This course is a practical and conceptual exploration into electronic sensors, processors and actuators in the context of interactive art and design. Students will turn everyday objects into ambient interfaces or "responsive systems" that respond to the conditions of the human body, data networks, and the environment. Contemporary works of art and design - from kinetic sculpture and sound art to installation, architecture and product design - will be examined through readings and presentations. Open source hardware (Arduino) and software (Processing) will be taught along with the fundamentals of electronic circuitry. Emphasis is given to the development of creative projects (individual or collaborative), followed by an iterative implementation process (planning, prototyping, testing, analyzing, and refining). The course is structured around a series of tutorials and exercises, culminating in a final project. Students also present work-in-progress and prototypes during class reviews to receive qualitative feedback from the class and the instructor. Participants will engage with physical computing conceptually and technically in their studio work and are encouraged to leverage their individual backgrounds to excel in the respective context.

Prior experience with electronics and programming is recommended but not required.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $200.00

Elective

This studio course reimagines game engine software as a critical tool for contemporary art and design practice. Moving beyond traditional gaming applications, we will use Epic Games Unreal Engine to invent unconventional approaches to digital art-making including: emergent design, speculative world building, as well as AI and physics-based processes (Note: traditional gameplay systems, player controller mechanics, and character animation will not be covered in the course). 

The course emphasizes conceptual development alongside technical experimentation. Students will focus on the fundamentals of Blueprints visual scripting, the Niagara particle system, and AI Behavior Trees. In addition, we will discuss historical, experimental film, animation, music, architecture and process-based art movements such as Situationism, Gutai, and Neoconcretismo. Students from every fine art and design department are encouraged to join. Students will learn to bring their current art and design work into Unreal as 2D, 3D and motion assets. The semester culminates in self-directed projects that align with individual creative practices.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $150.00

Elective

Exploring the question, "What if my computer made my drawings for me?" this course investigates the use of computational methods for creating drawings. Drawing inspiration from the likes of Mark Wilson, Vera Molnar, and Harold Cohen’s work with AARON, a life-long software that crafts significant art pieces, we will explore the historical and practical aspects of coding as a creative tool. Students will research the origins of computational making, learn basic scripting for artistic aims, understand generative drawings' material outputs, and participate in hands-on projects to foster innovation and exploration in computer-assisted drawing.

Elective

This course introduces the core themes of computational art and design, including interaction, networks, and simulation. Students will engage with these topics through modern digital production techniques, examining them from formal, material, historical, and social perspectives.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $150.00

Major Requirement | BFA Art + Computation, BFA Sound

This course introduces the core themes of computational art and design, including interaction, networks, and simulation. Students will engage with these topics through modern digital production techniques, examining them from formal, material, historical, and social perspectives.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $150.00

Major Requirement | BFA Art + Computation, BFA Sound

This course investigates the impact of computation and media technologies on artistic production and the way artists have utilized new technologies like computers, electronics, the internet, mobile devices, AI, robotics, and other tech media to create works of art. Students will analyze the works of pioneering new media artists, study the impact of technological advancements on artistic practices, and discuss the social, ethical, political, and cultural contexts that have shaped the aesthetics of computational art practices. Through a combination of readings, discussions, case studies, and project-based work, students will engage with key debates, texts, and methodologies that address the histories and potential futures of this dynamic and rapidly evolving field.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $150.00

Major Requirement | BFA Art + Computation

This course investigates the impact of computation and media technologies on artistic production and the way artists have utilized new technologies like computers, electronics, the internet, mobile devices, AI, robotics, and other tech media to create works of art. Students will analyze the works of pioneering new media artists, study the impact of technological advancements on artistic practices, and discuss the social, ethical, political, and cultural contexts that have shaped the aesthetics of computational art practices. Through a combination of readings, discussions, case studies, and project-based work, students will engage with key debates, texts, and methodologies that address the histories and potential futures of this dynamic and rapidly evolving field.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $150.00

Major Requirement | BFA Art + Computation

The material qualities of textile design and fabrication refer to our relationship to all aspects of the physical and tangible world. While computation has long been responsible for pushing the traditional techniques of textiles to high levels of mechanical industrial expression, digital sensibility and know-how of digital technologies are now increasingly seen as means to push the frontier and very definition of fabric. Parallel advances in digital fabrication and the invention of smart materials now allow for added dimensionality and functionality in fabric, and computation is a key interface for material exploration. In this course, students will learn to modulate the performance and behavior of fabric through its geometry and other systems of continuous structural surface within a computational framework. This course will provide students with the opportunity to push the boundaries of fabric design across disciplines and studio practices.

