Technology is allowing us to see our clothing as an extension of our body. An extension acting as a system that reacts, collects information, and augments our modes of interactions with spaces and people. Historically, what we wear has been used to express our identity as well as complex issues related to class, race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. Leila Brillson states: “”What you wear is a part of your identity, and identity is, well, pretty darn political””. Interested in fashion as a form of expression, artists, designers, and architects are now crossing disciplines to explore the realm of fashion. Utilizing computation design, digital fabrication, and electronics they are proposing new wearables to speculate on the future of human existence by exploring the limits of the body. In this course, students will research and work with soft electronics and robotics integrated into textiles to make it possible to add controlled behavior and interactivity with their immediate environment. They will study nature and design wearables, understanding them like a second skin, as well as a soft interface able to gather information and transform itself. Students will also explore the complex geometries and designs allowed by digital design and manufacturing. Furthermore, this course will engage with both theory and practice, and introduce students to a specific design sensibility and methodology in order to design wearables reflecting on religious, social, and political issues. Prerequisite: INTM-SHU 101 Interaction Lab or INTM-SHU 103 Creative Coding Lab. Fulfillment: IMA/IMB Elective
In this course, students focus on the study and development of responsive environments, framed within a contextual and critical exploration of the architectural space as a cultural, social and technological phenomenon, and also on the application of practical scenarios for interaction, sentience, and intelligence. Through the making of creative media designs and physical prototypes, students aim to demonstrate how our habitats/spaces/architectures can facilitate novel frameworks for experiencing and living. Prereq for INTM-SHU 138 is Creative Coding Lab OR Interaction Lab OR Application Lab OR Media Architecture Fulfillment: IMA/IMB Elective
This course investigates and illuminates the concepts and the aesthetics of kinetic sculpture and installation art in various forms from creative and historical perspectives. Students will learn to regard sound and performance as part of a sculptural form and learn to work with space. Students will gain woodworking and digital fabrication skills to expand on their physical computing skills to create moving sculpture and installation. The course consists of lectures, readings, and hands-on studio work.
This course surveys the implications of globalization for the production, circulation, and consumption of media. In this course, we will look across both analog and digital media (radio, TV, film, video, pop music, podcast, etc) in relation to a series of questions: How do media (and media industry) represents localities for a global audience? How can media practices create a feeling of belonging to the world/community? How may global media tell us about different material infrastructure, social imagination, and political desires? Students will explore media phenomena and critically examine media texts often beyond North American experiences. By the end of the class, students will be able to articulate how media connects to global flow of finance, cultural product, labor, and social aspirations.
Beginning with a design problem or challenge, and following a period of analysis and research, a designer can begin to draft, prototype, test, and evaluate possible solutions, often repeating these operations several times until the design reaches maturity. Agile software development methodologies, which involve the formation of self-organized cooperative teams, frequent deadlines with deliverables, and a willingness to accept changing conditions and requirements, have radically changed the way software is being produced. Additionally, new applications, such as Fritzing, 123D Circuits, and Eagle have greatly facilitated the process of electronic circuit design. And Computer Aided Design (CAD) applications, for example Rhinocerous and Tinkercad, and newly available digital fabrication equipment have dramatically quickened the pace with which designers can create physical prototypes. Students in this course will be confronted with a series of design challenges for which they have to propose and prototype possible solutions. The first design challenge will entail the entire class working together to produce a software prototype by adopting agile strategies. The second design challenge will involve students in the process of refining a circuit, and will require bringing a prototype from schematic, to breadboard, perfboard, and finally resulting in a printed circuit board. For the third design challenge, students will explore the use of 3D printers, laser cutters, computer numerical control (CNC) machines, and other tools to produce a physical prototype. Students will then be free to work on a personal design challenge for their final project. Prerequisite: Interaction Lab Fulfillment: IMA/IMB elective.
