IMA Cohort: Community is a Practice +

IMA Cohort: Community is a Practice provides incoming IMA students with an opportunity to consider the IMA program, and their role within it. This zero-credit course is based around in-class activities, discussions, viewings, texts, and lectures that begin from the students’ varying perspectives and ultimately provide a grounding within the tenets of the IMA program.
IMA is an interdisciplinary program that draws students from across the United States and around the world. This course functions as an opportunity for students to consider the knowledge that they already have, the contexts in which that knowledge is situated, and how students can relate to and work with classmates who come from their own diverse contexts and backgrounds.
Students will be guided through discussions, viewings, and visits from other members of the university. Because this is a zero-credit course and there are no assignments outside of class, student participation and engagement in these activities is especially important.

Quick Introduction to Physical Computing +

Dan O'Sullivan | IMNY-UT.103 |
Last updated: October 20, 2023

Prerequisite: Prior classwork or experience programming – May not have taken Creative Computing (IMNY-UT 101).

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 realize this goal, you’ll learn how a computer converts the changes in energy given off by our bodies (in the form of sound, light, motion, and other forms) into changing electronic signals that it can read and interpret. You’ll learn about the sensors that do this, and about simple computers called microcontrollers that read sensors and convert their output into data. In the other direction you will learn how to actual physical things in the world with devices like speakers, lights and motors. Finally, you’ll learn how microcontrollers communicate with other computers.

To learn this, you’ll watch people and build devices. You will spend a lot of time building circuits, soldering, writing programs, building structures to hold sensors and controls, and figuring out how best to make all of these things relate to a person’s body.

Note: This course is for students who have not taken Creative Computing (IMNY-UT 101) but who have prior classwork or experience programming. Taking this course enables the waiving of Creative Computing (IMNY-UT 101) in order to take higher level courses in Physical Computing and Experimental Interfaces which otherwise have Creative Computing (IMNY-UT 101) as a prerequisite.