Articles by Mimi

Game Design and the Psychology of Choice +

Melissa Parker | Syllabus | ITPG-GT.3028 | Wed 6:00pm to 8:30pm in 370 Jay St, Room 408 Meetings:14
4 Point, All, Elective, Evening, Fall 2025, Graduate, Wednesday, Yes
Last updated: March 24, 2025

As game and interaction designers we create systems and choices that can either prey upon our psychological foibles or help us avoid decision pitfalls. It is our responsibility to understand how we decide, to consider the ethics of the systems we create and to practice designing systems in a purposeful manner.

Game Design & The Psychology of Choice will provide interaction and game designers with an understanding of the factors that influence behavior and decision-making by looking at the intertwining of cognitive psychology and economics through the development of behavioral economics. These disciplines study behavior on the individual and group level, often revealing some of the why behind the rules of thumb and folk wisdom that game designers come to intuitively. But understanding the why—why we fall into decision traps; why certain tradeoffs tax our brain more than others; why we are overconfident about our abilities; why certain decisions make us uncomfortable—allows us to more purposefully apply our design craft, both in and out of games. Finally, as a class, we will take what we learn about how we think and create series of game experiences based around key cognitive science concepts.

Assignments may include:
•Mod a cognitive science experiment into a game or experience
•Analyze and present a game through the lens of cognitive science and behavioral economics
•Create game or experience based around a particular insight from cognitive science or behavioral economics

Creative Image Generation (Topics in ITP) +

Yuguang Zhang | Syllabus | ITPG-GT.2378 | Fri 3:20pm to 5:50pm in 370 Jay St, Room 407 Meetings:14
4 Point, Afternoon, All, Elective, Fall 2025, Friday, Graduate, Yes
Last updated: March 24, 2025

Recent years have seen unprecedented advancements in text-to-image / text-to-video AI models, sparking widespread attention, discussion, and mainstream adoption of these innovative co-creative tools. This has led to a mix of reactions, ranging from excitement and curiosity to concern, anger, and even offense. Alongside this, the growth of open-source models is democratizing access to these AI tools, extending their use beyond experts, tech giants, and professional technologists.

In this 14-week course, we will go over the landscape of text-to-image / text-to-video AIs and dive deep into some of the most well known ones (such as Stable Diffusion, Flux, CogVideoX, Hunyuan, etc.), to see what potential they have in terms of exploring new modes of content creation and helping us re-examine our language pattern. This will be a practice + technique course comprised of three modules: Text-to-Image AIs and Tools, Model Customization, and Text-to-Video AIs. In each module, there will be a hybrid of practice + technique sessions that focus on different topics such as building good prompting practices, image synthesizing, using Python to train models for customized visuals, building workflows with ComfyUI, and creating animations from text. We’ll also discuss how such tools could intervene in the workflows of artists and technologists, what they can provide for researchers, and what are the caveats and things we should look out for when we’re creating with these AIs.

Pre-requisites: Introduction to Computational Media (ICM) or the equivalent.

Innovation at Speed (Topics in ITP) +

Melissa Parsey | Syllabus | ITPG-GT.2379 | Mon 6:00pm to 8:30pm in 370 Jay St, Room 411 Meetings:7-Second Half
2 Point, All, Elective, Evening, Fall 2025, Graduate, Monday, Yes
Last updated: March 24, 2025

How do you get more teens to participate in sport? Ensure that generative AI tools don’t perpetuate bias? Or make the process of renting a car suck less? These are some the big, broad questions you’ll tackle as part of this course.

The format: Each week you’ll be tasked with a new, real-world challenge to address as part of a team. To help you, subject-matter experts in research, strategy and design will share valuable, relevant knowledge and frameworks for you to pressure-test. Your team will be expected to use these frameworks to break-down the problem, ideate quickly and present-back solutions. The form and shape of these solutions is for you to define. The only limitation is time.

The goal is to help you hone your skills through rapid, practical application, while also exposing you to new methodologies and expertise that can elevate your craft. Innovation is a practice, not just a process, and at the end of 7 weeks we hope you’ll be more confident approaching ambiguous questions and working with others to shape new, unexpected solutions.

