studies/seminar (old structure)

 Living Archives: Finding Stories of Peoples, Plants and Places (Topics in Media Art)

Tanika Williams | IMNY-UT.260 | Fri 12:20pm to 3:20pm in 370 Jay St, Room 409 Meetings:14
4 Point, Elective, In-Person, Spring 2025
Last updated: December 5, 2024
Show Course Description

Can a plant tell the story of your people and the planet?

This course aims to facilitate student relationships to the planet through the construction of personalized genealogies from family narratives, historical migrations, and plant relationships. Plants, like people, are intelligent life forms that hold memory and transmit knowledge. Students will study edible medicinal plants (herbs) to unlock their expertise on the past, present and future of the planet and its peoples. Participants will learn how to grow medicinal plants, employ ethical research practices, and develop their family archives.

Students will begin by examining various ways plants establish communities across the planet and studying the complex chemical and social lives of plants. Next, learners will parallel postcolonial theories of plants and peoples to connect the ways plants, like humans, seeded themselves across the globe for survival. Finally, students will incorporate primary sources from the family narrative, oral history, and government archives to help students visualize botanical imprints on their ethnic, racial, and national identities.

Learners will survey the research of botanists, horticulturalists, folk medicine practitioners, and urban gardeners. The works of Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Jamaica Kincaid, and Fred Moten will provide the course’s literary foundation. The art practices of Fred Wilson, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Alison Janae Hamilton, and Deb Willis will create avenues for social art exploration. Importantly, students will read research from a cross section of postcolonial theorists challenging Western cartography and naming conventions of land.

About Tanika Williams: www.tanikawilliams.net

Politics of Code

Joerg Blumtritt | Syllabus | IMNY-UT.260 | Mon 09:00am to 12:00pm in 370 Jay St, Room 408 Meetings:
4 Point, Elective, Spring 2025
Last updated: December 5, 2024
Show Course Description

Current description based on NYUAD iteration of the course (https://github.com/jbenno/nyuad_politics_of_code). Please be advised this is in the process of being-updated by the instructor.

Deconstructing the design and implementation of software as a political medium and re-building functional alternatives.

Code is political. It is a means of political processes and activism. It is political inherently by the ethical choices often hidden in the black box of The Algorithm. In the course we aim to deconstruct the design, implementation, and data of software as a political medium. We will work through political applications such as simulations, ownership of intangible assets, predictive policing, algorithmic recommendations, suggestions, and filters, social networks, and the blockchain.

Along with an introduction to the related political theory and media studies, students will work on several hands-on projects to offer actual or speculative alternatives to the existing systems. To that end, this course will include several workshops in JavaScript, Python, and other tools.

Design Skills for Responsible Media (Topics in Media Art)

Art Kleiner | Juliette Powell | Syllabus | IMNY-UT.260 | TBD Meetings:14
4 Point, Elective, Spring 2025
Last updated: December 5, 2024
Show Course Description

Generative AI and other digital media affect people in unexpected
ways. This is a course in the skills of responsible design and development of all forms of
media covered by IMA and ITP. We will look critically at the belief systems that affect
design, and will build skills for assessing the unexpected implications and consequences
of any new digital project, including generative AI projects. Together, we will create
personal and group processes to bring these issues safely to the surface, and create
standards and guardrails (a “calculus of intentional risk”) that you can apply to your own
work and to work you do in the future.
This course is structured around three comprehensive group assignments:
1. Group project: Produce a case study of an ethical dilemma in a real-world tech
company, based on news reports and other sources. How did this dilemma come
about? How did the company respond? What could they have done differently?
We will discuss these cases, and others, in class.
2. Group or solo project: Produce work in any format [not too elaborate] that brings
an ethical issue to light.
3. Solo project: Propose a design practicum – a set of ethical standard – that would
help you evaluate the impact of one or more pieces of your own work (or
someone else’s you know well). Use this “calculus of intentional risk” to explore
how you would change the design and use of these projects.
The class lectures will cover themes related to these three assignments, drawing on the
instructors’ extensive research in the fields of organizational and technological ethics and
responsibility. The recently published book, The AI Dilemma: The 7 Principles of
Responsible Technology, will be one resource for the class. We will also draw on work
on responsible technology going on elsewhere throughout NYU.

