Foundation

Capstone +

Blair Simmons | IMNY-UT.400 |
4 Point, All, Elective, Foundation, In-Person, Midday, Spring 2025, Thursday, Tuesday, YES
Last updated: November 15, 2024

The Capstone Studio course asks students to produce an interactive project (with documentation), a research paper, and a personal portfolio.

The interactive project will illustrate students’ unique interests as well as evidence of competency within the field of interactive media production. Students are encouraged to develop their project around a theme previously explored in their work. Projects will be presented and critiqued repeatedly throughout the capstone process to peers, faculty, and industry professionals. A final presentation of the interactive project will be delivered late in the semester.

The research paper (4000-5000 words) will focus on at least one aspect of the interactive project: e.g. culture, theory, philosophy, or history, the project context, and/or production methods. For example, students may write about their project’s reception by a set of specific users, or by users who are part of a larger culture, society, or market. It is important that students think beyond the project itself and situate it in a broader context accessible through research. The research paper will include an annotated bibliography of the books and other resources they used for their research.

Students will also be guided in the production of an online portfolio to showcase their work and accomplishments to the outside world. Graduates will be evaluated by their portfolio when applying for jobs, graduate school, artist residencies, grants, and the like. Portfolios will be tailored to the demands of each student’s future goals and target audience.

Prerequisites: Only available to graduating students!

Creative Computing +

Jack B. Du | Syllabus | IMNY-UT.101 |
4 Point, Afternoon, All, Elective, Foundation, Friday, Spring 2025, YES
Last updated: November 15, 2024

This course combines two powerful areas of technology, Physical Computing and Programming, and asks students to consider their implications.  It will enable you to leap from being just a user of technology to becoming a mindful creator with it.

The course begins with Physical Computing, which allows you to break free from both the limitations of mouse, keyboard and monitor interfaces and stationary locations at home or the office. We begin by exploring the expressive capabilities of the human body and how we experience our physical environment. The platform for the class is a microcontroller (Arduino brand), a very small inexpensive single-chip computer that can be embedded anywhere and sense and make things happen in the physical world. The core technical concepts include digital, analog and serial input and output.

The second portion of the course focuses on fundamentals of computer programming (variables, conditionals, iteration, functions & objects) as well as more advanced techniques such as data parsing, image processing, networking, and machine learning. The Javascript ‘p5’ programming environment is the primary vehicle. P5 is more oriented towards visual displays on desktops, laptops, tablets or smartphones but can also connect back to the physical sensor & actuators from the first part of the class.

What can computation add to human communication? The ultimate question of this class is not “how” to program but “why” to program. You will gain a deeper understanding of the possibilities of computation in order to see how it applies to your interests (e.g. art, design, humanities, sciences, engineering). In addition to weekly technical assignments there are blogging assignments, usually reacting to short readings, allowing you to reflect in writing about the nature of computation and how it fits into your life and into human society. 

There is an even workload each week of a technical production assignment and a writing assignment but none of them are big.  The course is designed for computer programming novices but the project-centered pedagogy will allow more experienced programmers the opportunity to go further with their project ideas and collaborate with other students.

Communications Lab +

Ami Mehta | Syllabus | IMNY-UT.102 |
4 Point, All, Elective, Evening, Foundation, Monday, Spring 2025, Wednesday, YES
Last updated: November 15, 2024

No prerequisites.

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 are examined as tools that can be employed in a variety of situations and experiences. Principles of interpersonal communications, media theory, and human factors are introduced. Weekly assignments, team and independent projects, and project reports are required

IMA Cohort: Community is a Practice +

Blair Simmons | Syllabus | IMNY-UT.99 |
9.75 Ready to Schedule (Do not edit) YES, Elective, Fall 2024, Foundation, Foundation, online
Last updated: March 12, 2024

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.