We can’t predict the future, but we know the questions we’ll need to collectively solve will only become bigger, and more urgent. This is a bootcamp for everyone and anyone who’s up for taking them on.

The Body Everywhere and Here (Topics in ITP) +

Lisa M Jamhoury | Syllabus | ITPG-GT.2380 | Sat 11:40am to 6:10pm in > Sun 12:10pm to 6:10pm in Meetings:S-Special
1 Point, All, Elective, Fall 2025, Graduate, Morning, New, No Tags, Saturday, Sunday, Yes
Last updated: March 24, 2025

For an estimated 300,000 years, human experience has been rooted in the physical body. In the past two decades, we’ve evolved to engage through digital mediations—video calls, text messages, social profiles—where presence is fragmented, and embodiment is abstracted. How do we design digital experiences that acknowledge and activate the body rather than ignore it?

This weekend course explores embodied interaction in digital spaces through both theory and practice. We will examine the history and politics of motion capture, the role of presence in mediated environments, and the ways computers perceive and package the body. The course will include group discussions of influential works in the development of real-time embodied interaction, including those by Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz, Susan Kozel, Myron Krueger, and Laurie Anderson. Students will work in groups with computer vision and real-time motion data to build interactive experiences that explore digital forms and their spatial impacts.

Emphasizing accessibility and experimentation, this course will focus on using low-fidelity and inexpensive tools that are easy to get up and running with, making them ideal for rapid prototyping and creative exploration. ICM-level programming experience is required.

Designing for Messy Humans +

Aleks Krotoski | Syllabus | ITPG-GT.3047 | Tues 3:20pm to 5:50pm in 370 Jay St, Room 408 Meetings:14
4 Point, Elective, Graduate, Spring 2025, Yes
Last updated: November 11, 2024

“How can we create services – digital or otherwise – that scratch psychological itches in ways that take into consideration the uncontrollable nature of users? In this course, we marry the art of design with the science of psychology. The offspring of this match is complicated, unexpected and never predictable – but indelibly informed by both its binary and analogue parentage.

Leaning on a variety of international case studies that tickle our human passion for enquiry, for storytelling, for sensation, and for sense-making, plus short philosophical readings about the nature of the indefinable, each class will dissect what we know about something inherently human (from beauty to joy to elegance), and how technologists and machine-makers have tried to predict it. We will spend time in this course reverse engineering black boxes and imagining how they could have been designed otherwise. The final project will be an “”engine”” or machine – mock-up, paper design or working prototype – that proposes to produce the solution to a messy human question every single time.

The course will be divided into three thematic sections of three classes each: a theory week, an analysis week, and a prototyping week. Each thematic section will examine single-topic human “needs” frequently designed for in apps and tech. Students will be expected to take part in group discussions, and brainstorming sessions that will imagine systems that could achieve that topic. Latterly, the last session will be workshops, in which students will work together or alone on their own projects based on one topic of their choice.”

Collective Play +

Mimi (Yue) Yin | Syllabus | ITPG-GT.2176 | Wed 12:10pm to 2:40pm in 370 Jay St, Room 411 Meetings:14
4 Point, abstract, analog, challenging, collective, collectiveplay, communications, computation, design, dynamics, Elective, game, gamedesign, Graduate, group, groups, humanbehavior, In-Person, interaction, interactiondesign, interactive, javascript, mind, node, nodejs, of, p5js, philosophy, play, playful, relationships, self, server, sockets, Spring 2025, systemdesign, theory, thoughtprovoking, websockets, Yes
Last updated: November 11, 2024

Rules of play shape competitive games from checkers to football. But how do rules of interaction, both stated and unstated, shape everyday life? What happens when there are no established conventions and the rules are being made up as we go along? And last but not least, can we invent and facilitate new social norms through unconventional uses of technology?

In this course, we will design, code and test strategies for playful, serious, and bizarre group interactions drawing inspiration from daily life. We will interrogate both what it means to play and how individual identities and group behaviors emerge. What motivates participation? What hinders it? When does participation become oppressive? What’s the difference between self-consciousness and self-awareness? Who has power? Who doesn’t? Are leaders necessary? What’s the difference between taking turns and engaging in conversation? What happens when the slowest person sets the pace? What happens when there are no explicit rules? And how do we set the stage for breaking social conventions?

