you
I was a nervous first year at NYU’s
interactive telecommunications program I
had been thrown headfirst into a whole
new world of technology I was learning
how to write programs for my computer
build circuits and solder things that I
never imagined I would ever do prior to
enrolling in the program and I felt in
over my head with all of this new
technology that I was encountering that
semester I was lucky enough to get a job
on campus as a student worker in the ITP
equipment room and I was showing up for
my second shift I remember this very
clearly I had no idea who I was gonna be
working with the shifts were assigned in
teams of two I didn’t know anything
about this person just that his name was
Antonius when I got to the equipment
room I was there for about five minutes
and all of a sudden the door opens and
in walks this talkative confident
student who really seemed like he knew
what he was doing I was in awe of his
confidence I was in awe of the way that
he held himself and the appearance that
he had he knew just what he wanted to do
and where he was in this program that’s
what I wanted to be and it was so
inspiring to see somebody who had
already reached that point but where I
was and where he was seemed so far apart
and the gulf between them seemed really
insurmountable at the time little did I
know at that moment that over the next
few years we would be working together
pretty consistently and mostly in the
same office for years to come I remember
that day very well
um I was faking it I really was also
over I didn’t really have the confidence
but I was faking it because little did
Rupa know when I first got to ITP I was
also very nervous because in order to
get into the program I had to speak with
red burns red burns
is the founder of the interactive
telecommunications program in 1979 and
she became the director for 28 years she
is known as the godmother of
Silicon Alley and the program is now run
by Daniel O’Sullivan and women make up
half of the ITP student body a rarity in
a program that’s heavily invested in
technology so people like grupa one of
the most talented and also put together
people I knew I met at ITP now the ITP
graduates have taken on many important
roles in different corporations such as
Apple Google Disney and also at
nonprofits and organizations like the
ACLU and also government organizations
like the UN and even freelance for NASA
many startups also began at ITP such as
little bits and jewel bots also
Foursquare in fact the founder of
Foursquare fell in love with ITP because
of the ITP show the ITP show is a place
where the students could exhibit their
work and show off what they can do and
he encountered this and he said
encountering a weird art show on his
first visit was how he fell in love with
ITP this show was the ITP
end-of-semester show and it has earned
the program the moniker of the Center
for the recently possible
it was at this show that I see things
like pizzas doing situps
and I realized that there is a real
possibility with technology that he you
know there’s only one place that I can
go to where I can learn how to make a
pizza
do a sit-up it’s also the place where I
first encountered the wooden mirror by
Danny Rosen a mirror made out of wooden
blocks
it was also where apps like this one
were developed metadata Plus which used
to be called drones plus showed a map of
recent drone strikes within the world
so in our experience part of what made
ITP so great is obviously the classes
were amazing and the teachers were
amazing we were learning from a really
distinguished group of faculty and the
opportunity to spend two years really
working on your own projects was
obviously a thing that drew most people
there but one of the things that ITP was
really great for also and part of what
made the student experience so wonderful
was this idea that the of engineering
serendipity in order to generate
encounters or to encourage encounters
ITV did this really really well not
necessarily only in the curriculum which
Antonius just talked about but also in
just the physical layout of the space as
you can see in this photo the ITP space
is open it’s very wide open
the classrooms even have glass walls so
that people can kind of see in and out
even if they’re not actually in the room
and can observe what’s going on the main
area is occupied by students doing work
and that’s basically the majority of the
space on the floor so every time the
faculty have to enter and exit the
building or the floor they basically
have to see all of the students working
this also enables students to kind of
see what each other are doing as well
and to kind of take a look at everything
that other people are working on it’s
much easier to talk to somebody about
the cool project that they’re working on
if you’re sitting right next to them
seeing them work on it as a results many
people’s favorite part of their
experience on the floor the fourth floor
of 721 Broadway was the sense of
community that resulted just from being
able to encounter so many diverse people
at all times people that they wouldn’t
necessarily have been able to encounter
any other way and so when figuring out
how to bring this magic or to bring kind
of the fundamentals of ITP over to the
IMA or interactive media arts program
there was kind of a sense of bringing
that magic and serendipity and encounter
over to NYU Shanghai
the founding directors of the program
Marianne petit as you see here as well
as Matthew Bell and Jay really tried
hard to bring some of that same magic
over to IMA from ITP and a lot of that
is reflected in the way that the
physical space is designed as you can
see here everything is on wheels the
tables the chairs everything so the
whole setup can be reconfigured if you
need to if you have to move around a
bunch of tables for a project or a
presentation set up or even just to get
really close to somebody whose work you
