This course consists of a series of three workshops, which explore contemporary positions in Communication Design, taught by specialists / working professionals from industry. Each workshop is 5 weeks long and examines a specific topic in detail. Topics include (but are not limited to) type in space; digital typography and prototyping; and design systems. Further details of the individual workshops will be posted soon. Students are expected to engage in all three workshops and must be present for the duration of the semester.

Digital Divination is a project-based making and exploratory seminar-style course that examines and plays with the relationship between technology and ritual. It introduces histories and current ways technological artifacts serve or carry value as talismans, particularly in non-western and post-colonial contexts, and furthermore, how rituals themselves can be seen as forms of computation in their ability to transmit information and create and/or maintain networks. Class members will also explore their own relationship to the tools they use in cultural and daily practices. Through building on discussions and technical workshops in physical computing/internet-of-things (IOT) (with Arduino and Raspberry Pi) and machine learning (python-based libraries/tools such as Tensorflow and OpenCV), students will produce their own rituals (either movement-based/gestural, or object-based) in order to engage with critical questions around the intersection of rituals and technology.

Queer Space asks how we, as designers, as individual bodies, can critically question and respond to implied power structures in the spaces around us. This course considers the importance of inhabiting, acknowledging, empowering, amplifying and living the perspectives of those who practice on the margins and in the in-between; exploring theory, histories, narratives and the current practices of those traditionally left out of the canon. Participants will engage in weekly readings, discussions and presentations while questioning through research-driven making; through 'Classical Design','Design Thinking', and 'Computational Design', learning how to generate and self-'publish' work that rejects the idea of design as solution, and explores the idea of design as question. Working together, students will create an array of grassroots projects; publications, posters, garments, websites, videos and events, examining design as advocacy and amplifying narratives that galvanize with multiple differentiated perspectives. The course will be a place for students to speculate on where and how queerness meets form, and to investigate and generate new histories, praxis and pedagogy for themselves. Participants will review alternative histories of theory and graphic design; exploring archives, spanning expressions of gender, sexuality, language, color, culture and thought and then responding with work that contemplates and complicates the potentials of alternative structures and independent means of cultural production, an effort toward a more inclusive, tolerant and plural space.

Through a close historical analysis of branding systems, set design, fashion, language and character construction, students will investigate the manner in which black and brown identities appear in popular film, television and music. We will compare the visual complexities surrounding cultural representations in shows such as: The Jeffersons, A Different World, The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, and Insecure while also identifying how these shows can be a source of inspiration to make future design. We will unpack the ways popular media can guide our visual and material choices and provide a basis for our conceptual thinking towards social critique. This is a hands-on-studio course that will include projects that investigate imagery, typography, color and pattern developed for print, digital and auditory spaces. Students will be encouraged to develop work across media and explore new tools, methods, and techniques in the creation of digital and print-based outputs. As we proceed throughout the semester, we will propose a number of related questions: What images and styles are recurring on screen? What language is used (ie. slang, code-switching, bilingual)? What are the differences in sitcoms versus serious dramas? How can sound be used to reinforce aspects of representation? How do we adapt our findings and references into communicable design pieces? What do we simplify? How do we add meaning? How do we amuse? How do we edit? How do we provide commentary or a point of view? How do we emphasize or speculate on our understanding of black and brown identities?

In this course, students will explore immersive prototyping methods for envisioning and testing objects and services that propose preferable relationships with society, technology, and the environment. Students will design participatory engagements where community members are challenged to envision social tests that could radically reimagine the way we engage with local economies, social rituals, and technological shifts. These visions take shape as future products, structures, and experiences. Collaboratively constructed futures provide alternatives to the narratives that have been colonized by powerful political groups and Hollywood producers. The outcomes allow participants to momentarily “live” in the future, and to help us navigate toward preferable worlds, instead of futures that have been pre-designed for us.

