In this seminar we will discuss topics of transit, surveillance, captivity, fugitivity, planning and design as formative components to life within the African diaspora. We will look at authors such as Frantz Fanon, Simone Browne, Mabel O. Wilson, and Jackie Wang to expand on the intersection of race, economics, technology, and mobility. The structure of the class will primarily consist of lectures by faculty and guests, group discussions and critical w ritten assignments. Using these authors we will build a creative and imaginitive way of thinking through ethical concerns that are an integral part of contemporary life. The subject matter will range from the history of surveillance as a racialized practice, the unequal access to resources created by land organization and urban planning, and the expansion of the private prison system.

In this hands-on studio class students will learn the essential tools and techniques of pop-up book design and paper engineering. During the first half of the course students will be familiarized with paper mechanisms by building examples of each mechanism for themselves. In the second half of the course, they will apply those techniques to construct multi page pop-up books based on their own designs. Lectures throughout the program will introduce students to different forms of pop-up book storytelling and narrative used throughout history.

On the model of queering design workshops where objects are submitted to deliberate disorientation, the Afro-Medieval Time Travel Workshop proposes subverting some foundational concepts of Western culture by revisiting them from the dual perspective of Africa (as a theoretical space outside Western culture) and the European Middle Ages (as a theoretical space before Western culture). The workshop is co-taught by Sasha Zamler-Carhart, a transgender medievalist and frequent traveler to Africa, and Ayo Okunseinde, a Nigerian-American time traveler, speculative designer and Afro-futurist. We will target concepts considered foundational in modern Western culture but secondary or absent in both African civilizations and European medieval civilizations, for example: the mathematical zero, the musical notation of silence, authorship, the primacy of literacy over orality, the distinction between the real and the magical. Western discourse presenting such foundational concepts as rational and necessary will be confronted with speculative Afro-Medieval perspectives exposing the magic nature of Western rationality, and the perversity of the power structures it can imply. This will done by designing allegorical, anachronistic, counterfactual, culturally displaced objects that subvert the original. The underlying project is to decolonize the target objects, in the sense of de-centering their place, time and purpose until they become absurd or ambiguous, or are exposed as threatening. Particular attention will be devoted to Western objects that imply coordinated labor and mandatory silence, for example the orchestra or the clock. Students will be encouraged to think allegorically outside those objects’ usual domain and to expose them as devices of power.

In Experimenting with Shaders students will explore the potential of graphics programming with shaders—specialized programs that run on GPUs which have the ability to render graphics extremely fast due to parallel processing. This course will cover the basics of shader programming, GPU graphics pipelines, common shader environments and applications, and mathematics common in shader programming. This class will utilize an experimental format including a required weekend crash-course at the start of the semester and a mix of faculty- and student-led meetings. Students will create a series of one-week exploratory projects followed by an independently proposed long term final project. This will be a demanding technical class, students should have an intermediate level of experience in coding and should be strong in at least one procedural programming language such as Javascript, OpenFrameworks, or C#.

Laser cutters, 3D printers, CNC plasma cutters, CNC routers, and pen plotters all enable the translation of digital files into physical, material form. In this course, students will use code to create generative designs for digital fabrication. How does data change when it is translated into physical matter? How do digital fabrication tools work—and how can they be controlled with custom code, or built using physical computation? How can these tools be combined with code to create meaningful artifacts, interfaces, and enclosures? How can 3D prints and laser cuts themselves be used as matrices for casting or printmaking? This course will examine the translation of data to physical form through multiple lenses. Data-driven digital fabrication may be used to create narrative objects, physical archives, or customized products. Students will consider dance, choreography, motion capture, and robotics. They will look at material histories, and explore material creation through 3D printing. Digital Fabrication is a project-based course that will support students in developing physical fabrication skills. Each student will develop a portfolio of experiments that will inform larger-scale pieces. Students will use programs and libraries including paper.js, OpenScad, Gcode, p5.js, and ml5.js to create forms for laser cutting, 3D printing, and other CNC machines.

Currents: Computing Textiles (A Hands-On History) is an interdisciplinary course exploring the complex history and speculative future of technology by way of the history (and future) of textiles and craft. Students in this course will develop skills in circuitry and coding as they relate to the construction of textiles. They will also develop skills in textile construction such as knitting, weaving, and dying as they relate to technology. Practical skill development will be accompanied by a deep practice in historical and theoretical research and writing. Discussions will include themes of gender, race, and society and students will be encouraged to challenge conventional history. We will examine the value society places in its tools and what that means for the objects they produce and we consume. In this course, we ask students to consider how we define technology, who can create technology and how the evolution of technology has shaped the world we live in. We seek to understand how the tools we create now will affect our relationships to each other and our environment in the future.

