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Video Art (Topics in Media Art)

Motomichi Nakamura | Syllabus | IMNY-UT 287 | Friday 9:00am-12:00pm
4 Point, Elective, Media and Entertainment (Old Structure), Media Arts (New Structure), New, No Tags, Spring 2026, Undergraduate
Last updated: October 30, 2025
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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.

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 implementing video and time based media installation today. The course will cover topics of projection, augmented reality, video sculpture, public art and interactive installation through a series of lectures and workshops. How do we create video artworks that are emotionally engaging with the audience while they truly represent who you are as an artist? What is a harmonious balance between art and the technologies we use? Through a series of weekly experiments and assignments, students will work with projection, video mapping and combine with various media to hack time based media into meaningful works of art. Class will be divided between lectures, guest speakers and critical discussion/presentation of work.

The Nature of Code: Motion (Topics in Computation and Data)

Lenin Compres | Syllabus | IMNY-UT 220 | Thursday 5:20pm-8:20pm
4 Point, Computation and Data (Old Structure), Elective, New, No Tags, Programming and Data (New Structure), Spring 2026, Undergraduate
Last updated: October 30, 2025
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Can we capture the unpredictable evolutionary and emergent properties of nature in software? Can understanding the mathematical principles behind our physical world help us to create digital worlds?  This course covers the first six chapters of Daniel Shiffman’s The Nature of Code, introducing how motion and behavior emerge from simple physical rules. Students will explore randomness, noise, vectors, forces, oscillations, autonomous agents, and particle systems.  Through hands-on coding projects in JavaScript and p5.js, students learn to translate natural forces into digital motion, bridging physics, art, and computation to create lifelike kinetic systems. The course concludes with a look ahead to the book’s later chapters, which move beyond motion into emergent complexity and offer a glimpse of how similar principles give rise to intelligence and self-organization.

Prerequisites: Creative Computing

Alter Egos

Ali Santana | Syllabus | IMNY-UT 297 | Fri 09:00am to 12:00pm in 370 Jay St, Room 408 Meetings:14
4 Point, Elective, Media and Entertainment (Old Structure), Media Arts (New Structure), New, Spring 2026, Undergraduate
Last updated: October 30, 2025
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Alter Egos is a course that embraces abstract storytelling, improvisation, resourcefulness, ritual, performance and self-expression through art and technology. Students will develop original characters based on a series of stream of conscious exercises around identity. They will explore various creative techniques, including costuming, sound design, and multimedia collage while experimenting with unique methods of self expression via audio/visual performance. 

Students will assemble recycled materials, field recordings, emerging tech and textiles into costumes, props and digital worlds that embody their invented personas. This course will culminate as a live event showcasing audiovisual performances by participants in costume as their Alter Egos.

Class discussions will examine notions of identity, technology, community, health, privacy and encourage participants to venture outside of their comfort zone to radically imagine new approaches to creative expression.

Prerequisites: Communications Lab: Hypercinema
Instructor Website: http://www.alisantana.com

Caring for Media Arts (Topics in Media Art)

Regina Harsanyi | IMNY-UT 281 | Monday 3:40-6:40pm Meetings:7-Second Half
2 Point, Elective, New, No Tags, Spring 2026, Undergraduate
Last updated: October 30, 2025
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Drawing on the instructor’s experience as a preventive conservator and curator of time-based and digital media, this course shares strategies for proactive preservation of artworks in contemporary practices for artists. Students will learn how thoughtful documentation and technical awareness can sustain the integrity and longevity of complex artworks over time, addressing the material and digital vulnerabilities that arise from inadequate planning.

Each week, students will examine conservation case studies to understand the practical and ethical challenges of maintaining variable and evolving media. Through hands-on projects, they will apply preservation workflows to their own works-in-progress or existing projects.

Students will:

Conduct technical questionnaires and develop detailed process documentation.

Establish file naming and organizational systems suited to sustainable studio practice.

Select appropriate file formats and plan for long-term storage and migration.

Identify material vulnerabilities across digital and physical components of their work.

Engage with foundational material science principles relevant to artists and media practitioners.

Participate in collaborative preservation exercises by documenting peers’ projects and implementing shared archival protocols.

By the end of the course, students will have developed adaptable workflows that reinforce a collective responsibility to preserve contemporary art as a living, evolving practice.

3D in the Browser (Topics in Media Art)

Aidan Nelson | Syllabus | IMNY-UT 220 | Tuesday and Thursday 12:20 Meetings:7-First Half
2 Point, Elective, Media and Entertainment (Old Structure), New, No Tags, Spring 2026, Undergraduate
Last updated: October 30, 2025
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3D in the Browser provides students with a foundation for designing and creating engaging 3D web experiences from the ground up. Students will learn aspects of 3D web programming through a series of practical exercises – drawing inspiration (as well as photos, video, audio, 3D captures, “gaussian splats” and more) from their own lives together into a series of mini-sites.   Project outcomes might include elements of collage, self-portrait, and experimental interactivity, with a focus on bringing meaningful content together in space, developing a personal aesthetic sensibility and learning to work creatively within constraints.

On the technology side, students will develop a familiarity with the three.js Javascript library for 3D rendering, techniques for gathering and preparing media content for the web, and the creative potential of emerging machine learning / artificial intelligence-enabled approaches to 3D capture (Gaussian Splats) and 3D mesh generation within this space.

Creative computing or equivalent web programming experience is a prerequisite.

Game Show Design: Buzzers, Bells, and Big Ideas (Topics in Physical Computing)

Patrick Warren | Syllabus | IMNY-UT 240 | Monday and Wednesday 12:20pm-1:50pm
4 Point, Elective, New, No Tags, Physical Computing and Experimental Interfaces (Old Structure), Spring 2026, Undergraduate
Last updated: October 30, 2025
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Explore the art and craft of game show design in this hands-on, project-based course. Students will dive into the mechanics of classic game shows, reimagining them as analog experiences, then experimenting with mashups, blending elements of two shows into classroom-ready versions that incorporate custom buzzers, Arduino-based tech, and light fabrication. For the final project, students will work collaboratively to design and produce an original game show, incorporating technologies including, but not limited to projection mapping and live-streaming. Culminating in a live performance in the NYU Performance Garage, this course challenges students to think creatively, prototype fearlessly, and engage audiences in innovative, playful ways.

 Histories and Critical Media Theories of the Digital (Topics in Media Art)

Rae Bruml Norton | IMNY-UT 281 | Tuesday 9am - 12pm
2 Point, Elective, New, No Tags, Spring 2026, Tech and Society (New Structure), Undergraduate
Last updated: October 30, 2025
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This course introduces students to the various ways scholars have discussed the “digital” and its associated phenomena, including computability, information, algorithms, and networks. Drawing on classic and contemporary texts in philosophy, political economy, and media studies, we will investigate how the categories of race, class, gender, and labor are necessary to any analysis involving the production of digital technologies. If algorithms, data, and the circulation of information help constitute the digital, what kinds of work are necessary? Who does the work? We will keep these questions in mind as we clarify and critique the ways that the digital has been defined. We will take note of our different interpretations and how our various definitions of the digital change over the course of the semester.