This course offers students the opportunity to develop a self-initiated project with close mentorship from a faculty member. Projects undertaken can span the areas of conceptual research, business development, creative practice, and media production. The course includes structured weekly workshop and critique times with peers and special guests. It is expected that students will embrace open-source and open-content ideals in their work, be invested in the work of their peers by providing feedback, and consider the feedback they receive during critique. In addition to weekly meeting times, students are expected to also participate in regular one-on-one meetings with faculty, peers, and guests. A formal project proposal, weekly assessments and documentation, a final project presentation, and participation in the IMA End of Semester show are all required. Although students are encouraged to continue work they may have initiated in a prior class, they may not combine or in any way double count work from this class in another class taken in the same semester. Group work is allowed assuming all group members are enrolled in this class. Students may take INTM-SHU 140T-A in the first 7 weeks for 2 credits or take this course in the second 7 week or take both of them across 14 weeks for 4 credits. It is open to anyone in any major assuming they have satisfied the prerequisites. Prerequisites: None Fulfillment: IMA /IMB elective.
This course offers students the opportunity to develop a self-initiated project with close mentorship from a faculty member. Projects undertaken can span the areas of conceptual research, business development, creative practice, and media production. The course includes structured weekly workshop and critique times with peers and special guests. It is expected that students will embrace open-source and open-content ideals in their work, be invested in the work of their peers by providing feedback, and consider the feedback they receive during critique. In addition to weekly meeting times, students are expected to also participate in regular one-on-one meetings with faculty, peers, and guests. A formal project proposal, weekly assessments and documentation, a final project presentation, and participation in the IMA End of Semester show are all required. Although students are encouraged to continue work they may have initiated in a prior class, they may not combine or in any way double count work from this class in another class taken in the same semester. Group work is allowed assuming all group members are enrolled in this class. Students may take this course in the first 7 weeks for 2 credits or take INTM-SHU 140T-B in the second 7 week or take both of them across 14 weeks for 4 credits. It is open to anyone in any major assuming they have satisfied the prerequisites. Prerequisites: None Fulfillment: IMA /IMB elective.
Experience Studio engages students in an immersive learning experience that brings them outside the classroom and into the community. This project-based course provides an opportunity for students to learn about experience design in practice. They will (1) engage in field experience with a community partner, exploring the theoretical and practical underpinnings of experience design through readings, guest talks, field trips, and reflective practice. Drawing from their field research learnings, students (2) produce a project that addresses a real-world challenge, through processes such as rapid prototyping, user testing, and customer research (informed by skills and insights from the initial experience). This course can be taken repeatedly as it will be offered by different instructors in collaboration with different course partners each semester. For the upcoming semester’s offerings, please visit: http://creativityandinnovation.shanghai.nyu.edu/experiencestudio. Prerequisite: None Fulfillment: IMA/IMB elective. (open to all; no prerequisites)
Technology products and services are increasingly a huge part of how businesses reach their end-customer and Product Managers (PMs) are the ones to lead teams to build software that solve real problems. This course is designed as an introduction course of how PMs do this across a variety of contexts to evaluate customer needs, translate needs into functional requirements, prioritize different aspects of development, work with cross-functional teams, launch a product and create a holistic vision of how customers experience the product. This course will focus on lectures, discussions, case-studies and hands-on exercises that replicate a typical product process at a startup, tech or non-tech company. This course equips students with the mindset, tools, frameworks to mindfully discover, design and build things that make an impact and meet the needs of real humans. We will cover both core product thinking, and also how to translate that into practical ways to make decisions and build great products. Prerequisite: None Fulfillment: Interactive Media Business Elective ; Interactive Media Arts Elective
This course will introduce the full process for the identification, invention, and implementation of new technologies. With case studies on innovative products from around the world, successes and failures, practical advice, and ’Getting Started’ discussions, students are encouraged to learn from real projects and apply important lessons to their own ideas. Prerequisite: None. Fulfillment: IMA Major Electives; IMB Major Business Elective/Interactive Media Elective; Business and Finance Major Non-Finance Electives; Business and Marketing Major Non-Marketing Electives.