How is the creative process affected or limited by our relationship with material? Current developments in the realm of materials science and biotechnology are challenging conventional distinctions between matter and life, inorganic and organic, passive object and active subject. From design studios to laboratories, from micro to macro, what possibilities can emerge from collaborations between living things and the synthetic creation of new, active materials? In this project-based course students will research and explore a range of unconventional materials, including: organic and synthetic, bio-inspired and robotic, and actual living organisms. Through rigorous research and hands-on workshops, students will develop a scientific, yet playful and alchemical approach to material exploration. Students will be guided to combine a range of high and low tech sculptural, digital, and scientific fabrication methods (mold-making, laser-cutting, 3D printing, CNC, growing, etc.). The class will collectively navigate the tension between long-term stability and environmental sustainability, especially as these concerns are related to living, organic, and biodegradable materials. Finally, we will look at designers and artists who practice alternative approaches to materiality, object making and knowledge production, by working with unorthodox materials such as skin cells, electroactive bacteria, or bioluminescent algae. This is a practical, hands-on course. Students will personally choose and explore a number of materials, culminating in a published open-source materials archive. Final projects will be presented in a public group exhibition and research symposium.

This course investigates the potential of coding as a form of self-expression. The dominant forms of computationally-driven digital media operate by defining our identities for us and mining our selves as data. This course seeks to evaluate and experiment with the potential of code and the interface as media for self-definition and artistic practice. Artists and writers throughout history have explored the means by which their art forms construct, deconstruct, subvert and disseminate individual and group identities. Through readings, discussions, writing and project-building we will explore how code, the interface and the Internet create engines, visions and networks of the self and selves. Readings will engage a variety of creative and critical perspectives on representations of the self and identity from contemporary poetry, fiction, history, critical theory, and visual art. We will study how writers and visual artists harness their chosen forms to represent and imagine individual, lived and collective experience. We will read critical texts that situate the "I" within computational media, and examine how data and computation drive our culture, and by extension our sense of self. The central question of this class we be: what does it mean to have a voice as a writer of code? How can a program or application express and include new perspectives and point-of-views through its programming, data architecture and visual design? All acts of coding reflect the assumptions, biases, experience and ideologies of the coder on some level, often leading to outcomes that are termed unconscious, unintended or unexpected. This class will seek to bring these biases and ideologies to the direct and conscious level, and collectively develop approaches for building more inclusive and polyvocal forms of code, data, visual and interactive experience. The basics of code will be introduced through Processing/P5js and we will embark on projects that speculate on, represent, express and imagine the possibilities of coding new voices and perspectives.

Are you a designer? Then you have to know how to make great videos! From Google to IDEO, video documentation and evaluation became the standard practice throughout their design projects. It is extremely crucial for the creative persons to utilize videos and filmmaking in their creative process from the ideation, iteration, experimentation to presentation. Students will learn how to use videos as a TOOL to help elevate a simple idea into a successful project. They will experiment with various types of creative videos such as video sketches, video prototype, video documentation to a pitching video. It will be scrappy, fast pace with hacks and short-cuts that get the students into making great videos. The class will cover the essentials and fundamentals of filmmaking, then introduce you to the more advanced cinematic techniques and storytelling. All levels are welcome, 99% making, in class demos and professional guest lectures.

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.

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. — Workshop 1: What Did The 2010s Look Like? (Nika Fisher) Workshop 2: Voice Activated: Commands and Interfaces (Lukas Eigler-Harding) Workshop 3: Generative Identity (John Provencher).

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. — Workshop 1: What Did The 2010s Look Like? (Nika Fisher) Workshop 2: Voice Activated: Commands and Interfaces (Lukas Eigler-Harding) Workshop 3: Generative Identity (John Provencher).

Social Media Studio is a part-seminar, part-studio course that critically reflects on human communications through a history of the web, and explores alternative modes of social gathering and community organizing through collaborative projects. In the seminar portion we will focus on issues of agency, privacy, and consent in online communications. In the studio portion we will employ a participatory design process to develop micro forms of social media using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Through a co-creation of the students and the instructor’s collective experience, this course serves as a space to experiment, intervene, and prototype alternatives for a more equitable web.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?