want to kind of observe or if you want
to work next to somebody it’s totally
doable very quickly and very easily the
classrooms have glass walls a lot of
them so you can actually see what’s
going on inside and nobody feels really
closed off from each other and most
importantly the students faculty and
fellows in the studio all work in an
open space with no walls nobody has
closed off from each other kind of
facilitating the ability of people to
kind of see what they’re working on talk
to each other and collaborate and these
ideas are not only exhibited in the
layout of this space it’s a very good
place to see it but it’s definitely not
the only place in fact some of the best
places that you can see the joy of
encounter within ima is from the work
that comes from two of our foundation
classes known as interaction lab and
communications lab
many of the students who come to ima
come as consumers of technology and they
find during the prerequisite courses how
much more difficult it is to become a
maker and to become a creator with the
technologies interaction lab introduces
the idea of physical computing thinking
of the computer beyond the screen and
the keyboard and one of the tools we use
to teach is an Arduino it’s a
microcontroller that you can program and
reprogram the Arduino allows you to
create things that have computing
abilities but they are not necessarily
looking like computers and one of the
first assignments the students have to
do is within the 4 first 4 weeks show us
that your Arduino can do a trick so
imagine if you own a computer and you’re
trying to teach your computer to do a
trick that’s tricking me roll over play
dead or anything that’s why we call it
the stupid pet tricks show during the
stupid patrick showed the students have
to show off that their students can
their projects can do a trick here’s one
such trick it’s called goth hates flash
by Angelina yay and the student learned
how to move a motor the student also
learned how to sense light combining the
two she moved the motor whenever it
sends his light but what’s more
important is she understood the
technology well enough that she could
create a story out of it and the
narrative that she created which he
created a puppy named goth and goth
really hates when you take flash
photographs of it
the students also do much more so the
students work much more thoroughly over
the semester and
even though these tools are very simple
the projects that come out of
interaction lab can become very
complicated another aspect of our
program is iteration and multiple
prototypes
this is a project by Sophia and Jose
it’s called fortune cookie they went to
the health and wellness people and they
asked them hey how do we make people
less stressed out so they created the
system where you get a fortune cookie by
squeezing a ball and then you get to
read what’s inside of it there is an
quote that inspires you and then
afterwards you return the favor by
placing another quote into the Machine
and the only way open the machine is by
smiling so your smile opens up a latch
this is after months of iteration so
they had done a first version first for
their midterm project and then combined
it with computer vision to understand
when the person smiles
another aspect of interaction lab is to
learn the idea of computational media
and learn how to make your computer do
things for you we use processing a
computer language whose hello world is
not text but rather an image and one of
the challenges we ask people is how can
you introduce your digital creations to
the physical world and that’s where
often magic happens when the digital
encounters the physical
this project is called Picasso by Maya
Juan and she had programmed in
processing a way to send values to
motors in order to draw so anything that
she programmed can be drawn one quote I
remember very well from red burns to me
the computer is just another tool it’s
like a pen and you have to have a pen to
know penmanship but neither the pen or
pendant ship will write a book for you I
am so happy to live in the world where I
can teach our students how to make their
own pens
so the second of our two foundation
classes is entitled communications lab
or comm lab as it’s colloquially known
to students and faculty kama is meant to
kind of introduce students to the world
of digital media which involves its own
encounters which I’ll talk about
momentarily but it’s notable in the fact
that it’s one of the only IMA courses
that actually requires students to work
in groups almost the entire time this
project that you see behind me entitled
lifespan by Natalie Chen and Lisa moon
represents the first major assignment
that students have in Khan Lab which is
to create an interactive comic that
involves artwork storyline and also
interaction all designed by you and your
teammate these teams are assigned
randomly so these people are
encountering each other by chance and
they have to kind of work together in
order to collaborate on taking both of
their ideas and putting them together to
create one cohesive unified project
Natalie and Lisa did a really great job
here at kind of taking both of their
talents and skills and combining them
into one project that clearly illustrate
things that they were both really
excited and passionate about and
incorporating it with user interaction
in the browser which they had been
learning all semester the other thing
about comm lab is that it’s required
it’s kind of a class that takes the
traditional digital video digital media
that we all know audio video and
animation and combines it with new media
in this case web technology this project
entitled the mind of Joe which was
created by Hoang Kuo Joseph and Sarah
ski and Eric shin is an interactive
video in the browser where the user can
decide whether or not they want to see a
first-person perspective that is a
perspective from the main character’s
point of view or a third-person
