This course focuses on technological developments and cultural contexts relevant to understanding the development of digital computing technology. The course familiarizes students with the social forces and technocultural innovations that shaped the personal computing industry, and uses primary documents, academic history and critical theory to contextualize and problematize popular frameworks of technological progress and challenge narratives of computing’s inevitability.
Beginning with the release of Crowther and Woods’ “Colossal Cave Adventure” in 1977, the potential and unique affordances of computation as a means of storytelling have become more and more apparent. Combining approaches from literary theory, anthropology, computational creativity and game design, this class considers how narrative structure can be represented as data and enacted through computation, and invites students to implement practical prototypes of their own interactive and procedurally-generated narratives using a variety of technologies. Topics include (but are not limited to) hypertext fiction, “choose your own adventure”-style branching narratives, text adventures, visual novels, story generation from grammars and agent-based simulations. Students will complete a series of bite-size weekly assignments to present for in-class critique. Each session will also feature lectures, class discussion, and technical tutorials.
We are inundated by data, but data alone do not translate into useful information. Statistics provides the means for organizing, summarizing, and therefore better analyzing data so that we can understand what the data tell us about critical questions. If one collects data then understanding how to use statistical methods is critical, but it is also necessary to understand and interpret all the information we consume on a daily basis. This course provides these basic statistical approaches and techniques. This course may not be acceptable as a substitute for any other Probability and Statistics course. For Sustainable Urban Environments (SUE) students, please see your advisor. Note: Not open to math majors or students who have taken or will take MA-UY 2054 or MA-UY 2224 or MA-UY 3014 or MA-UY 3514 or ECE-UY 2233 or equivalent.
Rules of play shape competitive games from checkers to football. But how do rules of interaction shape everyday life? And what happens when there are no established conventions and the rules are being made up as we go along as they have been for the past 6 months of living almost exclusively online? In this course, we will explore, code and test design strategies for playful, serious and bizarre group interactions while at the same time interrogating both what it means to play and how individual identities and group behaviors emerge. (The interactions we create in this class will be designed specifically for synchronous, in-person, embodied experiences.) Some of the questions we will ask and attempt to answer: What motivates participation? What hinders it? When does participation become oppressive? What’s the difference between self-consciousness and self-awareness? Who has power? Who doesn’t? Are leaders necessary? What’s the difference between taking turns and engaging in conversation? What happens when the slowest person sets the pace? And most importantly, what happens when there are no rules? Interaction inputs we will play with will include: mouse, keyboard, mobile device sensors, and microphone. Outputs can include visuals, text and sound. We will use p5, websockets and node.js for real-time interaction. Class time will be split between group improvisation exercises, playing with and critiquing examples and translating design strategies into code and logic.
Games and play are deeply embedded in human culture. Play suggests a range of human experiences not easily contained by a common form. Games use their playable form to speak to the cultural spaces in which they reside. There is freedom in play. There is structure in games. How do they work together? This course explores how games structure play to serve their purpose, and how play inspires games to push expectations of popular culture. Informed by game studies and theories of play, students will study analog and digital games to consider the technological, spatial, artistic and social structures that shape a play experience. Utilizing web-based technologies and the Unity game engine, students will assume the role of both game designer and developer, experimenting with building game experiences that convey meaning as well as express aspects of humanity beyond contest and conflict. Some programming experience is preferred but not required.
In this course, students complete a coordinated sequence of short projects that add up to a finished, live-motion video project. The course strongly emphasizes the relevance of particular tools and techniques to the specific project Concepts are introduced through the screening of historical examples, from 1895 to the present. The course format is modeled on professional standards and workflow for preproduction, production and postproduction. | Prerequisites: DM-UY 2263
How do games tell stories? How can we move beyond the traditional narrative in games? Is there a more holistic approach that embeds the story deeply into the interaction? In this class, students will begin to answer these questions by analyzing games and developing their own experimental narrative games. | Prerequisite: DM-UY 2153
In many political movements, the festive emerges as a major force shaping alternative social practices, forms of gathering, being together, and moving together. These alternative modes of being in collectivity are actively redefining the political. This sense of collectivity becomes particularly evident in the aesthetics of the Global South and its Diasporas. Consequently, this course explores the festive’s role in forming political movements beyond the traditional scope that reduces it to a simple byproduct of social life. It also explores how the pandemic has forced us to reimagine what coming together means. Taking Latin American and Caribbean aesthetics as an initial case, this seminar engages in a detailed interpretation of performances that challenge traditional definitions of both the festive and the political. A wide range of performance practices, such as carnival parties, sound systems, cabaret shows, popular dance styles, artworks, organized slave riots, and indigenous uprisings, shape the modes students will engage in theory and practice. For this course iteration, we will focus on questions around Black and Indigenous relations to carnival performance, structures of mutual aid as festive practice, and how they enact utopian modes of communal life, and how these modes of communal life redefine current understandings of art and politics. The class involves field trips, visits to several performance events, and conversations with artists and organizers who use the festive as a political tool to engage in political action in NYC. Questions regarding race, gender, and class will be directed to the philosophical, anthropological, and historical texts paying close attention to their involvement in the formation of colonial oppression. Performance studies’ methodologies will serve as the guiding mode to articulate these questions.