Class time will be a mix of technical material, play-testing, improvisation and movement work adapted from acting and dance training. All projects will be done in groups of 2-4.

We will work with both mobile sensors and traditional keyboard/mouse interaction with p5.js, socket.io and node.js to enable real-time interaction. Our challenge is to design technology-enabled interactions that encourage participants to be even more present in the physical world with each other.

Code Your Way +

Ellen Nickles | ITPG-GT.3007 | Mon 09:30am to 12:00pm in 370 Jay St, Room 407 Meetings:14
4 Point, Elective, Graduate, Spring 2025, Yes
Last updated: November 11, 2024

This course provides students an opportunity to sharpen their coding skills in several ways: by reviewing fundamental programming concepts, acquiring techniques to systematically develop code-driven projects, and then implementing those to develop an independent project with the structure and support of a classroom learning community.

The first part of the semester consists of weekly exercises to practice strategies for learning new algorithms, writing pseudocode, pair programming, debugging, refactoring, version control, and more. Screen-based code examples for the activities and assignments draw inspiration from the history of creative coding. The second part of the semester shifts to a project development studio format for students to apply these strategies to a self-directed project. This could be an existing idea or one devised during the course.

Ultimately this course aims to empower students to reflect on their process and teach themselves how to program with greater efficiency and independence. It is a direct follow-up to Introduction to Computational Media (ICM) or for anyone interested in advancing their coding practice.

Examples and exercises will be provided in JavaScript using the p5.js library. However, students are welcome to consult the instructor about working with another programming library, framework, or language with which they have interest or prior experience.

Prerequisite: ICM or equivalent experience

Bioart as Biopolitics–Genomics and Identity +

Heather Dewey-Hagborg | Syllabus | ITPG-GT.3048 | Fri 12:10pm to 5:10pm in 370 Jay Street, Room 426 Meetings:7-First Half
4 Point, dna, Elective, Graduate, Spring 2025, Yes
Last updated: November 11, 2024

What does biology have to do with art? Bioart is a discipline in which artists use life itself as a medium for creative experimentation and reflection on the social implications of cutting edge biological science. Biopolitics describes the ways in which DNA and other forms of biological knowledge combine with the accumulation of data to segment, categorize, and predict our behavior. In this course we will take a tour of the materials and techniques utilized by artists in the emerging field of biological art, with a focus on genomics and its political and social implications. This hybrid art and science class will introduce concepts in personal genomics, genetic engineering, speculative design, bioart, biopolitics, critical engineering, and bioethics as sites for activism and artistic exploration. Students will extract and analyze their own DNA while discussing human evolution and the social construction of identity. They will learn how DNA extraction and sequencing works, how to analyze real genomic data, and will incorporate this in creative and critical projects. Regular readings and in-class discussions will supplement artistic projects.

Restorative Spaces (Topics in ITP) +

John Henry Thompson | Najma Dawood | Syllabus | ITPG-GT.2379 | Wed 09:30am to 12:00pm in 370 Jay Street Room 450 Meetings:7-First Half
2 Point, Elective, Graduate, New, No Tags, Spring 2025, Yes
Last updated: November 11, 2024

Taking time to unwind is restorative and essential given the nature of our lives and the media rich environments inhabit. This couldn’t be any more true than it is for those attending interactive and digital media programs in NYC.

There are many ways individuals and groups engage in this from taking walks in parks to meditation or yoga. Recently, more immersive environments have begun to pop up that leverage sound and projection.  In this class, students will explore these new opportunities for developing restorative spaces, augmented with immersive technology, and more.

Writing Good Code +

Daniel Tsadok | Syllabus | ITPG-GT.3014 | Sun 12:10pm to 6:25pm in > Sun 12:10pm to 6:25pm in Meetings:S-Special
1 Point, Elective, Graduate, Spring 2025, Sunday, Yes
Last updated: November 11, 2024

As software projects become more complex, it becomes increasingly important to keep the code organized and manageable; otherwise, it becomes extremely difficult to implement new ideas, and the project is much more likely to be prone to mysterious and frustrating bugs. This course will demonstrate several approaches to organizing code for larger-scale projects, including how to write and name functions and classes, DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself), pure functions, unit testing and Test-Driven Development (TDD), and why to avoid “magic numbers” and global variables. The focus of the course will be on JavaScript, using P5.js, but the principles will apply to most languages. We will be doing an ongoing, step-by-step, in-class refactor* of a complex sketch. We will also be using version control to track our changes every class. Students will be expected to complete weekly readings and assignments, and to refactor one of their previous projects, using the principles learned in this course.