objective perspective that embodies a
more traditional video formats the way
that the storyline is constructed and
the things that happen in the storyline
and what the user sees is all ultimately
decided by the user which would not be
possible in a more traditional media
context this video was created
specifically for user interaction and
for the internet as you can see this
first-person perspective is very
different it incorporates blanks it
incorporates shaky camera based on
motion it’s kind of colored differently
and it
body’s really different kind of
filmmaking techniques and the user can
decide which version they want to see at
any given point in time
for their final project students are
required to create something in the vein
of Internet art which is an art project
that basically can only exist inside the
browser this is a project called QWERTY
by Haven Chu and Tommy song and it
basically rethinks the idea of a piano
by mapping piano keys to the top row of
a user’s keyboard the QWERTY Row enables
him enabling them to write a tune and at
the same time see an animation in the
browser users can choose to play a
pre-configured tune or they can choose
to kind of create their own based either
the melody they want to create or the
type of animation they want to create as
well so they have the option to kind of
do one or the other based on whatever
they’re interested in these projects are
a really great example of kind of not
only the encounters that these students
have with each other and combining their
ideas to create a single unified work
but also the encounter of traditional
media in this case animation and audio
with web technology and new media as
well
there’s so much more to ima that we can
talk about and there are so many more
electives we haven’t even discussed but
I highly encourage all of you to come
back to anyway Shanghai if you are just
visiting and if you are an annoying high
student definitely come to the IMA show
at the end of the semester on December
15 where you can see all the magical
creations by our students
so feeling intimidated is not a bad
thing especially when encountering new
different things and new people what’s
important though is we don’t shy away
what’s important is to know that
whenever you encounter something new you
will find that it’s foreign but over
time you will start to feel more
comfortable and you will become over
time more skilled at that objective so
you become better over time and you
become much much more skilled as you
keep going so please keep going and also
whenever you encounter new people please
keep an open mind and keep an open heart
because I encountered one of my best
friends and the best colleague I could
ever have asked for and if I did not
keep an open mind and she did not
keeping up with Mike she was scared of
me
I think we would be in a different place
but instead we are with each other and
we are working together to create ima
thank you
I was a nervous first year at NYU’s
interactive telecommunications program I
had been thrown headfirst into a whole
new world of technology I was learning
how to write programs for my computer
build circuits and solder things that I
never imagined I would ever do prior to
enrolling in the program and I felt in
over my head with all of this new
technology that I was encountering that
semester I was lucky enough to get a job
on campus as a student worker in the ITP
equipment room and I was showing up for
my second shift I remember this very
clearly I had no idea who I was gonna be
working with the shifts were assigned in
teams of two I didn’t know anything
about this person just that his name was
Antonius when I got to the equipment
room I was there for about five minutes
and all of a sudden the door opens and
in walks this talkative confident
student who really seemed like he knew
what he was doing I was in awe of his
confidence I was in awe of the way that
he held himself and the appearance that
he had he knew just what he wanted to do
and where he was in this program that’s
what I wanted to be and it was so
inspiring to see somebody who had
already reached that point but where I
was and where he was seemed so far apart
and the gulf between them seemed really
insurmountable at the time little did I
know at that moment that over the next
few years we would be working together
pretty consistently and mostly in the
same office for years to come I remember
that day very well
um I was faking it I really was also
over I didn’t really have the confidence
but I was faking it because little did
Rupa know when I first got to ITP I was
also very nervous because in order to
get into the program I had to speak with
red burns red burns
is the founder of the interactive
telecommunications program in 1979 and
she became the director for 28 years she
is known as the godmother of
Silicon Alley and the program is now run
by Daniel O’Sullivan and women make up
half of the ITP student body a rarity in
a program that’s heavily invested in
technology so people like grupa one of
the most talented and also put together
people I knew I met at ITP now the ITP
graduates have taken on many important
roles in different corporations such as
Apple Google Disney and also at
nonprofits and organizations like the
ACLU and also government organizations
like the UN and even freelance for NASA
many startups also began at ITP such as
little bits and jewel bots also
Foursquare in fact the founder of
Foursquare fell in love with ITP because
of the ITP show the ITP show is a place
where the students could exhibit their
work and show off what they can do and
he encountered this and he said
encountering a weird art show on his
first visit was how he fell in love with
ITP this show was the ITP
end-of-semester show and it has earned
the program the moniker of the Center
for the recently possible
it was at this show that I see things
like pizzas doing situps
and I realized that there is a real
