ITP Summer 2024 course offerings (Graduate classes):

These sections are open to all NYU students, except Freshman and Sophomore UGs. NYU Students may self-register in Albert, no permission required.

Visiting students, please email george.agudow@nyu.edu for steps on how to register for summer courses.

Pass/Fail Disclaimer: Please be advised, ITP courses are graded pass/fail. It is your responsibility as a non-ITP student to check with your home program to be sure a pass/fail ITP course may be credited toward your degree requirements.

ITP / IMA Media Fee Disclaimer: Please be advised, ITP / IMA courses are assigned a $279.00 Media Fee, which applies to ITP / IMA students as well as non-departmental students. For Summer term, the Media Fee is charged on a per-class basis. This fee grants students Equipment Room check-out privileges, as well as access to the physical computing shop and machines in our departmental space in 370 Jay / 4th floor. The Media Fee is non-refundable.

Synthetic Architectures

ITPG-GT 2177 – 001

Jonathan Turner

Tu/Th 2:00pm – 5:30pm (07/09 – 08/15) – 6W2

For better or worse humanity is heading down the virtual rabbit hole. We’re trading an increasingly hostile natural environment for a socially networked and commercially driven artificial one. Whether it’s the bedrooms of YouTube streaming stars, the augmented Pokestops of Pokemon Go, the breakout rooms of a Zoom meeting, or even the “airspace” of Airbnb; we are witnessing a dramatic transformation of what occupying space means. The socially distanced measures as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic have only accelerated this societal embrace of the virtual.
So where are these dramatic spatial paradigm shifts occurring? Who owns and occupies these spaces? Who are the architects and what historical and ethical foundations are they working from? What world do they want to build for humanity and where does the creative individual fit into it? Will it be a walled garden, a role-playing adventure or a tool for creating more worlds?

The course will ask students to embrace the role of virtual architect, not in the traditional brick-and-mortar sense of constructing shelter, but in terms of the engagement with the raw concept of space. However this virtual space must be considered and evaluated as a “site,” that is activated and occupied by real people and all the limitations of physical space that they bring with them from the real world. This is the foundation of synthetic architecture; simulated space met with biological perception.

This conceptual architecture is free from the confines of physics but host to a whole new set of questions: How do we embrace the human factors of a dimensionless environment? How do we make or encourage meaningful interactions within the limits of current technology? New models of interaction must inform and shape the architecture of virtual space – what does that look like? How can architecture and aesthetics inform the creation of virtual environments and immersive narratives? How do we acutely consider the psychological and social impacts of the worlds we design and what is the metaphorical ground plane to make sense of this virtual world, unbound by physics?

About Jonathan Turner: http://www.jonathanwilliamturner.com/about/