Estimated Cost of Materials: varies by individual project.

Elective

Computation, Technology, and Culture Interdisciplinary Critique is an advanced course for juniors, seniors, and graduate students who have already demonstrated a high level of commitment to pursuing art/design work that involves computational platforms, software systems, and digital technologies, and which explores associated histories, theories, and practices. In this course, students work on an individual project that incorporates research and theoretical exploration of a topic of their choice, with the aim of producing a refined body of work or large scale piece that advances their understanding of and practice with computation and technology. Students regularly meet individually with faculty and receive feedback in recurring group critiques. Additionally, seminar discussions are held focused on pertinent readings, screenings, and lectures. Successful completion of any CTC course or equivalent coursework is preferred, but not required.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $150.00 

Requirement | CTC Concentration

This course explores the relationships between new media languages and physical space. Building from the history and aesthetics of installation art and relational theater and based on conceptualizations such as "Relational Architecture" by Lozano-Hemmer and the "Poetics of Augmented Space" by Lev Manovich, we will learn to leverage interactive and audiovisual elements in order to design spatial experiences that are media-rich, relational, and responsive. We will use software, video-projectors, sensors and VR equipment, and explore emergent techniques including video-mapping, computer vision and augmented reality. We will learn to deploy not only vision, but also hearing and haptics to create immersive and multi-sensory environments. Class is comprised of lectures, hands-on workshops and individual projects. Students will gain a deep understanding of topics of spatial thinking and user-generated experiences related to space, as well as a theoretical and critical understanding of the history of installation and interactive arts. Although not a prerequisite, basic coding or scripting knowledge (Processing, javascript, or MAX, Touch Designer, etc.) is recommended.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $250.00

Elective

"Art is either plagiarism or revolution" - Paul Gauguin. This studio course explores how AI’s rapid progress is challenging artists today. As we work with these exciting, terrifying new tools, we’ll discuss how artists have responded to transformative media of the past like the camera, the television, and the internet. How can we comment on the ethical concerns of AI technology? Should we change how we think about creativity? And who will the machines replace? 

Students will experiment with new tools as they are released throughout the semester, as well as interview machine learning researchers and digital artists. Authors include: Walter Benjamin, Ray Kurzweil, Harold Cohen, N. Katherine Hayles, and Ted Chiang. No coding experience is required. 

Estimated Cost of Materials: $100.00

Elective

‘Camouflage as Praxis: Now You See Me Now You’ is a course exploring the forms, uses, and potentials of camouflage (or invisibility) as a strategy deployed by marginalized communities in the face of dominant hegemonies that seek to detect and disempower us. Grappling with the nuanced politics of representation and carefully unpacking the potential pitfalls and advantages of visibility, this course asks students to confront their own relationships with being in/visible, and create work from this place of definition/obscurity. 

The course considers various figures such as the undercommons (Fred Moten & Stefano Harney), Ditto (the formless pokémon), Banksy (the anonymous artist), and cuttlefish (camouflaging cephalopods), among others, to uncover what it means to cover and make visible what it means to be invisible. Readings include excerpts from Trap Door: Trans Cultural Production and the Politics of Visibility, For Opacity by Edouard Glissant, and Undrowned by Alexis Pauline Gumbs.

While course content will focus on film/video, animation, photography, and installation works, this course is interdisciplinary, and invites creative practitioners and scholars from all backgrounds and disciplines to consider how concepts of il/legibility apply to their chosen disciplines.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $100.00

Elective

In this graduate-level interdisciplinary research studio, we will explore notions of sympoiesis (“worlding-with, in company") and entanglement through theory, research and creative practice across media. Guided by critical texts, creative prompts, and visits from artists and collectives, we will consider mycelial webs, hydrocommons, queer ecologies, quantum physics, ecomedia, mutual aid networks, etc. Participants will then follow their own lines of critical inquiry to support creative work, sharing findings with the class and teaching one another. Final projects will be research-based artistic engagements with interrelation and entanglement (“research” casts a wide net here, referring to an array of embodied, scientific, theoretical and communal practices) and can be in participants’ media of choice. Thinking and making will happen independently, collaboratively and interstitially throughout the semester.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $100.00