possibility with technology that he you
know there’s only one place that I can
go to where I can learn how to make a
pizza
do a sit-up it’s also the place where I
first encountered the wooden mirror by
Danny Rosen a mirror made out of wooden
blocks
it was also where apps like this one
were developed metadata Plus which used
to be called drones plus showed a map of
recent drone strikes within the world
so in our experience part of what made
ITP so great is obviously the classes
were amazing and the teachers were
amazing we were learning from a really
distinguished group of faculty and the
opportunity to spend two years really
working on your own projects was
obviously a thing that drew most people
there but one of the things that ITP was
really great for also and part of what
made the student experience so wonderful
was this idea that the of engineering
serendipity in order to generate
encounters or to encourage encounters
ITV did this really really well not
necessarily only in the curriculum which
Antonius just talked about but also in
just the physical layout of the space as
you can see in this photo the ITP space
is open it’s very wide open
the classrooms even have glass walls so
that people can kind of see in and out
even if they’re not actually in the room
and can observe what’s going on the main
area is occupied by students doing work
and that’s basically the majority of the
space on the floor so every time the
faculty have to enter and exit the
building or the floor they basically
have to see all of the students working
this also enables students to kind of
see what each other are doing as well
and to kind of take a look at everything
that other people are working on it’s
much easier to talk to somebody about
the cool project that they’re working on
if you’re sitting right next to them
seeing them work on it as a results many
people’s favorite part of their
experience on the floor the fourth floor
of 721 Broadway was the sense of
community that resulted just from being
able to encounter so many diverse people
at all times people that they wouldn’t
necessarily have been able to encounter
any other way and so when figuring out
how to bring this magic or to bring kind
of the fundamentals of ITP over to the
IMA or interactive media arts program
there was kind of a sense of bringing
that magic and serendipity and encounter
over to NYU Shanghai
the founding directors of the program
Marianne petit as you see here as well
as Matthew Bell and Jay really tried
hard to bring some of that same magic
over to IMA from ITP and a lot of that
is reflected in the way that the
physical space is designed as you can
see here everything is on wheels the
tables the chairs everything so the
whole setup can be reconfigured if you
need to if you have to move around a
bunch of tables for a project or a
presentation set up or even just to get
really close to somebody whose work you
want to kind of observe or if you want
to work next to somebody it’s totally
doable very quickly and very easily the
classrooms have glass walls a lot of
them so you can actually see what’s
going on inside and nobody feels really
closed off from each other and most
importantly the students faculty and
fellows in the studio all work in an
open space with no walls nobody has
closed off from each other kind of
facilitating the ability of people to
kind of see what they’re working on talk
to each other and collaborate and these
ideas are not only exhibited in the
layout of this space it’s a very good
place to see it but it’s definitely not
the only place in fact some of the best
places that you can see the joy of
encounter within ima is from the work
that comes from two of our foundation
classes known as interaction lab and
communications lab
many of the students who come to ima
come as consumers of technology and they
find during the prerequisite courses how
much more difficult it is to become a
maker and to become a creator with the
technologies interaction lab introduces
the idea of physical computing thinking
of the computer beyond the screen and
the keyboard and one of the tools we use
to teach is an Arduino it’s a
microcontroller that you can program and
reprogram the Arduino allows you to
create things that have computing
abilities but they are not necessarily
looking like computers and one of the
first assignments the students have to
do is within the 4 first 4 weeks show us
that your Arduino can do a trick so
imagine if you own a computer and you’re
trying to teach your computer to do a
trick that’s tricking me roll over play
dead or anything that’s why we call it
the stupid pet tricks show during the
stupid patrick showed the students have
to show off that their students can
their projects can do a trick here’s one
such trick it’s called goth hates flash
by Angelina yay and the student learned
how to move a motor the student also
learned how to sense light combining the
two she moved the motor whenever it
sends his light but what’s more
important is she understood the
technology well enough that she could
create a story out of it and the
narrative that she created which he
created a puppy named goth and goth
really hates when you take flash
photographs of it
the students also do much more so the
students work much more thoroughly over
the semester and
even though these tools are very simple
the projects that come out of
interaction lab can become very
complicated another aspect of our
program is iteration and multiple
prototypes
this is a project by Sophia and Jose
it’s called fortune cookie they went to
the health and wellness people and they
asked them hey how do we make people
less stressed out so they created the
system where you get a fortune cookie by
squeezing a ball and then you get to
read what’s inside of it there is an
quote that inspires you and then
afterwards you return the favor by
placing another quote into the Machine