 Politics of Code (Topics in Media Art)

Joerg Blumtritt | Syllabus | IMNY-UT.260 | Mon 09:00am to 12:00pm in 370 Jay St, Room 408 Meetings:
4 Point, Elective, Fall 2024, Spring 2025
Last updated: November 15, 2024
Show Course Description

Current description based on NYUAD iteration of the course (https://github.com/jbenno/nyuad_politics_of_code). Please be advised this is in the process of being-updated by the instructor.

Deconstructing the design and implementation of software as a political medium and re-building functional alternatives.

Code is political. It is a means of political processes and activism. It is political inherently by the ethical choices often hidden in the black box of The Algorithm. In the course we aim to deconstruct the design, implementation, and data of software as a political medium. We will work through political applications such as simulations, ownership of intangible assets, predictive policing, algorithmic recommendations, suggestions, and filters, social networks, and the blockchain.

Along with an introduction to the related political theory and media studies, students will work on several hands-on projects to offer actual or speculative alternatives to the existing systems. To that end, this course will include several workshops in JavaScript, Python, and other tools.

 Living Archives: Finding Stories of Peoples, Plants and Places (Topics in Media Art)

Tanika Williams | IMNY-UT.260 | Fri 12:20pm to 3:20pm in 370 Jay St, Room 409 Meetings:14
4 Point, Elective, In-Person, Spring 2025
Last updated: November 15, 2024
Show Course Description

Can a plant tell the story of your people and the planet?

This course aims to facilitate student relationships to the planet through the construction of personalized genealogies from family narratives, historical migrations, and plant relationships. Plants, like people, are intelligent life forms that hold memory and transmit knowledge. Students will study edible medicinal plants (herbs) to unlock their expertise on the past, present and future of the planet and its peoples. Participants will learn how to grow medicinal plants, employ ethical research practices, and develop their family archives.

Students will begin by examining various ways plants establish communities across the planet and studying the complex chemical and social lives of plants. Next, learners will parallel postcolonial theories of plants and peoples to connect the ways plants, like humans, seeded themselves across the globe for survival. Finally, students will incorporate primary sources from the family narrative, oral history, and government archives to help students visualize botanical imprints on their ethnic, racial, and national identities.

Learners will survey the research of botanists, horticulturalists, folk medicine practitioners, and urban gardeners. The works of Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Jamaica Kincaid, and Fred Moten will provide the course’s literary foundation. The art practices of Fred Wilson, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Alison Janae Hamilton, and Deb Willis will create avenues for social art exploration. Importantly, students will read research from a cross section of postcolonial theorists challenging Western cartography and naming conventions of land.

About Tanika Williams: www.tanikawilliams.net

 Politics of Code (Topics in Media Art)

Joerg Blumtritt | Syllabus | IMNY-UT.260 | Mon 09:00am to 12:00pm in 370 Jay St, Room 408 Meetings:
4 Point, Elective, Fall 2024, Spring 2025
Last updated: November 5, 2024
Show Course Description

Current description based on NYUAD iteration of the course (https://github.com/jbenno/nyuad_politics_of_code). Please be advised this is in the process of being-updated by the instructor.

Deconstructing the design and implementation of software as a political medium and re-building functional alternatives.

Code is political. It is a means of political processes and activism. It is political inherently by the ethical choices often hidden in the black box of The Algorithm. In the course we aim to deconstruct the design, implementation, and data of software as a political medium. We will work through political applications such as simulations, ownership of intangible assets, predictive policing, algorithmic recommendations, suggestions, and filters, social networks, and the blockchain.

Along with an introduction to the related political theory and media studies, students will work on several hands-on projects to offer actual or speculative alternatives to the existing systems. To that end, this course will include several workshops in JavaScript, Python, and other tools.

