Electives

This course provides students with conceptual tools and critical methods for an advanced study in media theory. Each semester, we will focus on a single book or thinker, engaging in slow, thoughtful reading.

This course focusses on designing, creating, and performing with self-built electro-acoustic music systems to explore the limits of human musical expression.

This course introduces students to the practice of live coding, learning techniques for real-time algorithmic approaches to making music and visuals, while exploring its cultural, theoretical, and performative potentials.

This advanced course investigates emerging trends in machine learning and artificial intelligence for generating synthetic media content (images, video, sound, etc).

In the last decade, artists have been experimenting with the fakeness of the truth and the truthfulness of the fake creating fake documents, staged marriage, an arguably authentic artifact, imaginary advertisements of both historical and contemporary.

Nature of Code is an intermediate course designed based on Daniel Shiffman’s The Nature of Code course at NYU ITP and adjusted for undergraduate studies.

Visualize and simulate realistic / systematic shapes, movement and/or behaviors in natural phenomena by:

Is life itself the ultimate game? Where are the boundaries between childhood and adulthood across the many identities we inhabit online and in real life?

Historically used by scientists and engineers to test models, evaluate performance, and assess risks, simulation has been adopted by contemporary artists and designers as a technique for enacting concepts, creating dialogues, and speculating on imaginary futures.

This course aims to provide students with the means to understand immersive media experiences, and conduct experiments from both a practical and a theoretical perspective. The course consists of lectures, research, discussion and studio-based practice.

Emerging technologies are creating new synthetic bodies that differ radically from the machines of the past.

In this course we take “Contemporary” as beginning around the turn of the 21st century and “China” as a transnational formation linking multiple territories and migrant communities. 

What is the place of human creativity, agency and intelligence in complex technical networks?

Introduction to 3D is a course designed to provide students with a framework to effectively communicate through  3D graphics.

User experience design (UXD, UED, or XD) is the process of enhancing user satisfaction with a product by improving its usability, accessibility, and desirability provided throughout the user’s interaction with a product.

The practice of using light and motion as artistic media traces its roots back to the architectural design of spiritual structures in ancient cultures and the use of fire and shadow in religious ceremonies.

Toys are part of our culture, and an important medium to develop essential skills like creativity, problem-solving and socialization. They can also be a great contribution in education, medicine, and business and can improve the quality of life for children and adults alike.

Learn about the web, net-art, and build experiences in the browser using JavaScript.

Web Page to Web Space is a course that explores virtual interactive experience in the context of Virtual Embodiment, Virtual Space, Telepresence, and Metaverse.

This course offers an experience with the intersection of technology and culture through collaborative teaching offered by faculty from Interactive Media Arts (IMA) and Global China Studies(GCS).

An introductory course to machine learning and AI, aimed at students without a mathematics background who are interested in developing an intuitive, and critical understanding of related techniques and their effects.

Biohybrid robots, smart materials, and self-assembling nanotechnologies are beginning to shape new synthetic bodies that radically differ from the machines of the past.

In this course we will learn to use the tools of the Unity game engine to reconstruct sampled elements of our envi

Digital Fabrication is the process of using design modeling softwares to generate digital files which can then be physically produced through a variety of methods, including laser cutting, 3D printing and CNC milling.

During the course, we will be unpacking the process of filmmaking as a critical practice for researching nascen

This course will focus on Eco-Materialism (reuse, recycle, renew & rethink) and emergent practices in conjunction with some of the origins, influences, theories, processes, and manifestations of art installation.

This course investigates digital art and new media from creative, theoretical, and historical perspectives. The course aims to provide students with the means to understand what digital media is, and establish their own vision of what it can become, from both a practical and a theoretical perspective.

This course aims to train students to think philosophically about our rapidly changing—and ever more intimate — relationship with machines. The  interdisciplinary course is typically historically oriented. Each iteration focuses on a particular theme.

From the history of visual music and abstract film to the contemporary notion of live cinema, this course will be an exploration of the synesthetic relationship between sound and visuals in a real-time performance setting.

This course investigates and explores the integration between cultural heritage and virtual conservation, specifically towards the objects, deities, sites, and gardens in China.

Urban Farming: Technology and Community is a course that aims to explore digital agricultural innovations and alternative uses of urban land as potential solutions to food insecurity, ecological degradation, and social inequalities within hyperdense cities.

