In this ONLINE course, students will design and prototype online multiplayer apps and games using p5.js and p5.party. Study topics will include UX/UI for multiple-user software, multiplayer game design and playtesting, sketching and prototyping, client/server architectures, and team coding tools and workflows. p5.party is a library for easily prototyping multi-user experiences with p5.js created by the course instructor and still under development. Students will have the opportunity to work with and contribute to the library. For more information about p5.party see https://github.com/jbakse/p5.party This is an intermediate coding course. At minimum Students should have successfully completed an introductory programming course, have experience with p5.js, and have a strong interest in coding and javascript.

Can play be found inside the social forms of daily life? Can the creation of playful experiences function as a research method to better understand the communal and the social? Can the creative research process itself become an object of play? Working with graduate students at Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Design (KADK), we will explore these and other questions by creating play experiences that serve as both creative research experiments and as social play experiences. The course will employ creative research strategies derived from social practice art, participatory design, the iterative design process, systems design, and other fields to expand notions and values of play. The course will begin with a workshop at Parsons (Friday February 28 from 7-9:40, Saturday March 1 from 10-4, and Sunday March 2 from 10-4), followed by the Copenhagen collaboration from Friday, March 7 through Friday, March 14. The class is co-organized by game studies scholar and KADK faulty Jesper Juul, social practice artist Nancy Nowacek (Stevens Institute of Technology), and MFA Design & Technology faculty member John Sharp. This course is by permission only. Please reach out to John Sharp for more information: sharpj@newschool.edu. This course involves a participation fee of $500. Students will cover their own travel to and lodging expenses in Copenhagen. Some materials, breakfast, lunch, and three dinners are covered by the participation fee.

Five of New York City’s universities, Cornell Tech (Connective Media), Columbia University (SIPA), Queens College CUNY (Media Studies), New York University (ITP & IDM), and The New School (Parsons School of Design) collaboratively investigate toward understanding how our information ecosystem impacts our democracies, with the goal of addressing these challenges using design, engineering, and computational methods and techniques. The effort gathers graduate students with backgrounds and expertise in media, journalism, design, and engineering/technology from these institutions. The course includes public lectures featuring influential figures from media and technology and provides significant opportunities to collaborate on relevant research projects with peers across graduate programs and disciplines. The course will be conducted mostly online with a few opportunities to meet in person on campuses.

The Biodesign Challenge is an international program engaging over fifty schools and universities through an extensive resource and learning platform and within a large community and network of scientists, designers, and theorists. The Summit takes place in June each year, and is a competition, symposium and showcase of student projects that explore biotech’s entanglements within society—in the way it empowers people, contributes to structural inequities, and creates opportunities for change. Past winners from Parsons include Order of the Biodivine, TomTex, BacToYou, Betting on Babies, and others that have gone on to various international exhibitions and platforms such as the World Economic Forum. Bio-informed techniques are spreading into the design of every part of our daily lives, including materials, textiles, medicines, social critique, art, food, tools, processes and everyday products. Today’s designer must become fluent and engaged with this critical new domain that includes a range of transdisciplinary approaches, from bioengineering and biotechnology, to bio-art, biomimicry, biofabrication and biodesign. Through this course, we invite participation of students and teams at The New School to develop biologically informed intervention(s) that are socially, environmentally, and critically engaged. We will work with you to examine, develop and advise projects/research directions that intend to inform future designers to work with biotech thoughtfully and ethically. Projects should critically push the limits of current industry/practices and provoke new ways to design for the future. This course is multidisciplinary & collaborative. Students will work in teams throughout the semester, and while some of the work and investigation will be conducted individually that work will be contributing to a larger whole.

In this collaborative studio course, students will explore the intersections of AI, culture, technology, and nature, discovering how emerging AI and machine learning technologies can be used to understand, represent, and enhance our environment while confronting the challenges these technologies may bring. This course will be run in tandem with Parsons AI in Nature Symposium to take place April 10th-13th at Rensselaerville, NY’s Hilltown Commons (see https://www.hilltowncommons.org/). Students will work in teams to plan and conduct workshops and demonstrations for the symposium. These group activities will foster a sense of community and provide practical experience in coordinating academic events. Students will also work independently on AI projects to be presented at the symposium, allowing them to showcase their individual creativity and contribute original ideas to the discourse on AI and nature. Throughout the course, students will engage in critical discussions about the rapidly evolving technology of AI, the challenging social issues it raises, and its relationship with the natural world. Topics will include ethical considerations, environmental impacts, and the future of AI in society. As an alternate schedule course, students are required to attend three one-day weekend workshops early in the semester and meet regularly with faculty during the development of their projects and symposium events. All students will participate fully in the symposium. No prior AI experience is necessary, but interest and curiosity is a must. As an alternate schedule course, students are required to attend three one-day weekend workshops early in the semester and meet regularly with faculty during the development of their projects and symposium events. The dates of the Saturday workshops are flexible—however, students must be available for a majority of the April 10-13 Symposium dates (we will work with students who have Thursday or Friday courses to resolve conflicts).

This course will explore the interplay between perceptual psychology and the design of interactive systems and games. Students from psychology and design will learn a variety of useful concepts from perception research and interactive design, including how to make interactive digital games and experiences. Together, we will explore questions such as: how do humans perceive the world? How do our interactions in games reveal underlying systems? How is “intelligence” perceived in artificial agents? And how do we understand each other through perceptual cues? We’ll develop experiments using simple programming environments and tools (Javascript/Python and Unity) to study how people interact with, perceive and understand artificial worlds. While some experience in these tools and programming languages will be helpful for this course, it is not necessary, as long as there is a willingness to learn the basics. This is a cross-listed course with NSSR Psychology (listed under the name PERCEPTION IN VIRTUAL WORLDS: EXPERIMENTS IN DESIGN AND PSYCHOLOGY). If you are a Parsons student, you should register for this CRN.