and the only way open the machine is by
smiling so your smile opens up a latch
this is after months of iteration so
they had done a first version first for
their midterm project and then combined
it with computer vision to understand
when the person smiles
another aspect of interaction lab is to
learn the idea of computational media
and learn how to make your computer do
things for you we use processing a
computer language whose hello world is
not text but rather an image and one of
the challenges we ask people is how can
you introduce your digital creations to
the physical world and that’s where
often magic happens when the digital
encounters the physical
this project is called Picasso by Maya
Juan and she had programmed in
processing a way to send values to
motors in order to draw so anything that
she programmed can be drawn one quote I
remember very well from red burns to me
the computer is just another tool it’s
like a pen and you have to have a pen to
know penmanship but neither the pen or
pendant ship will write a book for you I
am so happy to live in the world where I
can teach our students how to make their
own pens
so the second of our two foundation
classes is entitled communications lab
or comm lab as it’s colloquially known
to students and faculty kama is meant to
kind of introduce students to the world
of digital media which involves its own
encounters which I’ll talk about
momentarily but it’s notable in the fact
that it’s one of the only IMA courses
that actually requires students to work
in groups almost the entire time this
project that you see behind me entitled
lifespan by Natalie Chen and Lisa moon
represents the first major assignment
that students have in Khan Lab which is
to create an interactive comic that
involves artwork storyline and also
interaction all designed by you and your
teammate these teams are assigned
randomly so these people are
encountering each other by chance and
they have to kind of work together in
order to collaborate on taking both of
their ideas and putting them together to
create one cohesive unified project
Natalie and Lisa did a really great job
here at kind of taking both of their
talents and skills and combining them
into one project that clearly illustrate
things that they were both really
excited and passionate about and
incorporating it with user interaction
in the browser which they had been
learning all semester the other thing
about comm lab is that it’s required
it’s kind of a class that takes the
traditional digital video digital media
that we all know audio video and
animation and combines it with new media
in this case web technology this project
entitled the mind of Joe which was
created by Hoang Kuo Joseph and Sarah
ski and Eric shin is an interactive
video in the browser where the user can
decide whether or not they want to see a
first-person perspective that is a
perspective from the main character’s
point of view or a third-person
objective perspective that embodies a
more traditional video formats the way
that the storyline is constructed and
the things that happen in the storyline
and what the user sees is all ultimately
decided by the user which would not be
possible in a more traditional media
context this video was created
specifically for user interaction and
for the internet as you can see this
first-person perspective is very
different it incorporates blanks it
incorporates shaky camera based on
motion it’s kind of colored differently
and it
body’s really different kind of
filmmaking techniques and the user can
decide which version they want to see at
any given point in time
for their final project students are
required to create something in the vein
of Internet art which is an art project
that basically can only exist inside the
browser this is a project called QWERTY
by Haven Chu and Tommy song and it
basically rethinks the idea of a piano
by mapping piano keys to the top row of
a user’s keyboard the QWERTY Row enables
him enabling them to write a tune and at
the same time see an animation in the
browser users can choose to play a
pre-configured tune or they can choose
to kind of create their own based either
the melody they want to create or the
type of animation they want to create as
well so they have the option to kind of
do one or the other based on whatever
they’re interested in these projects are
a really great example of kind of not
only the encounters that these students
have with each other and combining their
ideas to create a single unified work
but also the encounter of traditional
media in this case animation and audio
with web technology and new media as
well
there’s so much more to ima that we can
talk about and there are so many more
electives we haven’t even discussed but
I highly encourage all of you to come
back to anyway Shanghai if you are just
visiting and if you are an annoying high
student definitely come to the IMA show
at the end of the semester on December
15 where you can see all the magical
creations by our students
so feeling intimidated is not a bad
thing especially when encountering new
different things and new people what’s
important though is we don’t shy away
what’s important is to know that
whenever you encounter something new you
will find that it’s foreign but over
time you will start to feel more
comfortable and you will become over
time more skilled at that objective so
you become better over time and you
become much much more skilled as you
keep going so please keep going and also
whenever you encounter new people please
keep an open mind and keep an open heart
because I encountered one of my best
friends and the best colleague I could
ever have asked for and if I did not
keep an open mind and she did not
keeping up with Mike she was scared of
me
I think we would be in a different place
but instead we are with each other and
we are working together to create ima
thank you
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