The traditional understanding of media industries reminds us of mass media such as TV, radio, newspaper etc. Digital technologies, however have reshaped how media is made, consumed, and comprehended by increasingly fragmented audience groups. Self-made public accounts, search-based video streaming platforms, and social media apps refreshed our vision of media and challenged the existing ways of running a successful media. How to develop a thorough understanding of the rapidly changing market? This course is an introduction to the media industries, with a particular focus on the institutional forces (i.e., market structures, law and regulation, technological advancement, and audience dynamics) that shape the content and forms of emerging media. Combining lectures and guest talks, this class will make sense of the key concepts, professional terms, and business logics embedded in the production and operation of the global media industries. Furthermore, we will take case studies approach to examining the economic and social influences of media companies in specific contexts, particularly China, U.S., and U.K. These knowledge, together with the analytical skills that the students will acquire through in-class discussions, will allow them to comprehend and cope with the interplay among technology, market forces, and regulators in a wide array of media companies, including television, film, news, social media, video streaming, and the media-related tech businesses. Prerequisite: None. Fulfillment: IMB major Emerging Media Foundation course or IMB major IMA/IMB elective.
This practical course will introduce students with knowledge and tools to quickly iterate, validate and gauge business ideas. The course will explore questions such as: How can we validate an opportunity? What is a “value proposition” and how critical is it? What are the most popular business models and can new ones be invented? Why are investors constantly looking for “Product Market Fit”? Why do “Customer Cost of Acquisition” and “Lifetime Value” matter? The course will also provide an opportunity to apply these newly learned methodologies with two projects during the term of the class. The fourteen weeks classes will be divided into two projects where students will work in teams. One project will be focusing on the Chinese market, whereas the second one will be targeting the North American market. For both projects, teams will be experimenting with customers’ feedback, iterating business propositions and identifying key traction factors. At the end of each project, students will present and demo their business idea to their peers and an external audience of entrepreneurs/ business managers in Shanghai. Prerequisite: None Fulfillment: IMA Major Electives; IMB Major Business Elective/Interactive Media Elective; Business and Finance Major Non-Finance Electives; Business and Marketing Major Non-Marketing Electives.
Innovation is the process by which an organization generates creative new ideas and converts them into viable commercial products. Branding, on the other hand, is the process of creating a unique image for the product in the consumers’ mind. This perception reflects on the organization as a whole. Moreover, branding aims to establish a differentiated presence in the marketplace to attract and retain loyal customers. Thus, innovation and branding are inextricably linked for organizational success, or survival, in today’s hyper-competitive business landscape. This course aims to equip students with knowledge in both the innovation and branding processes. By participating in the International L’Oreal Brandstorm Competition, students will gain practical experience in formulating an idea, develop branding around said idea, and then pitching said idea (innovation and branding) in a competitive forum. Students will also develop an understanding of the role of design and innovation as a collaborative, multidisciplinary group activity; and improve writing and presentation skills. The course incorporates multiple ways of learning including: lectures, case studies, ethnographic research, industry expert feedback on projects and guest presentations, and design activities in the interactive media lab. In essence, the course integrates a project-based learning approach. (No Pre-requisites; satisfies IMB Major, and Business Major – Marketing Elective if Intro to Marketing has been taken, otherwise Non-finance/Non-marketing Elective)
This practical, hands-on course will explore questions such as: How can we design engaging, creative learning experiences that are relevant to the cultural goals and needs of today’s youth in China, while laying the foundation for creative learning for the workforce of tomorrow? What are engaging, effective creative learning resources, and how are they best implemented in Chinese learning settings? How can we take advantage of young people’s near ubiquitous love of the arts to facilitate creative learning?’ In this course, students will work in teams to design digital learning resources and experience designs at the intersection of music, coding, arts, and technology. The course will begin with an introduction to emerging trends in learner engagement and design-based research, especially related to web- and mobile-based musical experiences and principles of making music with new media. Innovations in and applications of musical interaction, interactive technologies, user-centered design & engagement, scaffolded learning, creative learning, pedagogies of play and making, and educational entrepreneurship will also be explored. Students will work together in teams and paired with a partner audience of learners and teachers in Shanghai drawn from local and regional international schools, ed-tech startups, and cultural partners. Together they will assess the needs and opportunities of partner students and teachers, and engage in a two-stage iterative, reflective co-design process prototyping custom learning resources and experience designs with their partner end users. At the end of the course, students will present and demo their learning resources as part of a public showcase to an external audience of partners, educators, technologists, musicians, entrepreneurs, and experience designers in Shanghai. Prerequisites: None. Fulfillment: IMA Major Electives; IMB Major Business Elective/Interactive Media Elective; Business and Finance Major Non-Finance Electives; Business and Marketing Major Non-Marketing Electives.
