Speaking Shaders is an intermediate, digital development intensive course to teach the essentials of shader programming. This course is designed as two phases. In the first phase, students will code shaders that make images. This will go over the foundations of using fragment, vertex, and compute shaders to create imagery for screens. Students will practice shaders through topics like texture sampling, noise, lighting, procedural coloring, and more. In the second phase, students will work the other direction: translating images into shader graphics. For each week in this phase, we will develop and share custom shaders to meet the needs of our artistic direction, establishing a repertoire of techniques and strategies that can be used in all kinds of real time interactive engines. Through both sides, we will develop the taste and familiarity for shaders and images that we see in the world, and enable ourselves to speak the language of shaders. Coding is necessary for this course. Students must be comfortable reading and debugging code samples as well as actively seeking assistance when needed.

In this class students will experiment with emerging techniques in machine learning, developing a series of creative works that address topics like classification, fakery, automating language, surveillance, image generation, and embodiment. The approach will be both practical and critical. How does machine learning produce and reproduce repressive status quo political, economic, ecological, and social conditions, and how might these technologies be used and mis-used to further more just political and social outcomes? How does the project of “AI” continue a long and bleak history of imperialist attempts to shape the world with data? How does creative experimentation reveal the qualities of machine learning as a medium and approach? Is it even possible to make an interesting project using stable diffusion? We will primarily use open source models and tools, but will also explore commercial products to probe their limitations, biases, politics, and business models.

Are you tired of the grim and the dark? Let’s change things up! Hopepunk emphasizes optimism, kindness, and resilience in the face of adversity. This course will take advantage of the leading-edge machine learning tool RunwayML to produce works of radical optimism, resistance through kindness, and the weaponization of kindness. By the end of this course the world will be a better place! RunwayML has been embraced by major design agencies and film studios to produce imagery, special effects, and animation for a wide range of projects. The first half of this course will focus on weekly assignments and experimenting with different elements of Runway. We will read examples of hopepunk by authors such as N.K. Jemisin, Becky Chambers, Ryka Aoki, and Emily St. John Mandel. Students will explore and experiment with RunwayML, applying it to their own work and to hopepunk-related assignments. During the second half of the semester students will undertake longer projects of their choosing. Students will be provided with unlimited accounts for RunwayML. This course is open to all New School students, with priority to Parsons Design and Technology students. No prior experience is needed, though enthusiasm for AI and making the world a better place is helpful.

Physical matter and materiality are central to the deeply emotive experiences of our everyday lives. From ephemeral materials like bubbles, sand, or rice paper to vibrations and particles traveling through various media, these elements and their transformative processes can be used to craft new narratives. Art and design rooted in fundamental phenomena, rather than relying on commercial technologies, have the power not only to capture pure moments and poetic translations but also to foster new, open dialogues and relationships with the world around us. In this course, Poetics of Matter, students will engage in weekly hands-on experiments to explore unique physical phenomena, complemented by generative pencil-based sketching. This approach shifts the focus from technology-led design to design-led technology. Students will investigate how understanding novel physical processes can serve as both a medium for creative expression and an inspiration for new forms of computing that transcend conventional digital logic. Conducted in a studio format, the course includes collaboration with a sketching expert from IDEO to explore generative design techniques, weekly instructor-led demonstrations (e.g: self-pouring liquids, anti-bubbles, edible electronics), field visits, and lectures from media artists around the world who work with unique materials. By encouraging students to challenge the limitations of digital-exclusive computation, this course empowers them to explore the inherent modes of computation found in nature. Poetics of Matter is additionally valuable for students entering their thesis years, providing a high volume idea generation and a collaborative space for rapid testing and iteration.