 Living Archives: Finding Stories of Peoples, Plants and Places (Topics in Media Art)

Tanika Williams | IMNY-UT.260 | Fri 12:20pm to 3:20pm in 370 Jay St, Room 409 Meetings:14
4 Point, Elective, In-Person, Spring 2025
Last updated: November 5, 2024
Show Course Description

Can a plant tell the story of your people and the planet?

This course aims to facilitate student relationships to the planet through the construction of personalized genealogies from family narratives, historical migrations, and plant relationships. Plants, like people, are intelligent life forms that hold memory and transmit knowledge. Students will study edible medicinal plants (herbs) to unlock their expertise on the past, present and future of the planet and its peoples. Participants will learn how to grow medicinal plants, employ ethical research practices, and develop their family archives.

Students will begin by examining various ways plants establish communities across the planet and studying the complex chemical and social lives of plants. Next, learners will parallel postcolonial theories of plants and peoples to connect the ways plants, like humans, seeded themselves across the globe for survival. Finally, students will incorporate primary sources from the family narrative, oral history, and government archives to help students visualize botanical imprints on their ethnic, racial, and national identities.

Learners will survey the research of botanists, horticulturalists, folk medicine practitioners, and urban gardeners. The works of Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Jamaica Kincaid, and Fred Moten will provide the course’s literary foundation. The art practices of Fred Wilson, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Alison Janae Hamilton, and Deb Willis will create avenues for social art exploration. Importantly, students will read research from a cross section of postcolonial theorists challenging Western cartography and naming conventions of land.

About Tanika Williams: www.tanikawilliams.net

 Politics of Code (Topics in Media Art)

Joerg Blumtritt | Syllabus | IMNY-UT.260 | Mon 09:00am to 12:00pm in 370 Jay St, Room 408 Meetings:
4 Point, Elective, Fall 2024, Spring 2025
Last updated: October 11, 2024
Show Course Description

Current description based on NYUAD iteration of the course (https://github.com/jbenno/nyuad_politics_of_code). Please be advised this is in the process of being-updated by the instructor.

Deconstructing the design and implementation of software as a political medium and re-building functional alternatives.

Code is political. It is a means of political processes and activism. It is political inherently by the ethical choices often hidden in the black box of The Algorithm. In the course we aim to deconstruct the design, implementation, and data of software as a political medium. We will work through political applications such as simulations, ownership of intangible assets, predictive policing, algorithmic recommendations, suggestions, and filters, social networks, and the blockchain.

Along with an introduction to the related political theory and media studies, students will work on several hands-on projects to offer actual or speculative alternatives to the existing systems. To that end, this course will include several workshops in JavaScript, Python, and other tools.

 Living Archives: Finding Stories of Peoples, Plants and Places (Topics in Media Art)

Tanika Williams | IMNY-UT.260 | Fri 12:20pm to 3:20pm in 370 Jay St, Room 409 Meetings:14
4 Point, Elective, In-Person, Spring 2025
Last updated: October 11, 2024
Show Course Description

Can a plant tell the story of your people and the planet?

This course aims to facilitate student relationships to the planet through the construction of personalized genealogies from family narratives, historical migrations, and plant relationships. Plants, like people, are intelligent life forms that hold memory and transmit knowledge. Students will study edible medicinal plants (herbs) to unlock their expertise on the past, present and future of the planet and its peoples. Participants will learn how to grow medicinal plants, employ ethical research practices, and develop their family archives.

Students will begin by examining various ways plants establish communities across the planet and studying the complex chemical and social lives of plants. Next, learners will parallel postcolonial theories of plants and peoples to connect the ways plants, like humans, seeded themselves across the globe for survival. Finally, students will incorporate primary sources from the family narrative, oral history, and government archives to help students visualize botanical imprints on their ethnic, racial, and national identities.

Learners will survey the research of botanists, horticulturalists, folk medicine practitioners, and urban gardeners. The works of Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Jamaica Kincaid, and Fred Moten will provide the course’s literary foundation. The art practices of Fred Wilson, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Alison Janae Hamilton, and Deb Willis will create avenues for social art exploration. Importantly, students will read research from a cross section of postcolonial theorists challenging Western cartography and naming conventions of land.

