This course delves into the key issues, challenges, and best practices of cinematic storytelling in emerging media, with a focus on real-time spatial computing. Students will gain technical skills to create a narrative motion-capture cinematic using Unreal Engine. The course emphasizes the role of a technical director, responsible for overseeing the virtual production’s technical workflow while making both creative and administrative decisions.
Instructor: Todd Bryant
This course focuses on the integration of cutting-edge technologies in architectural projection mapping, combining photorealistic rendering, motion graphic design, and media server workflows. Using Unreal Engine alongside the media server workflow of TouchDesigner, students will explore the technical and artistic aspects of crafting immersive visual narratives projected onto architectural surfaces, with an eye towards real-time simulations and photorealistic rendering while managing complex projection mapping setups. Emphasis will be placed on creating short, narrative-driven pieces that seamlessly blend motion graphics, 3D simulations, and real-world architectural environments. By the end of the course, students will be proficient in designing, simulating, and executing projection mapping projects with a focus on both technical precision and creative storytelling.
Instructors: Todd Bryant
The social impact of technologies is typically thought about fairly late, if ever, in the design process. Indeed, it can be difficult at design time to predict what effects technologies will have. Nevertheless, design decisions can inadvertently “lock in” particular values early on. In this course, we will draw on science & technology studies, technology design, and the arts to analyze the values embodied in technology design and to design technologies to promote positive social impact. What social and cultural values do technology designs consciously or unconsciously promote? To what degree can social impact be “built into” a technology? How can we take social and cultural values into account in design?
Instructor : Margaret Jack
This seminar course is a survey on the work done on thinking about the politics and ethics of design and technology, particularly with regards to the politics of race and culture. Drawing from a range of fields and disciplines that study cultural and racial difference in nuanced ways: anthropology, cultural studies, Black studies, settler-colonial and indigenous studies, and postcolonial and decolonial theory, we will put discourses from these disciplines into conversation with discourses from fields that deal with materializing new ways of living and being via technology like art, design, architecture, and computer science.
Topics we will cover in the course include the history of politics and ethics in design, design justice, decolonising design, race and technology, cosmofuturisms and cosmotechnics. We will have readings that deal with subjects and contexts outside of the United States, including Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, South and East Asia.
Instructor: Ahmed Ansari
Since at least the 1980s, haptics technologies have teased us with a seductive promise to transform the landscape of digital communication. However, contemporary deployments of haptics remain limited primarily to vibration feedback emanating from video game controllers, smartphones, and wearable fitness trackers, still falling far short of reaching the ‘perfect haptics’ sought after by those in the field. Beginning with the technology’s origins in 18th century electrical experiments and nineteenth century experimental psychology labs, we explore the technogenesis of haptics, with the intent of understanding how haptics was shaped by the changing historical contexts of its gradual emergence. We will then turn to contemporary efforts to design and commercialize more advanced forms of haptics technologies, learning from both the successes and failures of various case studies, including remote manipulation interfaces, sensory substitution systems, virtual reality bodysuits, video game controllers, and teledildonic cybersex wearables.
Instructor : David Parisi
The newest artist is AI. As the landscape for creating and displaying AI-based artworks is fast-paced and ever-evolving, what are the common tools and languages that will be necessary to conserve and re-exhibit these works into the future? In this class, students will work on case studies in collaboration with a contemporary artist and their studio, focusing on artworks created using AI. Students will learn conceptual and practical frameworks of conservation as applied in this field through readings, class discussion and guest lectures, along with lab sessions to learn and apply skills to handle these artworks. Throughout the semester students will develop documentation and present conservation concepts for these fragile artworks.
Previous programming experience is highly recommended. Please contact instructors for evaluation and guidance related to your current programming expertise related to this class.
Instructors: Thiago Hersan, Deena Engel
This course surveys assistive technologies for people with low vision and blindness, from historical, contemporary, and forward thinking perspectives. Guest lectures from leaders in the field and people with lived experience will help students learn about low-vision and blindness accessibility across several domains (web, wayfinding, literacy, socialization, etc.). In the second half of the class, students will partner with each other and clients/community members to develop their own projects that transform and advance these technologies.
Instructors : Regine Gilbert, Gus Chalkias
This course is designed to explore introductory approaches to using Virtual Reality (VR) as a creative medium. The course will provide historical context, hands-on instruction, theoretical inquiry and class visits from relevant experts to engage students critically in the creation of VR environments. Students will learn about the physiology and psychology of virtual immersion as well as the core concepts of VR production and interaction, including 3D asset creation, scene development, immersive user experience design, and exporting to target platforms.
instructor: Najma Dawood
Our society often relies on centralized and vulnerable systems for most of our basic needs including power, telecommunications and food. In times of crisis these systems fail and the infrastructure they control struggles to adapt in the face of change and uncertainty. Through this “choose-your-own-adventure” citizen science and design research course, focused on real-world scenarios, you will be introduced to tools, methods and practical skills around fermentation, environmental sensing and wireless networking, energy production and harvesting, community engagement and more. The course will include lectures from experts and local Community-Based Organizations (CBOs), hands-on workshops, scavenger hunts and field trips. The class aims to empower individuals to unpack and build their own resilience while also contributing to the resiliency of their communities through research and experimentation.
Instructor : Benedetta Piantella
“Humor is everywhere in that there’s irony in just about anything a human does.” – Bill Nye (“the Science Guy”, mechanical engineer, science communicator, and television presenter)
“When humor goes, there goes civilization.” – Erma Bombeck (female humorist)
Do our immersive media experiences sometimes feel too functional, either too programmatic or too earnest? Humor can be the agent that humanizes our technological products, services and experiences. It also can act as salve during moments of crisis in culture and society.
This course is designed to engage students critically in exploring humor and the absurd in the production of moving image works built with game engines and video editing software, including Unity, Unreal and After Effects. Taking a speculative design approach, students can address pressing societal issues, autobiography, the art of puns and more through thoughtful and imaginative implementations of comedic storytelling.
There will be lectures; class visits from scholars on the absurd, comedy writers, and game engineers; along with hands-on introductions to working with software to produce comedic moving image stories. There are no prerequisites for this course, however a key asset to success is tapping into your own sense of humor. The course will culminate in a screening of student work at locations in New York and the University of Texas at Austin.
Instructor: Carla Gannis