MoCap for the Archive +

Ami Mehta | Syllabus | ITPG-GT.3021 | Wed 6:00pm to 8:30pm in 370 Jay St, Room 411 Meetings:7-First Half
Last updated: March 24, 2025

How can motion capture (MoCap) be used to archive, preserve, and share intangible heritage forms, such as performing arts, rituals, and other social practices and traditions? This course approaches motion capture through the lens of ethnography — drawing on techniques of observation, participation, and qualitative design research. This class will offer an overview of different motion capture technologies, such as 2D-3D pose estimation and depth mapping, with a practical focus on learning the OptiTrack system at ITP. We will start by covering the basics of OptiTrack and build up to other workflows and techniques used across animation, game design, and virtual production (e.g. OptiTrack to Unreal Engine or Unity).

Prerequisite: CL: Hypercinema (ITPG-GT 2004)

The Medium of Memory +

Simone Salvo | ITPG-GT.3019 | Wed 09:30am to 12:00pm in 370 Jay St, Room 413 Meetings:7-First Half
Last updated: March 24, 2025

What is the medium of memory? In this 14-week studio class, we will dig into this question through creative storytelling. Starting from a lens-based practice, this class will introduce traditional and bleeding-edge documentary methods to inform our own varied approaches to activating archival material. Through weekly “readings” (articles, podcasts, films), written reflections, and creative assignments, we’ll explore:

• how technology has impacted our relationship to memory;
• how visual interventions can can surface alternative narratives;
• how to make under- and unrecorded histories visible, and call into question the power dynamics embedded in “official” records; and
• how we might recast objects and sites of memory-keeping, like heirlooms, journals, and memorials, as a mode of engaged preservation.

Mid-way through the course, students will identify either personal or collective histories to open up to their own individual creative reexamination, memorialization, or transformation––each producing a final project with the technology and approaches of their choosing that serves to answer the question we started with––what is the medium of memory?

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
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

Shared Minds +

Dan O'Sullivan | Syllabus | ITPG-GT.3033 | Wed 12:20pm to 2:50pm in 370 Jay St, Room 407 Meetings:14
Last updated: March 24, 2025

This class asks students to think about thinking. Based on first person introspection, meditation and readings in psychology, students will examine the experience of their minds. Then we look at how computation works as a medium to capture and share that experience. Class time is evenly divided between conceptual discussions around the psychology of media, looking at student work, and learning coding skills for the following week. The goal is for students to improve web based social media.

On the technical side, the class gently picks up from any introductory javascript coding class moving away from the P5 to create 2D interfaces with vanilla javascript in an environment of Visual Studio Code, Github and Copilot. Using APIs, we explore the hyper dimensional space of popular machine learning models. Using Firebase databases we then introduce the ability to make media social by sharing our creations across time and with other people. We then pop the hood a bit using google colab notebooks to go beyond the functionality of the ML API’s. Finally the class looks to expose the vast connections from these hyperdimensional models back into 2D or 3D (three.js library) interfaces to reach your body using UMAP dimensions reduction and embodied interfaces like VR, ML5 or P5LiveMedia. The class uses web technologies in the hope of improving the web media ecosystem and so game engines will not work for this class. Each week students are expected to produce a quick sketch playing with the tech and imagine its application as a tool of improved communication.

In tandem with this technical journey each week there are conceptual readings and prompts asking students about how the technology aligns with the way they think. In a short blog post students are asked to take a critical look for the shortcomings of existing computational media and for ways we can make better media for connecting people with a better understanding of the mind. At the end of the semester students work on a final project using some or all of the concepts and technologies from the class.

Designing for Digital Fabrication +

Daniel Rozin | Syllabus | ITPG-GT.2890 | Wed 12:10pm to 2:50pm in 370 Jay St, Room 408 Meetings:14
Last updated: March 24, 2025

The ability to digitally fabricate parts and whole pieces directly from our computers or design files used to be an exotic and expensive option not really suitable for student or designer projects, but changes in this field in the past 5 years have brought these capabilities much closer to our means, especially as ITP students. ITP and NYU now offer us access to laser cutting, CNC routing, and 3D stereolithography. In this class, we will learn how to design for and operate these machines. Emphasis will be put on designing functional parts that can fit into a larger project or support other components as well as being successful on a conceptual and aesthetic level. In this class, we will discover methods to design projects on CAD applications for total control of the result, and we will develop algorithmic ways to create designs from software (Processing) to take advantage of the ability to make parts and projects that are unique, customizable, dependent on external data or random. The class will include 3 assignments to create projects using the three machines (laser, router, 3D) and the opportunity to work on a final project.

Socially Engaged Art and Digital Practice +

Artificial intelligence, basic communication, data processing, image manipulation, and even financial systems have transformed our social and political worlds and our artistic practice. This course will examine the material, ethical, and esthetic implications of a digital and networked world through the lens of socially engaged art, where art and creative work intersect directly with people and civic life. This includes discussion of how digital and networked tools both increase and complicate physical, economic, and cultural accessibility, and the ethical and social implications of the newest technologies. We will focus especially on the impact that new technologies have on the environment.

We will concentrate on creating projects that examine and critique the inner workings of digital practice through socially engaged work. Students will be asked to propose several projects as thought experiments, and fully realize one online/digital socially engaged project. We will review and discuss the different definitions of “socially engaged art” and address the ethics of developing new technologies, including discussions about “best practices,” and investigate how we approach the physical and digital social spaces around us.

We will look at artists like Stephanie Dinkins, Kyle McDonald, Ari Melenciano, and the group Forensic Architecture. We will have some meetings and activities in public spaces, field trips to organizations such as Eyebeam and Genspace, and guest lecturers.

Please feel free to reach out to me directly if you have questions about taking the course, or the course content.