About Tanika Williams: www.tanikawilliams.net

Topics in Media Art: Design Skills for Responsible Media

Art Kleiner | Juliette Powell | Syllabus | IMNY-UT.260 | Tues 12:20pm to 1:50pm in 370 Jay St, Room 407> Thur 12:20pm to 1:50pm in 370 Jay St, Room 407 Meetings:14
4 Point, Elective, Fall 2024, Spring 2025
Last updated: October 11, 2024
Show Course Description

Generative AI and other digital media affect people in unexpected
ways. This is a course in the skills of responsible design and development of all forms of
media covered by IMA and ITP. We will look critically at the belief systems that affect
design, and will build skills for assessing the unexpected implications and consequences
of any new digital project, including generative AI projects. Together, we will create
personal and group processes to bring these issues safely to the surface, and create
standards and guardrails (a “calculus of intentional risk”) that you can apply to your own
work and to work you do in the future.
This course is structured around three comprehensive group assignments:
1. Group project: Produce a case study of an ethical dilemma in a real-world tech
company, based on news reports and other sources. How did this dilemma come
about? How did the company respond? What could they have done differently?
We will discuss these cases, and others, in class.
2. Group or solo project: Produce work in any format [not too elaborate] that brings
an ethical issue to light.
3. Solo project: Propose a design practicum – a set of ethical standard – that would
help you evaluate the impact of one or more pieces of your own work (or
someone else’s you know well). Use this “calculus of intentional risk” to explore
how you would change the design and use of these projects.
The class lectures will cover themes related to these three assignments, drawing on the
instructors’ extensive research in the fields of organizational and technological ethics and
responsibility. The recently published book, The AI Dilemma: The 7 Principles of
Responsible Technology, will be one resource for the class. We will also draw on work
on responsible technology going on elsewhere throughout NYU.

Topics in Media Art: Politics of Code

Joerg Blumtritt | Syllabus | IMNY-UT.260 | Mon 09:00am to 12:00pm in 370 Jay St, Room 408 Meetings:
4 Point, Elective, Fall 2024, Spring 2025
Last updated: October 11, 2024
Show Course Description

Current description based on NYUAD iteration of the course (https://github.com/jbenno/nyuad_politics_of_code). Please be advised this is in the process of being-updated by the instructor.

Deconstructing the design and implementation of software as a political medium and re-building functional alternatives.

Code is political. It is a means of political processes and activism. It is political inherently by the ethical choices often hidden in the black box of The Algorithm. In the course we aim to deconstruct the design, implementation, and data of software as a political medium. We will work through political applications such as simulations, ownership of intangible assets, predictive policing, algorithmic recommendations, suggestions, and filters, social networks, and the blockchain.

Along with an introduction to the related political theory and media studies, students will work on several hands-on projects to offer actual or speculative alternatives to the existing systems. To that end, this course will include several workshops in JavaScript, Python, and other tools.

Topics in Media Art: Living Archives: Finding Stories of Peoples, Plants and Places

Tanika Williams | IMNY-UT.260 | Fri 12:20pm to 3:20pm in 370 Jay St, Room 409 Meetings:14
4 Point, Elective, Fall 2024, In-Person, Spring 2025
Last updated: October 11, 2024
Show Course Description

Can a plant tell the story of your people and the planet?

This course aims to facilitate student relationships to the planet through the construction of personalized genealogies from family narratives, historical migrations, and plant relationships. Plants, like people, are intelligent life forms that hold memory and transmit knowledge. Students will study edible medicinal plants (herbs) to unlock their expertise on the past, present and future of the planet and its peoples. Participants will learn how to grow medicinal plants, employ ethical research practices, and develop their family archives.

Students will begin by examining various ways plants establish communities across the planet and studying the complex chemical and social lives of plants. Next, learners will parallel postcolonial theories of plants and peoples to connect the ways plants, like humans, seeded themselves across the globe for survival. Finally, students will incorporate primary sources from the family narrative, oral history, and government archives to help students visualize botanical imprints on their ethnic, racial, and national identities.

