Applications of Interactive Telecommunications Technology
| H79.2000.1 Call#71392 | Tues 4:00pm to 7:30pm | Red Burns |
This introductory class is designed to allow students to engage in a critical dialogue with leaders drawn from the artistic, non-profit and commercial sectors of the new media field, and to learn the value of collaborative projects by undertaking group presentations in response to issues raised by the guest speakers. Interactive media projects and approaches to the design of new media applications are presented weekly; students are thus exposed to both commercial as well as mission-driven applications by the actual designers and creators of these innovative and experimental projects. By way of this process, all first year students, for the first and only time in their ITP experience, are together in one room at one time, and as a community, encounter, and respond to, the challenges posed by the invited guests. The course at once provides an overview of current developments in this emerging field, and asks students to consider many questions about the state of the art. For example, with the new technologies and applications making their way into almost every phase of the economy and rooting themselves in our day to day lives, what can we learn from both the failures and successes? What are the impacts on our society? What is ubiquitous computing, embedded computing, physical computing? How is cyberspace merging with physical space? Class participation, group presentations, and a final paper are required.
Introduction to Physical Computing
| H79.2301.3 Call#71429 | Wed 09:30am to 12:00pm | Thomas Igoe |
| H79.2301.4 Call#71430 | Wed 3:30pm to 6:00pm | Thomas Igoe |
| H79.2301.2 Call#71428 | Wed 12:30pm to 3:00pm | Daniel O'Sullivan |
| H79.2301.1 Call#71427 | Tues 12:30pm to 3:00pm | Daniel O'Sullivan |
| H79.2301.5 Call#71431 | Thur 12:30pm to 3:00pm | Staff |
| H79.2301.6 Call#71432 | Wed 6:30pm to 9:00pm | Rory Nugent |
This course expands the students' palette for physical interaction design with computational media. We look away from the limitations of the mouse, keyboard and monitor interface of today's computers, and start instead with the expressive capabilities of the human body. We consider uses of the computer for more than just information retrieval and processing, and at locations other than the home or the office. The platform for the class is a microcontroller, a single-chip computer that can fit in your hand. The core technical concepts include digital, analog and serial input and output. Core interaction design concepts include user observation, affordances, and converting physical action into digital information. Students have weekly lab exercises to build skills with the microcontroller and related tools, and longer assignments in which they apply the principles from weekly labs in creative applications. Both individual work and group work is required.
Syllabus Every Bit You Make
| H79.2530.1 Call#76839 | Mon 12:30pm to 3:00pm | Raffi Krikorian |
Popular culture and current events have focused the public's attention on surveillance. In the movie adaptation of "Minority Report", the protagonist attempts to hide himself around Washington, DC while technology tracks his every move. That future, maybe, is not that far off-the city of London itself has half a million cameras installed for use by the security services. How can one remain in control of one's identity in that future? This class creates a framework to help students not only analyse existing technology, but also to them think more deeply about their own projects. We review current technologies such as Internet protocols, cellular networks, and RFID; we also get hands-on experience in both using these technologies and hacking them. We all understand why you shouldn't throw out a credit card receipt with the card's number on it without tearing it up, but should we be concerned with clicking on a link on a web page? Or sending an instant message? Or opening a laptop to sign onto the wirless network at Starbucks? Maybe. Clicking on a web page records your IP address on a web server somewhere, instant messages are usually sent off unencrypted over the network, and opening a laptop usually requires negotiation with a DHCP server that records your computer's unique identifier. Our devices and our online interactions leaves a mark as unique as our fingerprints; thus, relevant questions are: how can we turn those tables? What technologies can we create to trace information left by others? Given that openness is a core feature of the networks and technologies we use-what code, regulations, and etiquette make these useable? Weekly classes and assignments are balanced between background survey reading, technical reading, and hands on experience all culminating in a final project.
Future of the Infrastructure
| H79.2297.1 Call#76838 | Thur 09:30am to 12:00pm | Art Kleiner |
Can the future be foretold? No, but the long-term outcomes of present-day actions can be foreseen -- and, as the 2008 economic crisis showed us, lack of foresight can have grave implications. Using a technique called scenario planning, students consider the present and future ramifications of knotty, large-scale problems related to the evolution of the internet and other aspects of the telecommunications infrastructure. In exploring this, we touch upon the global economy, demographics, international politics, environmental concerns, and other large-scale issues. Scenario planning is a rigorous but highly engaging technique, in which people share information and judgment to create a picture of the future larger than any individual could produce alone. The technique has been used since the mid-1950s decades to distinguish certainties from uncertainties, and to learn to be prepared for multiple eventualities. Students will conduct original research on significant trends, use those trends to develop compelling, plausible stories about possible futures, and present the futures - and the strategies they suggest - to a public audience. As part of the process that we co-develop, the class explores theories about system dynamics, organizational and societal change, the causes of economic failure and success, and the nature of technology.
