Learning with Turtles explores programming languages, systems, and activities designed to help learners in computational environments. Starting from a constructionist principle that systems designed for beginners must be able to embody the most powerful ideas in computing, we master some of those systems, explore how those have been designed, and engage in contemporary debates. The environments we learn with include Turtle Geometry, Craft Computing withTextiles, Modelling, and other interactive projects using programming and modelling systems such as Snap!, TurtleArt, Turtlestitch and NetLogo. Individual and group projects involve students in advancing their computational knowledge and skills and provide opportunities to design for others, to teach, to study learning and expertise, and present projects in community and public forums. The course is fundamentally about ideas, and how some powerful ideas from computation can empower a learner to be a better creator and problem solver. Writing, presentations, and discussions will emphasize reflection on our own learning within the course. Prerequisite: None. Fulfillment: IMA Major Electives; IMB Major Interactive Media Elective.
Electronic Textiles spans the worlds of craft, electronics, and computing. We will build skills in the often surprising world of using soft, stretchy or low tech materials where one might have expected hard, dimensionally stable, or high tech materials and vice versa. Weekly projects will have requirements for craftsmanship and design, and will build skills in integrating electronics and computing with soft items and wearables, making sensors and displays, tailoring and costuming, and creating your own materials. You will gain familiarity with materials and with hand and machine crafting skills. Weekly readings for discussion will be required, and presentations and guest speakers will offer you ideas and critical challenges. Pre-req: None. Fulfillment: IMA/B Elective
In this course we combine both analytic and embodied learning about human movement practices. We will learn selected computational and physical movement sensing techniques (webcam-based, wearable-based, and commercial motion capture technologies). We will combine guest and student-led presentations and activities that involve us in movement while learning structures and history of selected movement practices such as dance and circus arts. We will do four sprint projects of approximately one week in length (each semester projects differ, but may include examples such as PoseNet/MoveNet, Creating a Fitness Tracker, Rhythm Game, Non-humanoid MoCap avatars), alternating with work on a class choreographic project and individual research and writing of a paper on a movement practice. Prerequisite: Creative Coding Lab or equivalent programming experience. Fulfillment: IMA/B Elective.
We will explore a range of programming languages, systems, and activities designed to help learners acquire computational skills and become creative problem solvers and project designers, including arts and interactive projects. We will create projects in turtle geometry, animation, and programmable embroidery (Snap!, Turtle Geometry, TurtleArt, and TurtleStitch), and in simulation systems which model complex systems in the life and social sciences in order to acquire a deeper understanding of their underlying phenomena (NetLogo). The course is fundamentally about ideas, and how some powerful ideas from computation can empower a learner to be a better creator and problem solver, acquire a deeper understanding of social and scientific phenomena, and become a self-directed learner. We will identify these ideas and actively engage with the pedagogical theories that underlie embodying them by creating with systems designed for children, beginners, or people coming from disciplines which traditionally had less emphasis on computing-based tools. We will emphasize reflection on our own learning within the course.”
People use their bodies in the workplace whether they are dancers or athletes, managers or engineers. Physical wellbeing, social teamwork, and cognition may be affected by our movement practices. How do people use physicality and motion to think? What is the interaction between body, motion, place, and goals? We will explore these questions by building physical-computing-based systems that encourage us to bring movement into new times and places in daily life, that coach users and develop learning environments for movement practices, and that test our understanding of ways that we “think with the body”. In this course we will bring practices such as fitness, dance, sports, and martial arts into a series of interactive installations, movement learning projects, and workspace modifications built on computing, sensing and actuator technologies. In this course we will also explore these questions through review of existing creative projects in this area, readings, presentations, and knowledge-sharing sessions. Prerequisites: Creative Coding Lab, Interaction Lab or equivalent programming experience Fulfillment: IMA/IMB elective.
A site for IMA NY Students to find equivalent courses outside of IMA NY
For most students joining IMA in Fall 2022 and beyond, there is a new program structure that affects the categorization of courses on this site:
Any class in any IMA major elective category (ie "Art & Design") refers to the IMA program structure previous to those entering in Fall 2022. If you are in the class of 2026 (most entering Fall 2022 or later), any course in an IMA elective category are generic IMA electives in the new structure.