Considers the trajectory of changes in the production, circulation, and reception of Korean popular music from the turn of the twentieth century to the latest K-pop hits across successive political, social, and economic junctures, with regard for major themes such as nationalism, race, gender, technology, and globalization; and investigates music culture in relation to hybridity, authenticity, transculturation, cyber-culture, and fandom, among other subjects Prereq: None Fulfillment: Humanities Introductory Course (18-19 Topic Courses).
This course investigates digital art and new media from creative, theoretical, and historical perspectives. We will examine the paradigm shift resulting from the rise of digital art and its expansion as well as explore current ideas, creative strategies, and issues surrounding digital media. The topics of study will include digital image, digital sound, net art, systems, robotics, telematics, data art, and virtual/augmented reality. The course aims to provide students with the means to understand what digital media is, and establish their own vision of what it can become, from both a practical and a theoretical perspective. The course will consist of lectures, field trips, and small studio-based practices. Prereq: None Fulfillment: IMA/IMB elective.
This course examines both the practices and the products of adapting narratives from one medium to another. Through case studies of specific adaptations, we will address some of the major formal, industrial, and interpretative questions that transmedia adaptation raises, as creators change characters, stories, settings, and narrative tropes to fit into new stories various, often multiple media: comics, radio, novels, movies, television, games (tabletop and electronic), and more. Theoretical readings will give students concepts and a vocabulary to discuss ways that narrative adaptations use and re-purpose their “source” texts. Students will write prompted response papers, an analytical essay, and an annotated bibliography; in collaboration with classmates, student teams will first propose and then develop transmedia narratives of their own. Prerequisite: Writing as Inquiry Fulfillment: IMA/IMB elective.
This 2-unit interdisciplinary research seminar will be held in conjunction with an international symposium convened by the NYU Center for AI and Culture, which will bring leading scholars, curators, science fiction writers, and heads of major platform research groups to campus. The seminar will host a deeper interdisciplinary conversation on the issues that underpin their work. Seminar participants will meet each of the conference speakers. We will emphasize the overlapping and intersecting histories of “AI” in cognitive science, philosophy, interactive and computer arts, and science fiction literature and film. The frequent back-and-forth between AI in fiction and in fact is the basis of how we will, together, attempt to map the divergent futures of AI. It is said that artificial intelligence will be as important to the twenty-first century as oil was to the twentieth. AI is promoted by China, Europe, Russia and the USA as central to their innovation strategies and, as such, may portend a new computational arms race. There is consensus that geopolitical peace and conflict may be determined by how great nations use AI for good or ill. To define AI is is to conceive what is and is not “intelligence” and what is and is not “artificial.” Because no two cultures understand these basic terms in the same way, they will not understand AI in the same way. As such, any global discussion about the future of AI must be cross-cultural. The more we understand what each culture “means” by AI the more fruitful the collaborative design of AI can be. The seminar is suggested for students of Interactive Media Arts, Computer Science, Political Science, Philosophy, and anyone interested in algorithmic art, automation, machine vision, computational economics, and geopolitics. We will read and discuss 10 key texts and students will prepare an original project, paper or hybrid. Prereq: WAI Fulfillment: IMA/IMB elective.
This course offers students the opportunity to develop a self-initiated project with close mentorship from a faculty member. Projects undertaken can span the areas of conceptual research, business development, creative practice, and media production. The course includes structured weekly workshop and critique times with peers and special guests. It is expected that students will embrace open-source and open-content ideals in their work, be invested in the work of their peers by providing feedback, and consider the feedback they receive during critique. In addition to weekly meeting times, students are expected to also participate in regular one-on-one meetings with faculty, peers, and guests. A formal project proposal, weekly assessments and documentation, a final project presentation, and participation in the IMA End of Semester show are all required. Although students are encouraged to continue work they may have initiated in a prior class, they may not combine or in any way double count work from this class in another class taken in the same semester. Group work is allowed assuming all group members are enrolled in this class. Students may take this course in either the first or second 7 weeks for 2 credits or repeated across 14 weeks for 4 credits. It is open to anyone in any major assuming they have satisfied the prerequisites. Prerequisites: None
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.