While our relationships between ourselves, our environment, and other people are inherently political, computer technologies and technology companies consistently claim to remain “neutral”. This course will assume the opposite —software is political—, and focus on how software applications share commonalities with political systems, how they affect their users as political actors and how we can build alternatives or improvements to those systems. This course is aimed at deconstructing the design and implementation of software as a political medium, such as Facebook’s timeline algorithm, city officials’ use of computer simulations to orchestrate urban life, blockchain-backed proof of ownership and algorithmic criminal assessment. Along with an introduction to political theory and media studies, coupled with an exploration of the underlying political impacts of those systems, students will work on several hands-on projects to offer functioning alternatives to those systems. To that end, this course will include several workshops in JavaScript, Python and Unity.

Wall labels, audio guides, and informative maps are just some of the ways by which galleries and museums convey information and hidden narratives about a collection. Given the changing role of museums and galleries in the 21st century, how can we utilize new tools such as Augmented Reality (AR) to design and deliver immersive experiences that breathe new life into an exhibit? How can such tools do so without distracting from the power and importance of a collection, or by purposefully challenging problematic aspects such as an exhibit's disputed provenance or ethical concerns? And how can these tools make collections more accessible to a wider audience? This course mobilizes resources from museography, art history, sociology, interaction design and 3D, real-time development to answer these questions. Topics covered include exhibition installation and curation, mixed reality production in Unity, and mobile development for Augmented Reality. The course is open to students from a variety of academic backgrounds interested in gaining hands-on experience in applying new technologies to exhibition spaces.

This course is an introduction to the theory and practice of digital media, of how they affect the formation of human groups, and how are themselves affected by human groups. Changes in means of communication imply changes in the nature of communication itself, and therefore in the nature of the societies which communicate through these means. The near-ubiquitous presence of computer-mediated communications thus affects the way that humans organize, relate and imagine. As computers are changing us, this class provides the tools to approach and understand the nature of these changes. To do so, this course will proceed along three axes: decoding, coding and exploring. Decoding will be a cross-disciplinary approach to the digital, spanning history, sociology, anthropology, media studies, science/technology studies and software studies. Coding will involve students the practicalities of working with, and creating, digital objects (websites, videos, podcasts, visualizations). Exploring will stand on the two previous and take the form of a digital exploration: a sociological investigation on the social, economic and/or political impact of digital technologies on human behaviors and practices. This investigation will be designed, developed and presented on a digital platform harnessing the specific affordances of digital media.

The world is a work of carefully assembled, organized and presented pieces of fiction, which intersect more or less intimately with our beliefs and experiences. This course will propose a suspension of disbelief in order to construct virtual cosmogonies in the Unity game engine. How can we pick, lay out and program texts, images, films, objects, spaces and procedures to persuade a virtual visitor of the coherence of our world? Drawing on environmental storytelling, procedural rhetoric, literary studies and museography, this class will explore how we can build accounts of untold stories, alternate realities and possible worlds.

From digital image processing to connected devices and artificial intelligence, we are more and more inclined to imagine our surroundings through the lens of the computer. However, the fundamental tension between continuous aspect of our lived, immediate, analog experience and the digital, discreet logic of software and hardware cannot be avoided, and can have increasing ramifications. This seminar will be looking at the different ways that computers and computation have affected the way that we represent the world around us, and to what extent where social, political and economical forces involved in the process. The seminar will be a combination of lectures, discussion and hands-on programming exercises.

Although computers only appeared a few decades ago, automation, repetition and process are concepts that have been floating around artists’ minds for almost a century. As machines enabled us to operate on a different scale, they escaped the domain of the purely functional and started to be used, and understood, by artists. The result has been the emergence of code-based art, a relatively new field in the rich tradition of arts history that today acts as an accessible new medium in the practice of visual artists, sculptors, musicians and performers. Software Art: Image is an introduction to the history, theory and practice of computer-aided artistic endeavours in the field of visual arts. This class will focus on the appearance of computers as a new tool for artists to integrate in their artistic practice, and how it shaped a specific aesthetic language across traditional practitioners and newcomers alike. We will be elaborating and discussing concepts and paradigms specific to computing platforms, such as system art, generative art, image processing and motion art. Drawing on those, students will explore their own artistic practice through the exclusive use of their computers. The course will also serve as a technical introduction to the OpenFrameworks programming environment to create works of visual art. Software Art: Image is a complement to Software Art: Text, a 7-week course approaching computation from the perspective of poetry and fiction.

Although computers only appeared a few decades ago, automation, repetition and process are concepts that have been floating around artists’ minds for almost a century. As machines enabled us to operate on a different scale, they escaped the domain of the purely functional and started to be used, and understood, by artists. The result has been the emergence of code-based art, a relatively new field in the rich tradition of arts history that today acts as an accessible new medium in the practice of visual artists, sculptors, musicians and performers. Software Art: Text is an introduction to the history, theory and practice of computer-aided artistic endeavours in the field of prose and poetry. This class will be focused on the appearance and role of computers as a new way for artists to write and read both programming and natural languages. While elaborating and discussing concepts and paradigms specific to computing platforms, such as recomposition, stochastic writing, found material and interaction, students will be encouraged to explore their own artistic practice through the exclusive use of their computers, by writing their own programs. Software Art: Text is a complement to Software Art: Image, a 7-week course on the use of software from the perspective of the visual arts.

Communications Lab is a production based course that surveys various technologies including web development, sound, 2D design, digital imaging, video, effects and animation. The forms and uses of these communications technologies are explored in a laboratory context of experimentation, collaboration, and discussion. Much of class time will be spent introducing and playing with equipment and software essential to media production and contemporary storytelling. Each technology is examined as a tool that can be employed and utilized in a variety of situations and experiences. Students will gain fundamental experience thinking, writing, and producing across a variety of media. The world wide web will serve as the primary environment for content delivery and user-interaction. Principles of interpersonal communications and media theory are also introduced with an emphasis on storytelling fundamentals, user-­centered design, and interactivity. Outside of the classroom, students will work both individually and in assigned groups on a variety of assignments. Each major assignment will have a written and practical component. In sum, students will be expected to complete weekly readings, homework exercises, four major group assignments, and one final web portfolio project.

With the advent of digital computation, humans have found a variety of new tools for self expression and communication. However, most of the interfaces to these toolsets are created with a computer in mind, not taking into account humanistic needs of design and usability. Additionally, computers have traditionally lacked knowledge of the richness of the physical world. As such, their understanding of our needs has been informed by click and taps, seeing the world as a binary system of on or off. This course explores creative computation through software and hardware. By approaching software and hardware design as artists and designers with an emphasis on human-based factors, we can explore new paradigms of interaction with machines and each other. Using open source software environments and open hardware platforms, we will look at way of making these tools work for us. No background in programming or electronics is expected. A sense of play, desire to experiment, and a DIY attitude is strongly encouraged.