed to new creative perspectives on reading and writing in the digital age. Software Art: Text is a complement to Software Art: Image, a 7-week course approaching software and computation from the perspective of the visual arts. The two courses can be taken in series or independently.

Interactive Media (Undergraduate)
2 credits – 6 Weeks

Sections (Spring 2022)

IM-UH 2316-000 (18521)

IMA Electives IMA Electives (Legacy Structure - Art & Design) Undergraduate

Understanding Interactive Media – Critical Questions & Theories (IM-UH 1013)

Credits: 4
Duration: 15 Weeks
Dates: Tue,Thu
Credits: 4
Duration: 15 Weeks
Dates: Tue,Thu,Mon,Wed

This seminar course is an introduction to the theories, questions, and conditions that encompass interactive media. Students will engage in readings that critically examine both the impact that interactive media and technology have on culture and societies as well as the ways in which social contexts shape the development and application of these technologies. The contexts become apparent by examining interactive media and interactivity through the lenses of relevant perspectives including politics, ethics, race, gender, and cybernetics. Throughout the semester students will leverage theory to analyze interactive media works and build a vocabulary for making sense of our increasingly mediated world. The course thus serves to lay a conceptual foundation for students to inform and direct their own creative practice. Readings, discussions, research, and writing constitute the body of this course.

Interactive Media (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks

Fall 2025 IMA Electives IMA Electives (Legacy Structure - Seminar/Studies) Spring 2026 Undergraduate

Machine Lab (IM-UH 2113)

Credits: 4
Duration: 15 Weeks
Dates:

The saying goes, “If all you have is a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail.” What if all you have is a 3D Printer? In this course, students will be introduced to, and engage critically with, a range of contemporary machines inside and around the Interactive Media Lab. Leveraging historical perspectives, current use-cases, and hands-on making, the course will explore how machines enhance, or limit, our creative processes. Readings and discussion will be paired with practical designing, prototyping, and making of creative computer controlled devices, such as drawing machines, musical instruments, and a collaborative Rube Goldberg contraption. Over the course of the semester, students will be exposed to a variety of tools, materials, and fabrication techniques as well as learn how to use micro-controllers and software to give their machines unique behaviors and abilities. By thinking about machines, using machines, and making machines, the course will offer insight into our creative relationships with our tools.

Interactive Media (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks

IMA Electives IMA Electives (Legacy Structure - Physical Computing & Experimental Interfaces) Spring 2026 Undergraduate

Future Punk (IM-UH 2513)

The future: let’s patch it together from scraps. Future studies and strategic foresight are methods of guiding businesses and politics. Punk means to take the master’s tools apart, repurpose them to serve our own goals, to outsmart our adversaries, and to prevail. The compound of the words future and punk, just like in cyberpunk or steampunk, indicates that in the case of future punk, future itself would be setting the stage for the narrative, provide the condition against which the human beings in the world of the story would have to struggle: So in the good old punk tradition, we, too, want to take futurism and use it for our own creations. This class introduces speculative fiction and the more scientific forms of speculation as a means to students to envision, draft, and draw and paint their own images and imaginations of alternative worlds. Students will apply the futurist methods to creative projects and in addition, discuss and critique the field.

Interactive Media (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks

Sections (Fall 2025)

IM-UH 2513-000 (13614)

Fall 2025 Undergraduate

Introduction to Digital Humanities (IM-UH 1511)

Credits: 4
Duration: 15 Weeks
Dates:

What happens when the arts and humanities are represented in digital form? What kind of new insights can we have when by looking at the data of the humanities? This course will look at intersections between computers and the humanities, a form of inquiry known as “digital humanities.” The course is structured around a broad examination of concepts important in today’s society (computational thinking, digital identity, text as data, dataset, pattern, algorithm, network, location). Students will discuss these concepts critically, explore real-life examples and put them into practice in hands-on activities. Examples of such hands on work might include, but are not limited to, creating accessible web design, analyzing text digitally, building and visualizing a dataset, curating an open bibliography, thinking about art as data, building a Twitter bot, teaching a computer to recognize human handwriting, visualizing social networks or making digital maps. The course assumes no prior technical skills, but a willingness to explore new technologies is essential for success.

Interactive Media (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks

IMA Electives IMA Electives (Legacy Structure - Programming & Data) Spring 2026 Undergraduate