Synthetic Identity: Building Expressible Individuality Across Mediums (Topics in ITP) +

Scarlet Dame | Syllabus | ITPG-GT.2379 | Thur 3:20pm to 5:50pm in 370 Jay St, Room 411 Meetings:7-Second Half
Last updated: March 24, 2025

I hope to teach a class about synthetic identity and how the architecture, operation, and misuse of technical, social, and political systems has shaped the narratives that we use to tell the stories of who we are and what we’re meant to do. Different technologies present different perceivable surface areas of our identity and distort our presentations in way both harmful and liberating. Can we trace the ways the uniqueness of the individual leaks past the boundaries of different mediums, say handwriting, print, email, SMS, voice, video chat, and virtual reality? Can we explore generative AI not as a stepping stone to general intelligence, but as a already extant synthetic identity – full of perspective, narrative, voice, tone, history, context, presentation, etc. Can we construct a general model for the properties of synthetic identity? Can we use this to create identities that are stored within different physical and digital mediums and that are able to generate and express themselves? Can we encode and represent parts of ourselves, our environments, and the changes we wish to see in the world and place them in direct relationship with others?

Critical Objects +

Art, design and experimental electronics can be great tools for inciting discussions of complex issues such as privacy, sexism, racism, economic inequality and climate change. This course aims to provoke thoughtful discussions of pressing issues through the combination of Art, Industrial Design and Embedded Electronics (sensors, actuators, Wi-Fi enabled microcontrollers – ESP32, raspberry pis). Topics will include technological disobedience, adversarial design and critical engineering.

In this 14-week class, students will combine technology, design, and critical theory to build Art Objects / Interactive Sculptures that are aesthetically intriguing while socially relevant.

This is a production heavy four-credit course, where students will learn about new-media critical theory, design and electronics. Prerequisites include an open mind, the drive to make, and physical computing.

Multisensory Design +

Lauren Race | ITPG-GT.2375 | Thur 6:00pm to 8:30pm in No Room Required (Brooklyn) Meetings:7-First Half
Last updated: March 24, 2025

Our users have senses that they use to perceive information in different ways. Some perceive best through sight, some through hearing, others through touch. Designers often prioritize visual information, excluding those who benefit from other sensory modalities. In this class, we’ll take a multisensory approach to design that makes interfaces more accessible to disabled and nondisabled users. Students will learn how to design for the senses (think tactile controls combined with atmospheric sounds and olfactory or taste experiences), while gaining an understanding of the assumptions we make about our users’ sensory preferences. Students should come with prior experience with physical computing and fabrication techniques and can expect to learn technical processes for the user research, usability testing, and iterative design of multisensory interfaces. Over the course of 14 weeks, students will design an interface for the 5 senses (sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell), culminating in one final project that includes at least 3 sensory modalities.

Experiential Comics: Interactive Comic Books for the Fourth Industrial Revolution +

Tony Patrick | ITPG-GT.2072 | Thur 12:20pm to 2:50pm in Online Meetings:7-Second Half
Last updated: March 24, 2025

Juxtaposed to traditional comics, Experiential Comics combines emergent tech, unconventional comic book art/structure, and game engines to offer users a more immersive, continuous storyworld experience. Challenging the status quo of classic and contemporary digital comics, students will explore new technologies/world-building techniques better suited to craft innovative comic book narratives and formats –worthy of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Students will ingest a brief history of classic and digital comics formats, collaborate with comic book artists to design engrossing characters, engage in world-building sessions, play with Unity/Unreal engines to generate avatars/ virtual environments, work with actors in motion capture/volumetric capture studios, learn the latest iteration of the Experiential Comics format, and share their unique expressions of Experiential Comics in a final presentation.

Throughout a 7-week period, the course will be divided into 7 themes 1) The Disconnection of Digital Comics 2) Classic and Unconventional Comics Continuity 3) Marvel vs DC vs Insert Your Universe Here 4) Fourth Industrial Revolution Technologies 5) Capture & Creation 6) Infinite Engagement and Unlocking Immersive Format 7) Experiential Comics Presentations. Each weekly class will be divided into two halves 1) Exploration of Theme/Discussion 2) Process, Practices, & Play.

This course requires CL: Hypercinema or equivalent experience.