Learners will survey the research of botanists, horticulturalists, folk medicine practitioners, and urban gardeners. The works of Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Jamaica Kincaid, and Fred Moten will provide the course’s literary foundation. The art practices of Fred Wilson, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Alison Janae Hamilton, and Deb Willis will create avenues for social art exploration. Importantly, students will read research from a cross section of postcolonial theorists challenging Western cartography and naming conventions of land.

About Tanika Williams: www.tanikawilliams.net

Topics in Media Art: Politics of Code

Joerg Blumtritt | Syllabus | IMNY-UT.260 | Mon 09:00am to 12:00pm in 370 Jay St, Room 408 Meetings:
4 Point, Elective, Fall 2024, Spring 2025
Last updated: October 11, 2024
Show Course Description

Current description based on NYUAD iteration of the course (https://github.com/jbenno/nyuad_politics_of_code). Please be advised this is in the process of being-updated by the instructor.

Deconstructing the design and implementation of software as a political medium and re-building functional alternatives.

Code is political. It is a means of political processes and activism. It is political inherently by the ethical choices often hidden in the black box of The Algorithm. In the course we aim to deconstruct the design, implementation, and data of software as a political medium. We will work through political applications such as simulations, ownership of intangible assets, predictive policing, algorithmic recommendations, suggestions, and filters, social networks, and the blockchain.

Along with an introduction to the related political theory and media studies, students will work on several hands-on projects to offer actual or speculative alternatives to the existing systems. To that end, this course will include several workshops in JavaScript, Python, and other tools.

Topics in Media Art: Living Archives: Finding Stories of Peoples, Plants and Places

Tanika Williams | IMNY-UT.260 | Fri 12:20pm to 3:20pm in 370 Jay St, Room 409 Meetings:14
4 Point, Elective, Fall 2024, In-Person, Spring 2025
Last updated: October 11, 2024
Show Course Description

Can a plant tell the story of your people and the planet?

This course aims to facilitate student relationships to the planet through the construction of personalized genealogies from family narratives, historical migrations, and plant relationships. Plants, like people, are intelligent life forms that hold memory and transmit knowledge. Students will study edible medicinal plants (herbs) to unlock their expertise on the past, present and future of the planet and its peoples. Participants will learn how to grow medicinal plants, employ ethical research practices, and develop their family archives.

Students will begin by examining various ways plants establish communities across the planet and studying the complex chemical and social lives of plants. Next, learners will parallel postcolonial theories of plants and peoples to connect the ways plants, like humans, seeded themselves across the globe for survival. Finally, students will incorporate primary sources from the family narrative, oral history, and government archives to help students visualize botanical imprints on their ethnic, racial, and national identities.

Learners will survey the research of botanists, horticulturalists, folk medicine practitioners, and urban gardeners. The works of Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Jamaica Kincaid, and Fred Moten will provide the course’s literary foundation. The art practices of Fred Wilson, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Alison Janae Hamilton, and Deb Willis will create avenues for social art exploration. Importantly, students will read research from a cross section of postcolonial theorists challenging Western cartography and naming conventions of land.

About Tanika Williams: www.tanikawilliams.net

 Politics of Code (Topics in Media Art)

Joerg Blumtritt | Syllabus | IMNY-UT.260 | TBD Meetings:
4 Point, Elective, Fall 2024, Spring 2025
Last updated: October 10, 2024
Show Course Description

Current description based on NYUAD iteration of the course (https://github.com/jbenno/nyuad_politics_of_code). Please be advised this is in the process of being-updated by the instructor.

Deconstructing the design and implementation of software as a political medium and re-building functional alternatives.

Code is political. It is a means of political processes and activism. It is political inherently by the ethical choices often hidden in the black box of The Algorithm. In the course we aim to deconstruct the design, implementation, and data of software as a political medium. We will work through political applications such as simulations, ownership of intangible assets, predictive policing, algorithmic recommendations, suggestions, and filters, social networks, and the blockchain.

Along with an introduction to the related political theory and media studies, students will work on several hands-on projects to offer actual or speculative alternatives to the existing systems. To that end, this course will include several workshops in JavaScript, Python, and other tools.