The February 2019 cover story of Wired magazine features the concept of the ‘Mirrorworld’, a digital copy of everything in the real world; a place where we communicate with each other and communicate with machines, and where machines communicate with each other. This is a new way of seeing for us but it is the native environment of robots and algorithms. Adapting to this new reality will require a combination of new tools and methods of interaction. It will make us rethink design and problem solving, art and utility. The Mirrorworld does not yet exist but it is being built. Within ten years every street, lamppost, car and room will have its digital twin and new companies and platforms will emerge to overlay this information on the real world. Microscopic cameras will scan everything 24/7 to build 3D maps, big data will become exponentially bigger, and text will be relegated to the slow lane in relation to gaze, voice and gesture commands. In this course students will imagine, build and prototype an element, experience or artistic rendering of how this world will operate. Students will investigate the near future from the perspective of the here and now, designing prototypes for function and utility in augmented spaces, experiential environments, new interactions or connections between humans and objects. Technologies to be explored will include virtual, augmented and mixed reality, AI and IoT, 3D models and animation, data visualization and sonification.

This course will introduce students to the subject of machine learning and its applications in the field of design, particularly for creating interactive web applications that enable the semantic exploration of datasets. Students will gain a top-level understanding of the history and current state of machine learning, as well as an understanding of the frontiers of data organization for image, text, and audio. Additionally, this course will explore the philosophical and moral implications of emerging machine learning technologies and their impact on society at large. Valid outcomes from the course may be tools, products, or art, and may focus on practical or conceptual/critical applications. This is a hands on technical course using Python, Javascript, HTML, and CSS. Students will be expected to keep up with the technical demands independently.

This course is designed to empower designers with non-quantitative backgrounds with a core framework understanding concepts in mathematics that are useful to a wide variety of design practices. Mathematics provide the underlying framework for many disciplines, from creative coding and data-driven artwork to game design and computer graphics. However, math is seldom taught as a tool for creative expression. This course is designed to remedy that by providing a toolkit of mathematical concepts, with an emphasis on their direct applicability to design and creative coding. Working first in Processing and then using Unity, students will gain experience implementing concepts directly in code, and build a toolbox of functions to draw from in future work. Topics covered include vector mathematics and trigonometry, matrix operations and linear algebra, probability, noise and fractals.

Motion capture (mo-cap) is the technique of recording patterns of movement digitally. It is used heavily in filmmaking, animation, video games, as well as in Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality environments. Mo-cap allows movement to be used to animate a 3D model, perform position-tracking for large-scale VR, and more. Using Parsons’ new Motion Capture Studio, we will learn how to use high-end professional motion capture equipment, as well as how to work with the resulting data in several different workflows (both real-time and recorded). Mo-cap results in data that can be mapped in a myriad of ways. This studio aims to expand on the typical applications and mappings of the data in the context of VR and room-scale AR. How can we use the body as a controller/musical instrument? How can we visualize movement data? How can we subvert the output of mo-cap? For example, to create a feedback loop to guide the bodies being tracked? How can we embody and perform as other (not necessarily human) bodies and forms?

This course is designed to teach both technical and artistic aspects of Projection Mapping to create experiential art installation work. Experiential Art is an immersive and engaging form of art which connects viewers to the artwork by creating interaction and relationship between the artwork and viewers. Increasingly more and more artists are working together with various institutions such as museums as well as companies to create experiential marketing campaigns and a brand activation. Projection Mapping is one of the most popular media to produce experiential installation in which the basic idea is to make buildings, the walls or objects come alive in light, color, and motion by projecting moving images onto them and used for various medium including museum installation, storefront display, product presentation, fashion show, music concert, large-scale outdoor installation, Street and Guerrilla marketing, an interactive kiosk and theater performance. The main focus of the course is not only to acquire the necessary technical skills to produce any Projection Mapping work but also to learn how to use the media effectively to bring their concepts to reality and to create the experiential and immersive installation. By the end of the course, students will learn 2D and 3D projection mapping techniques by using MadMapper and Modul8, and to operate necessary hardware to create projection mapping installation work as well as mobile live projection on the street. The students can also combine with their other technical knowledge such as OpenFrameWorks, Processing, and Unity3D to create interactive installation work.