Elective

Sonic Practices is a research intensive course focused on acoustic, electronic, and/or computer-based means of sound production and reception. Participants explore audio culture and technology while developing experimental approaches to composition, performance, recording, and/or listening. Areas of investigation include, but are not limited to: audio programming languages, embedded/mobile computing for sound and music, spatial audio, sound synthesis, audio electronics, sonification and auditory display, electroacoustic music composition and improvisation, field recording and soundscape studies, sound installation and performance, and sonic interaction design. Each semester, course content changes in response to a new unifying theme upon which students base individual and team-based research projects. Meetings consist of discussions, workshops, critiques, and collaborations that support students' individual inquiries, the exchange of ideas, and the exploration of research methodologies.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $100.00 - $200.00

Elective

This combined studio and seminar forum for Digital + Media first year students supports the exploration of theoretical, social, material, technical and contextual research and concerns in new media arts practices during the first semester of the D+M MFA program at RISD. Students are introduced to a core set of methodologies and technologies from basic electronics, programming and interaction design to installation, and are encouraged to break comfort zones through experimentation. Students conceptualize and discuss their work and ongoing practice. The course is a mix of group discussions, individual meetings, required lecture and workshop series, and group critiques. The technical workshops are opportunities for students to experiment and test out aspects of their research in order to develop a sound practice. Guest lecturers and visiting critics may join during other portions of the class time on occasion.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $100.00 - $300.00

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Digital + Media Students.

Major Requirement | MFA Digital + Media

In this historical survey, we analyze the aesthetic conventions, narratives, and formats of works in new media. We examine the impact digital technologies and new media have had on existing media, as well as the ways in which new media function as a unique system of communication. While investigating the aesthetic conventions, economic conditions and infrastructures that affect the production of new media, we address the social and political contexts in which new media are disseminated, interpreted and privileged. We make connections across decades by focusing on the recurring themes of language, futurism, simulation, hyper-reality, transnationality and information.

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Digital + Media Students.

Major Requirement | MFA Digital + Media

The course supports the exploration of theoretical, social, material, technical, and contextual research and concerns in new media arts practice during the final semester of the DM MFA program. It is a combined studio and seminar forum for Digital + Media second-year students. (Students conceptualize and discuss their work and their ongoing practice and thesis process). The course is a mix of individual meetings, group discussions and group critiques. Guest lecturers and visiting critics will also become involved with this class in terms of critical/research aspects. Each student will practice articulating their art process and work towards their thesis and will contribute to the dialogue concerning the research and work of their classmates.

Estimated Materials Cost: $100.00 - $300.00

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Digital + Media Students.

Major Requirement | MFA Digital + Media

This course will explore drawing and collage using various methods, materials and subjects. Students will use a variety of media, including their own drawings, found objects and photographic images. Students will be encouraged to instigate intuitive and open responses to perceptual and conceptual sources. The form of collage will give students the opportunity to build, develop and reprocess their drawings. Scale, subject, abstraction and materiality are some of the visual elements addressed in the course.

Estimated Cost of Materials $50.00

Elective

This course seeks to foreground how movement in film and sculpture can explode and redefine viewing positions within immersive installations and cinematic experiences. We will consider how the learning and unlearning of modes and methods within the field of film can bring about a reorientation through spatial, perceptual and perspectival shifts. The expansive field of sculpture can reimagine how movement and gesture are perceived and embodied through site context, materiality, intervention, performativity, and world building. In this course we will construct sets and installations that will engage with time, memory, and performance. We will examine how the process of editing can build meaning both through material transformation and the moving image. Through employing an intersectional and accessible approach to making, we will engage the potential for reorientation in the visual vocabulary in cinema and sculpture.

 We will focus on the performative aspects inherent in both filmic and sculptural practices while keeping these explorations distinct and not in service of the other. Students will learn cinematic technical skills alongside sculptural investigations with materials and installations, and consider strategies used in scenic/theatrical design, dioramas, phantasmagorias, magic lanterns as well as innovative production design for film. Throughout the course, we will consider viewer participation, passive and active audience viewership and interactive sculptural experiences involving the gaze and framing. Learning from alternative ways of creating movement developed in the field of independent cinema, experimental film and video art, students will explore what types of seeing can be developed by these approaches. In addition to in-class collaborative  experiments, students will produce two individual projects, where they will infuse aspects of the themes of the course into their own practice.  

Please contact contact fav@risd.edu for permission to register.

Elective

In this course, we will create site-specific projections that breathe new life onto the built environment. Working in the lineage of street art and guerrilla performance, we will explore the relationship between art, public space and the communities we inhabit. How is projection a tool of public communication? How can light and movement reshape architecture and human behavior? We will research sites, understand their stories, develop creative interventions, build prototypes and work collaboratively to design ephemeral public installations.

Elective