* Refactoring means rewriting the code, without any changes to how the program behaves. Students should have some programming experience prior to taking this course, and would ideally have an existing software project they would like to develop.

Experiments on the Embodied Web +

Lisa M Jamhoury | Syllabus | ITPG-GT.3013 | Sat 11:40am to 6:10pm in > Sun 12:10pm to 6:10pm in Meetings:S-Special
1 Point, Elective, Fall 2024, Graduate, In-Person, Spring 2025, Sunday, Yes
Last updated: March 7, 2024

Today’s internet, made up of mostly text documents and two-dimensional images and videos, is the result of historical limitations in bandwidth, graphics processing and input devices. These limitations have made the internet a place where the mind goes, but the body cannot follow. Recent advances in motion capture devices, graphics processing, machine learning, bandwidth and browsers, however, are paving the way for the body to find its place online. Experiments on the Embodied Web will explore the new realm of embodied interactions in the browser across networks. The course will include discussion of influential works in the development of online embodied interaction, including the works of Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz, Susan Kozel, and Laurie Anderson. Together we’ll explore pose detection across webRTC peer connections in p5.js and Three.js. Experience with Node, HTML and JavaScript is helpful but not required. ICM level programming experience is required.

Prerequisite: ICM / ICM: Media (ITPG-GT 2233 / ITPG-GT 2048)

Topics in ITP: Outside The Box: Site-Specific + Immersive Explorations +

Mia Rovegno | Syllabus | ITPG-GT.2379 | Mon 6:00pm to 8:30pm in Meetings:7-First Half
2 Point, Elective, Fall 2024, Graduate, Spring 2025, Yes
Last updated: March 7, 2024

This course introduces students to modalities for creating site-specific and immersive art and performance. Assignments will examine the work of artists who challenge the limitations of the physical, psychological and transactional spaces that have come to define conventional production models. Students will regularly receive prompts from which collaborative work will be workshopped, generated and presented. The sites and practices explored will de-center script/text as spine, institutional space as gathering place, linear storytelling as narrative, and separation between audience and artist as social contract. Through group performance projects and presentations, students will investigate how Site evokes Narrative and Event differently in brick & mortar, virtual, historic, liminal, dead, found, contested, democratized and community spaces. Our work will unpack the challenges and opportunities presented when we relinquish creative control of such unfixed elements as serendipity, impermanence, improvisation, audience agency, public space, weather, and pandemic.

Text-to-Image AIs +

Yuguang Zhang | Syllabus | ITPG-GT.3020 | Fri 3:20pm to 5:50pm in Meetings:14
4 Point, Elective, Fall 2024, Graduate, Spring 2025, Yes
Last updated: March 7, 2024

Over the past few years, the unprecedented advancement in text-to-image artificial intelligence models has sparked widespread attention, discussion, and mainstream adoption of these innovative co-creative interfaces, which has resulted in novelty, excitement, and curiosity, as well as concern, anger, and insult. Alongside this, the booming open-sourced text-to-image model development contributes to expanding access to working with AI tools beyond experts, tech giants, and professional technologists.

In this 14-week course, we will go over the landscape of text-to-image AIs and dive deep into some of the most well known ones (such as Stable Diffusion and its variants), to see what potential they have in terms of exploring new modes of content creation and helping us re-examine our language pattern. This will be a practice + technique course – in the first half, we’ll focus on building good prompting practices, and in the second half, we’ll explore different image synthesis skills related to text-to-image AIs, use Python to train our own models to create customized visuals, and create animations from text. We’ll also discuss how such tools could intervene in the workflows of artists and technologists, what they can provide for researchers, and what are the caveats and things we should look out for when we’re creating with these AIs.

Pre-requisites: Introduction to Computational Media (ICM) or the equivalent.

Prerequisite: ICM / ICM: Media (ITPG-GT 2233 / ITPG-GT 2048)