While traditional forms of art such as painting and sculpture only expect intellectual communication with the spectator, interactive arts consider the audience as active participants and directly involve their physical bodies and actions. Interactive art invites its audience to have a conversation with the artwork...
Society has always dreamed about humans coexisting with automatons, robots and talking machines that fit into every facet of daily life. As a consequence of computation and the internet leaving the flat screen, alternative forms of human-machine relationships are increasingly becoming more ubiquitous. Designing for...
This is an interactive media art class for people who want to develop creative experiences that are about something specific with a specific point of view! This sounds vague, but your projects won’t be! You’ll be provided with a step-by-step methodology for making research-driven creative...
Video art is a time based media art form which emerged during the late 1960’s as video cameras and recorders became available to the general public. In this class we will look at both the history of video art as well as new ways of...
Contemporary interaction designers and artists often manipulate scientific, historical, commercial and social information. Literacy in design, art or engineering requires a complement of literacy in data. This class will make a powerful addition to your existing skill set of programming, visual design and electronics. Students...
Beginning with the invention of paper, the paper craft movement has roots on all continents. This course is divided into several subject areas: the history of paper and paper making, paper folding, paper cutting, paper engineering, paper automata, and the contemporary DIY electronics and paper...
This two-point workshop is centered on the examination and creation of collective storytelling environments. We will examine a wide-range of storytelling spaces including participatory and user-generated environments, site-specific works, community based arts practices, and transmedia storytelling. Weekly assignments, field trips, and student presentations.
This course will provide a foundation for understanding modern web development with a focus on front end technologies and accessing public data. The forms and uses of these technologies are explored in a laboratory context of experimentation and discussion. Students will create two well-designed single-page...
While the first augmented reality experiences were achieved over fifty years ago, we’ve only recently carried these experiences in our pockets. From Pokémon GO and Snapchat filters to Google Maps AR and IKEA Place, augmented reality is rapidly changing how we shop, work, and play....
This course expands the students’ palette for physical interaction design with computational media. We look away from the limitations of the mouse, keyboard and monitor interface of today’s computers, and start instead with the expressive capabilities of the human body. We consider uses of the...
Do you want to MAKE THINGS with your computer? Are you an artist, engineer, designer, sculptor or architect? Are you a few of those things? How are 3D scanning and 3D modeling different? What materials should I be using? Should I be 3D printing or...
The goal of this course is to develop the skills to translate information from its clinical definition of ‘facts provided’ to being a source of knowledge that is engaging and understandable. We will look at a myriad of historic and modern examples of how design...
Real-Time Media is a 4 credit class using MaxMSPJitter to survey how real-time and reactive media can be used for art installation and performance. Classes will be a mix of coding labs, surveys and lectures on historical examples of the medium, guest artists talking about...
This class aims to provide students with the critical thinking and practical skills to explore and communicate ideas visually. This foundational course is a combination of lecture and studio format that will introduce the fundamental principles of design including typography, color, composition, branding and product...
Online – Non-Majors Only This online 7 week course focuses on applying the fundamentals of computer programming in JavaScript to interactive media projects. In particular it leverages the p5.js creative computing environment which is oriented towards visual displays on desktops, laptops, tablets or smartphones. The...
Online – Non-Majors Only This online 7 week course focuses on the fundamentals of computer programming (variables, conditionals, iteration, functions & objects) using JavaScript. In particular it leverages the p5.js creative computing environment which is oriented towards visual displays on desktops, laptops, tablets or smartphones....
This course aims to provide students with the critical thinking and practical skills for creating effective and compelling interfaces. We will dissect what a compelling user experience is and discuss and apply design methods for creating one. Throughout this 14-week course we will examine a...
Assistive technology is a term that includes a wide variety of technologies for people with disabilities. This two-point survey course is designed to provide students with an overview of the field of assistive technology. Field trips, readings, and guest speakers will provide students with an...
Fairy tales, myths, and stories of magic have always served as a way for both children and adults to make sense of the unpredictabilities of the world around them. How do these stories serve us today? How do new technologies allow us to reinterpret them...
We live in a world where we have more data, computational power, and access to digital connectivity than ever before. But how do we make sense of the promise inherent in this reality while holding space for the challenges that it presents for different groups...
An introductory course designed to provide students with hands-on experience using various technologies including time based media, video production, digital imaging, audio, video and animation. The forms and uses of new communications technologies are explored in a laboratory context of experimentation and discussion. The technologies...
Physical Computing is an approach to learning how humans communicate through computers that starts by considering how humans express themselves physically. In this course, we take the human body as a given, and attempt to design computing applications within the limits of its expression. To...
3D environments and objects are powerful prototyping tools. This class will introduce the basics of 3D modeling techniques in Autodesk Fusion 360 and students will learn to create assets for prototyping and 3D printing. The class will take an industrial design approach to design and...
Whether it’s through photo realistic scans found in current-gen video games or the cartoonish and low-fi aesthetic of Bitmoji there is no limit to ways in which the body and the self are represented in digital spaces. This 2 credit class will look at how...
This course combines two powerful areas of technology that will enable you to leap from being just a user of technology to becoming a creator with it: Physical Computing and Programming. The course begins with Physical Computing, which allows you to break free from both...
How does someone become famous on the internet? What does it take to capture our digital attention? While movie stars, rock gods, and other mainstream A-listers struggle to find their place in a sea of emerging technologies and platforms, a new swarm of micro celebrities...
An introductory course designed to provide students with hands-on experience developing creative coding projects with machine learning. The history, theory, and application of machine learning algorithms and related datasets are explored in a laboratory context of experimentation and discussion. Examples and exercises will be demonstrated...
This course explores the elements of music through the lenses of computation and interactive design. Each of the five course units focuses on one element of music (rhythm, melody, timbre, harmony, and structure), approaching it from the perspective of music theory, computation, and design. For...
This course introduces the Python programming language as a tool for reading and writing digital text. This course is specifically geared to serve as a general-purpose introduction to programming in Python, but will be of special interest to students interested in poetics, language, creative writing...
The network is a fundamental medium for interactivity. It makes possible our interaction with machines, data, and, most importantly, other people. Though the base interaction it supports is simple, a client sends a request to a server, which replies; an incredible variety of systems can...
Time to get your hands dirty. Prototypes need to be created, motors have to be mounted, enclosures must be built. Understanding how things are fabricated makes you a better maker. But hardware is hard. You can’t simply copy and paste an object or working device...
This course is designed to provide students with hands-on experience creating immersive experiences, with a focus on designing artistic, meaningful worlds for virtual reality headsets. The class will also touch on related technologies, methods, and fields including experience design, virtual painting, augmented reality, interactive installation,...
This course is designed to provide students with hands-on experience working with sensors, actuators, and other electronics to design interfaces and outputs for a live multimedia performance. Students will explore the expressive properties of sensors to control a variety of outputs such as light, sound,...
“Big Ideas in the History and Future of Technology” is designed to provide students with a critical perspective on current issues in technology in the context of the history, controversies, consequences, and ethical questions in emerging media. This first course in the series includes: in...
