Data seems to exist everywhere all around us, but what exactly is it? The plural of “datum”, the word data comes from Latin meaning ”something given”, but is data better understood as discovered or produced? Is such a thing as “raw data” ever really possible? What is the difference between data, information, and knowledge? This class will endeavor to answer these questions by participating in a process of gathering, organizing, and visualizing data drawn from the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn: one of our nation’s most polluted waterways and currently the subject of a substantial, federally funded remediation effort. Both public sector institutions and informal community groups are closely monitoring this site, and an influx of recent residential developments raises the stakes and the profile of this troubled canal. Students will work with environmental data from organizations like the EPA, Gowanus Dredgers Canoe Club, Community Water Quality Testing Project, and APIs provided by the City of New York; and will write custom code using the R programming language to turn data into knowledge, empowering local residents to make informed decisions about their environment. The class will visit the site to observe the data collection process, and will end the course by presenting coding work back to the community onsite at the canal. // DIGITAL CURRENTS is a hands-on, project-oriented workshop on contemporary digital technology in the Code as a Liberal Art program. The course will meet for 12 hours over 4 weeks of the semester. Coursework will include reading popular journalism and trade press, as well as scholarship in media and science & technology studies to establish historical context and engagement with the ongoing debates and controversies. Students will be given practical, technical instruction, and will end the course having produced a final project using this technology. No prior coding experience is required but students are advised to first take LCOD 2000 and LCOD 2010, 2012, or 2013. This course is repeatable for credit. For the Spring 2026 semester, the class will meet four times, on February 20, March 6, April 3, and April 17.

Can computers “see”? In recent decades we have seen a proliferation of vision devices connected to computational machinery and the codes that operate it. From self-driving cars and “smart” vacuums, to facial recognition techniques used by law enforcement, to motion tracking of bodies used by artists and advertisers, and object recognition used in novel shopping experiences, we find these devices and their algorithms at the center of our everyday human-computer-interaction experience. But what does it mean to speak of computers as possessing vision? This course will interrogate the ways that computers see, examining the mechanisms of algorithmic seeing and the various biases that it introduces and reproduces. // DIGITAL CURRENTS is a hands-on, project-oriented workshop on contemporary digital technology in the Code as a Liberal Art program. The course will meet for 12 hours over 4 weeks of the semester. Coursework will include reading popular journalism and trade press, as well as scholarship in media and science & technology studies to establish historical context and engagement with the ongoing debates and controversies. Students will be given practical, technical instruction, and will end the course having produced a final project using this technology. No prior coding experience is required but students are advised to first take LCOD 2000 and LCOD 2010, 2012, or 2013. This course is repeatable for credit. For the Fall 2025 semester, the class will meet four times, on October 10, 17, 24, and November 7.