The current design methods and technologies in the field of digital entertainment, from design concepts to design tools, are still based on 2D screens, but the product is often 3D. This contradiction results in the designers not being able to see the final consequences of their work directly.

Emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, and immersive media, are rapidly changing the creative industries and society as a whole.

This course uses a data visualization approach to define new methods of computational design and digital fabrication. Students will create unique, data-driven, everyday objects and sculpt meaning into them.

This course offers students the opportunity to develop a self-initiated project with close mentorship from a faculty member. Projects undertaken can span the areas of conceptual research, business development, creative practice, and media production.

We have all played and enjoyed games, but how do people actually design and develop them? How to describe a game from a professional standpoint? What are the basic elements and structure in video game development? How do game designers create an interactive experience for the player?

This course covers digital modeling / sculpting techniques including polygonal modeling, digital sculpting and blend-shape facial animation. The course breaks down into 4 stages : 1. basic topology of head model (student’s profile photos as reference), 2.

The development of Human Computer Interaction, and its identification as a field, required scientists, engineers, designers, and artists as well as contributions from several other disciplines.

This course draws from net art, physical computing, and post-digital / post-internet practices to explore interactions that bridge screen and the physical.

Architecture has always been considered as an immediate extension of the human civilization, and its connection with state-of-the-art technologies has always been essential.

What is the place of human creativity, agency and intelligence in complex technical networks?

Since the 1990s, theories of globalization have emphasized two main processes. One is the continuous time-space compression that is now felt in every aspect of human life; the other is the rapid movement and circulation of media, commodities, humans and capital.

This course aims to utilize animation and motion media to depict and preserve the richness of cultural heritage contents. 3D animation and motion graphics techniques will be addressed and applied to the storytelling.

Industrial Design in Action is a course that will help you bridge the gap between your ideas and their physical form. From initial research to conception, you will apply different design methodologies that lead to innovative ideas.

What exactly is data? Explore this question and learn to use JavaScript to build web-based data visualizations that tell a story.

Since the beginning of civilization people have fantasized about intelligent machines sensing and acting autonomously. In this course we will discover what robots are, learn how to design them, and use simple tools to build them.

In this course, students focus on the study and development of responsive environments, framed within a contextual and critical exploration of the architectural space as a cultural, social and technological phenomenon, and also on the application of practical scenarios for interaction, sentience,

In response to the popular conception of the “immaterial” Internet, and “datafication” of all aspects of life, how might we rethink the materiality and environmentality of media in our research?

Technology is allowing us to see our clothing as an extension of our bodies. An extension acting as a system that can react, collect information, and augment our modes of expression and interactions with spaces and people.

Exhibition: Next is an exploration and observation of the fields of exhibition design and museum study. This class will explore how emerging and interactive technologies can be applied to a museum to enhance visitors’ experiences.

This interdisciplinary project-based class focuses on the design, development, and use of technology that increases the quality of life of individuals of disabilities.

This course investigates and illuminates the concepts and the aesthetics of kinetic sculpture and installation art in various forms from creative and historical perspectives. Students will learn to regard sound and performance as part of a sculptural form and learn to work with space.

This course will focus on designing, creating, and performing with self-built electro-acoustic music systems to explore the limits of human musical expression.

Teaching and learning during the pandemic has motivated us to look past the present zeitgeist and near total reliance on audio-visual collaboration software, and question what might come next.

Learn how to creatively harness the power of your computer’s graphics card by writing your own shaders! Shaders are small programs that run on the GPU and are used for purposes most commonly related to graphic effects, video post-processing, and the generation of geometry.

This class examines the idea and practices of ‘cultivation’ in relation to the challenging environment of the 21st century city.

In this era of virtual production, time-based media faces new opportunities and challenges in terms of pipelines, workflows, and distribution.

Re-make: make (something) again or differently.

Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality represent, respectively, visions of “being” somewhere else or augmenting your present environment.

This course is about ways that we “think with the body”. We will bring practices such as fitness, dance, sports, and martial arts into a series of interactive installations, movement learning projects, and workspace modifications built on computing, sensing and actuator technologies.

During the course we will have seminar discussions analyzing texts that contextualize the lab experiments and we will work toward conclusions on the implications of these discoveries.