This studio will focus on creating functional AI projects while exploring two great European cities, Amsterdam, The Netherlands and Köln, Germany. Travel will occur during Thanksgiving week, 2024 (Nov 20th through Dec 1st). We will spend 5 days in each city, travelling between them via train. Students can either use the travel as a testing ground for AI projects, or make projects specifically related to the travel experience. Students can pursue their own individual projects, but all must join Parsons/Köln groups to create collaborative projects. Ideally participating students should have some experience building interactive media in combination with various AI tools— either AI programming platforms such as Tensorflow, Azure, OpenAI, or online platforms such as StyleGAN, ChatGPT, RunwayML, or Teachable Machines—but this experience requirement is flexible. There will be 4 weekend workshops (Saturdays) leading up to the travel, with students required to attend 3 of the 4. These workshops will introduce different AI platforms to the students. This studio will augment traditional methods of creating AI applications (programming) with use of APIs in undertaking AI experiments. Assistance will be provided students requiring a Schengen visa for travel in Europe. Students will be responsible for all travel expenses (flights/trains/lodging) plus a $550 course fee. There is no scholarship available. Enrollment is by faculty permission only. Interested students should attend info sessions during April 2024 or late August 2024. Workshop and travel schedule: Saturdays 9am-5pm on campus: Sept 28th, Oct 12th, Oct 26th, Nov 9th Flight to Europe: Evening Nov 20th Amsterdam: Nov 21st-25th Köln: Nov 26th-30th Return flight to NYC: Dec 1st There are no prerequisites for this studio, and students from all disciplines are welcome. Space is strictly limited. APPLY HERE: https://forms.gle/dC7Sp9LF9bwvqmqaA

Are there uses for Augmented and Virtual Reality design technologies beyond their role in creating entertainment products? Can AR and VR tools be utilized to help create more livable and sustainable future? The primary audience for VR today is gaming, but there are a wide variety of industries that benefit from the application of VR and AR technologies in their professional processes. These include architecture, urban, interior, product and industrial design, and medical education. This Co-lab explores how VR and AR technologies can be applied to the design of more livable and sustainable cities. Each semester the students choose an abandoned or under-utilized, real-world site, and using AR and VR technologies - along with additional study in urban planning and design – create new and engaging environments. This course explores the history of immersive media; pioneers of VR; current applications of VR; the relationship between AR and VR, and extensions of VR that connect it to the real world. It also teaches principles of “placemaking,” experience design and developing communities using Smart City and APA (American Planning Association) guidelines. Students will work in a variety of platforms depending on their own backgrounds and interests. Authoring platforms will be Unity and UnReal Engine and modeling platforms will include SketchUp, Blender, Cinema4D, Rhino3D and 3D Studio Max.

This course is an experiential/embodied/multisensorial exploration into human | non-human collaboration, communication, relationship, co-existence and co-creation. As an introduction to living systems, a transdisciplinary framework that integrates the scientific/biological, cultural, social, economic, environmental and ecological dimensions of life, we will critically re-frame and position design process vis a vis the urgent and emergent contexts related to climate change and social/environmental justice, while disrupting the dominant processes and methods of human-centered design using speculative and critical approaches as catalysts for alternate ecological imaginaries. Students will have the opportunity to contribute to existing projects and/or develop their own line of inquiry, while weaving in their interests and disciplinary perspectives. We will engage and learn with numerous organisms and technologies, from slime mold and physical computing to dinoflagellates, plants, and generative AI. No previous technical experience is necessary to thrive in the course, just an open and experimental attitude. Throughout the semester, we'll be delving into queer, cybernetic, natural-historical, indigenous (TEK - traditional ecological knowledges), afrofuturism, ecofeminism, post-humanism, deep time, scale & energy, transhumanism, and many other theoretical perspectives, concepts and ideas, and strive to be comfortable in the discomfort of operating in conditions and contexts of volatility, uncertainty, emergence, un-knowing, ambiguity, and complexity as we seek an understanding of a multispecies cosmopolitics. IMPORTANT SCHEDULE INFORMATION: During the semester, we will meet on three (friday or saturdays) in Sept/Oct from 10:30-3pm on (Fridays or Saturdays), often traveling to various locations throughout NYC. The other 10 sessions will take place during our scheduled course time on Wednesdays. Please consider this schedule carefully, to make sure this course works for you. Attendance during field/lab experiences is compulsory. Biodesign Challenge If you’re interested in participating in the Biodesign Challenge Studio in the Spring Semester, (biodesignchallenge.org), this course is a strongly encouraged preparatory experience, especially if you have minimal experience in Science. MATERIAL FEE: $200

NEW VIEW AWARDS, the global XR Content Award, now in its 6th year, is being boldly revamped for the era of spatial computing. This year they are interested in leveraging the collective knowledge of next-generation artists and creators to develop use cases for the forthcoming era of spatial computing. In this Collab, we will be learning and working with their latest development pipeline capable of creating high-fidelity immersive experiences for Apple Vision Pro. Their award-winning tools and plugins (Best Creator & Authoring Tool at AWE'24) are compatible on both Mac and Windows computers. NEWVIEW SCHOOL New York - STYLY for Vision Pro walks students through STYLY’s award winning prototyping pipeline involving Unity3D and Virtual Scripting. It is a codeless, Visual Scripting driven, content creation pipeline that lowers the technical requirement for building sophisticated and immersive experience on Apple Vision Pro. Participants are required to submit their use scenarios and prototypes to the NEWVIEW AWARDS 2024. There will be a limited amount of Apple Vision Pro devices provided on-site for testing.