The increasing access to our personal data will have unprecedented implications for our future lives. As designers we are often tasked with transforming these data into new services that will improve our everyday convenience. Recent national and international situations have highlighted some of the issues around biases and other flaws that are currently being encoded into our systems of tomorrow. This class challenges students to think not only about the potential benefits of data but also to explore their social consequences and by doing this, re-thinking their own role beyond creating the in- and outputs for tomorrow’s algorithmic black boxes.As a foundation, it teaches students the most important ‘traditional’ design methods from human centered design to more speculative methods and quick prototyping and guides the students through a series of assignments. These assignments make use of these methodologies to gain a practical understanding of their benefits, but also where they fall short when applied to new contexts of data-driven algorithmic systems. Students explore how these design methods can be re-appropriated to develop processes that help identify social issues that occur in our data-driven lives. Students learn how to visualize these future frictions and develop insights that can inform concrete design approaches to help mitigate them. Through these methods, the course aims to redefine our role as designers in the multi-disciplinary teams we work in, to lead with a unique perspective and advocacy for the ethical application of these technologies.

The students will be focusing on telling stories through tactile and tangible technology. We will be creating interactive objects with a focus on wearables design. In this course, the students will be experimenting with textile design, physical computing and the internet of things. Projects can range from commercial usage as well as experimentation and performance. We will be also introducing students from the MFA textile department to help and collaborate with MFA DT students with integrating textile with technology to introduce multi-sensory textures.

It’s 2030: local news organizations have gone extinct; national news organizations are deemed untrustworthy by large swaths of the public; and social media has only grown messier, more clamorous, more polarized, and easier to hack. Propaganda—masquerading as news—flourishes. Given this backdrop, how can product designers and media technologists produce and distribute information that is accurate and independent of faction, and that audiences will find both useful and credible? In this class, students will imagine, build, and prototype the media systems and products of the future, using the science and technology of today to speculate about the possible scenarios of tomorrow.

This course consists of a series of three workshops, which explore contemporary positions in Communication Design, taught by specialists / working professionals from industry. Each workshop is 5 weeks long and examines a specific topic in detail. Topics include (but are not limited to) type in space; digital typography and prototyping; and design systems. Further details of the individual workshops will be posted soon. Students are expected to engage in all three workshops and must be present for the duration of the semester.

In the current era of short attention spans and bite-sized news, designers need to come up with increasingly clever ways to get through to users. In this class, students will learn how motion graphics can be an effective medium for information design, creating animations that translate complex ideas into simple, even delightful, experiences.

This class provides technical and production support for ongoing Unity projects, with a particular interest in supporting Thesis projects. Students will work with faculty and classmates to identify areas in which they need support around the production of an ongoing work. Class sessions will be used for a variety of activities, including hands-on tutorials, one-on-one meetings with the professor, and peer-led “Dorkshop”-style learning. Enrollment is by permission only. Please reach out to John Sharp (sharpj@newschool.edu) including a description of the ongoing project you would like to work on, and whether or not it is your Thesis project.

This course is designed to teach both technical and artistic aspects of Projection Mapping to create experiential art installation work. Experiential Art is an immersive and engaging form of art which connects viewers to the artwork by creating interaction and relationship between the artwork and viewers. Increasingly more and more artists are working together with various institutions such as museums as well as companies to create experiential marketing campaigns and a brand activation. Projection Mapping is one of the most popular media to produce experiential installation in which the basic idea is to make buildings, the walls or objects come alive in light, color, and motion by projecting moving images onto them and used for various medium including museum installation, storefront display, product presentation, fashion show, music concert, large-scale outdoor installation, Street and Guerrilla marketing, an interactive kiosk and theater performance. The main focus of the course is not only to acquire the necessary technical skills to produce any Projection Mapping work but also to learn how to use the media effectively to bring their concepts to reality and to create the experiential and immersive installation. By the end of the course, students will learn 2D and 3D projection mapping techniques by using MadMapper and Modul8, and to operate necessary hardware to create projection mapping installation work as well as mobile live projection on the street. The students can also combine with their other technical knowledge such as OpenFrameWorks, Processing, and Unity3D to create interactive installation work.