Materials and Building Strategies
| H79.2025.1 Call#71405 | Tues 6:30pm to 9:00pm | Peter Menderson |
You’ve built a foam prototype. Your project idea is now out in the open sitting on a table where you and your teammates can look at it. It’s not quite what you thought it would be when you made your first rough sketch, there’s even something a little goofy about it, but then there’s also that interesting curve that you hadn’t envisioned. Your teammates have also noticed some things that you hadn’t thought of. You see where you can reshape the foam to make the prototype both look and work better. You’ve made your first step; you’ve moved your project forward. Removing barriers to creative problem solving and learning the steps for advancing a project are the dual purposes of this course. You’re asked to make things over and over during your time at ITP. This class helps you to break out of 2-d screen and keyboard thinking and take advantage of the discoveries that inevitably occur when you're thinking in 3-d by manipulating materials with your hands, observing the results, and refining successive iterations of your idea. From techniques for prototyping and making small objects to fabrication methods for kiosks, you’ll get hands-on experience with a variety of materials and methods. You have an idea for a wearable device? Mock it up with the sewing machine. You're thinking about a squeezable children’s toy with sensors? Make a mold and cast some sensors inside soft rubber. You want to build an installation? Make a foam core model of the space and get a valuable preview of your project installed. During the course you'll be introduced to building in a variety of materials. You’ll make objects of wood, foam, plastic, metal, clay, plaster, rubber, paper and fabric. You’ll move a project from sketch to prototype to presentation and learn to incorporate the lessons of the process into your final product. By taking notice of the unexpected your original concept will evolve, and amplified by those revelations it will surprise you and delight your audience.
Syllabus Mediated Intimacy: Closeness and Distance
| H79.2798.1 Call#76844 | Mon 3:30pm to 6:00pm | Kio Stark |
The experience of intimacy across distances is at least as old as the technology of the letter. Since then, every new technology of connection produces new ways of initiating, enriching and sustaining intimacy. These new developments are often perceived simultaneously as creating distance and bridging distance. Because the invention of technologies of intimacy is a perennial pursuit at ITP, the goal of the class is to enrich students' ability to create meaningful and successful projects related to intimacy. Students gain a studied and nuanced understanding of the idea of intimacy and the physical and emotional experiences associated with it— as well as examining how existing and cutting-edge technologies work to connect intimates across the physical and metaphorical distances they routinely experience in everyday life. The first section of the course is devoted to studying intimacy, bonding, attachment, longing and desire from a variety of perspectives. These will include psychology and psychoanalysis— e.g.: Freud, Erich Fromm, Lacan, Kristeva, John Bowlby on attachment, Jessica Benjamin on bonding, Donald Winnicott on intersubjectivity; recent neuroscience, neurochemistry, and evolutionary biology related to intimacy and bonding; and recent psychological work specifically regarding intimacy and the internet. The second section of the course focuses on current art and technology projects— along with commercial ventures— that explore mediated intimacy across distances (the examples are legion). We scrutinize these projects to understand what they do right and what they do wrong. And we investigate the language and syntax of mediated intimacy, including attempts to incorporate each of (or combinations of) the human senses into devices of connectedness. In seeking to articulate what makes a meaningful mediated experience of intimacy, the course also looks at a group of edge cases— for example, personal performances in public (from web-cam girls to performance art)— that support asymmetrical intimacies. Through this process, we attempt to define a set of possible methods from which to create work. Classwork includes short papers throughout the semester and a final research paper or research-based project proposal.
Site-specific: Augmentation, Affinities, and Frames
| H79.2620.1 Call#76840 | Tues 3:30pm to 6:00pm | Marina Zurkow |
Site suggests contexts that are spatial, temporal, narrative, and populated. Site-specific works require a frame for participants, a set of stories and a point of entry. More than art within "the framework" of an art institution, site-specific, interactive and community-based works require rigorous levels of observation, interrogation, and participation. Whether in the physical or the virtual public, frame and context are primary considerations in the work you produce. This class is part studio and part refection, using contemporary art examples and writings that engage and critique the local and the global, invert locale and involve the everyday as well as traditional urban studies of observation. The studio portion of the class will either utilize an existent space in New York, or work towards the development of proposals for a fictional grant for lower Manhattan.
Syllabus Video Sculpture
| H79.2722.1 Call#71475 | Mon 6:30pm to 9:00pm | Gabe Barcia-Colombo |
Video is the new marble. In this class we breathe new life into video as a medium for creating engaging interactive physical sculpture. Video is no longer a flat screen based medium. How do we create video sculptures that move, emote and react to our presence? The course takes video off the screen and into the world of three-dimensional space in the form of site-specific and or physical installations. Through a series of weekly experiments and assignments, students work with projection, tiny LCD screens, physical sensors and interactive software to hack video into interactive sculptures in the tradition of Nam Jun Paik, Tony Oursler and Camille Utterback. Class is divided between lectures, guest speakers and critical discussion/presentation of work. Previous knowledge of video production / editing is not required, but a mad scientist-like lust to bring video to life is highly encouraged.
Visual Communication
| H79.2724.1 Call#76859 | Mon 6:30pm to 9:00pm | Katherine Dillon |
We see information before we read it - and often we see instead of read. Effective technologists and storytellers embrace the importance of visual design and understand the many tools available to convey and manipulate the user experience. These tools include everything from the layout and packaging of the written word to photo editing, information graphics, illustration, typography, animation, color and spatial modeling. This course provides an overview of the tools available and, through a series of practical exercises, enables students to understand the implications of their use. The goal of the course is to provide students with the practical knowledge and critical skills necessary to effectively consider visual design as an important and inevitable component of their work. The goal of the course is to provide students with the practical knowledge and critical skills necessary to effectively consider visual design as an important and inevitable component of their work. This class is especially recommended as an introductory course for people without training in the visual arts who might waive ICM or Physical Computing.
Syllabus
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