Hedonomic VR Design: Principles and Practices +

Michelle Cortese | ITPG-GT.3025 | Thur 09:30am to 12:00pm in 370 Jay St, Room 409 Meetings:14
Last updated: March 24, 2025

To be a VR creator, it’s not enough to learn the hard skills—it’s also our responsibility to prime ourselves for the human impact of our work. As a means to design VR that is both enjoyable and accountable, this class proposes we borrow design principles from Hedonomics, a branch of ergonomic science that facilitates pleasurable human-technology interaction. Through the Hedonomic Pyramid, we’re able to section our thinking off into regions (Safety, Function, Usability, Pleasure and Individuation) and map out industry-tested VR design guidance for each. The result is a hierarchical checklist of proven principles, specifications and practices—that promote a culture of inclusive and holistic design—built to serve as a quickstart guide to designing accountable VR interfaces and systems. This class, divided into units that represent each level of the Hedonomic pyramid, will unpack both technical and conceptual strategies for creating VR, from visual interface fidelity to avoiding locomotion cybersickness to designing safer social VR spaces.

Multisensory Storytelling in Virtual Reality and Original Flavor Reality +

Winslow Porter | ITPG-GT.3026 | Thur 3:20pm to 5:50pm in 370 Jay St, Room 409 Meetings:14
Last updated: March 24, 2025

In this course, we will explore how to create immersive narratives that leverage our full suite of senses like touch, taste and smell as well as lesser-known ones like space, time, balance and scale. We will dig into the history of experiential storytelling, starting from immersive theater and Smell-O-vision to cutting-edge haptics and mind-bending illusions of proprioception. To help center this back in practical applications, we will also explore how this evolving art is commonly used in exhibition design, experiential marketing and brick and mortar retail. The class will be a healthy mixture of game theory as well as experienced based learning (meaning there will be field trips and many multisensory VR projects to explore).

We will dig into the process of making the immersive experiences Forager (SXSW, NAB, SIGGRAPH) and Tree VR ( Sundance, Tribeca, WEF, TED), looking at both the project files as well as all of the work that went into ideation and pre-production. All of this will culminate with a show to exhibit all of your final projects.

A basic knowledge of Unreal Engine is extremely advantageous because it is our primary tool for both creating and experiencing projects during the class semester.

Canvas for Coders +

Joohyun Park | Syllabus | ITPG-GT.3016 | Thur 6:00pm to 8:30pm in 370 Jay St, Room 409 Meetings:7-Second Half
Last updated: March 24, 2025

Your web browser is a digital canvas for 21st-century artists. While being one of the most common mediums today, web space has infinite possibilities for new aesthetics. This course covers Three.js fundamentals, providing students with the skills and insights to create arts in web 3D.

This course requires ICM or equivalent coding experience.

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

Fabricating Mechanical Automatons (Batteries Not Included) +

Josh Corn | Syllabus | ITPG-GT.3034 | Thur 09:30am to 12:00pm in 370 Jay St, Room 408 Meetings:14
Last updated: March 24, 2025

How do we make things move, produce sounds, or maybe even emit light without batteries? Through this course, each student will design their own purely mechanical automaton. We will learn how to use simple materials and tools to hand prototype mechanisms in their early stages. CAD software will be used to refine the designs and then a series of traditional and digital fabrication tools (various wood shop tools, laser cutter, CNC, 3D printers, etc.) will be used to produce the final pieces. We will learn how to work iteratively in the shop through weekly exercises, and a midterm and final project.

Time +

Jeffrey Feddersen | Syllabus | ITPG-GT.2040 | Thur 09:30am to 12:00pm in 370 Jay St, Room 407 Meetings:14
Last updated: March 24, 2025

“A computer is a clock with benefits” writes Paul Ford in Bloomberg’s issue dedicated to code. Time, at once fundamental and mysterious, is of course a basic part of any time-based media, but uniquely more so for programmed media that can evolve as it runs. In this course, we’ll reflect on the deep mysteries of time while also building hands-on skills that will improve our command of temporal media and technologies.

Specific topics will range from the marvelous engineering of historical clocks and orreries through modern computer architecture. We’ll draw inspiration from a technological tradition stretching back at least 2000 years to the Antikythera Mechanism that includes humanity’s earliest efforts to understand temporal patterns in nature. Practically, we’ll build mechanical and software clocks; experiment with time-series data and time protocols; and survey techniques for digital signal processing and software state transitions.

Students will improve their skills in:

– Extracting meaning from data in time-series sets, like sequential sensor readings in a physical computing project or a public API;
– Creating experiences with a beginning, middle and end; a narrative arc;
– Getting to the “metal” in microcontrollers and CPUs;
– Integrating real-time clock modules and network time protocols with projects;
– Using programmatic timelines and variable ‘tweening’ to add grace and sophistication to our creations

Students will execute production assignments throughout the semester. Students should have taken or be taking physical computing, a programming course, or have equivalent experience.

Prerequisite: ICM / ICM: Media (ITPG-GT 2233 / ITPG-GT 2048) & Intro to Phys. Comp. (ITPG-GT 2301)