Undergraduate Overview

This course will introduce students to basic techniques of working with sound as an artistic material. As a prerequisite for many of the department's upper level offerings, the class is designed to familiarize the student with both the technology and the historical and aesthetic background relevant to our facilities and courses, to the field of 'sound art' and experimental music in general, and to the application of sound in other disciplines (video, film, performance, installations, etc.) Equipment covered will include microphones, mixers, analog and digital audio recorders, signal processors and analog synthesizers. Hard-disk based recording and editing (ProTools) is introduced, but the focus is on more traditional analog studio technology. The physics of sound will be a recurring subject.

Examples of music and sound art, created using similar technology to that in our studios, will be played or performed and discussed in class. The listening list will vary according to the instructors' preferences. Readings are similarly set according to the instructors' syllabus: some sections employ more or less reading than others, contact specific instructors for details.

Students are expected to use studio time to complete weekly assignments, which are designed to hone technical skills and, in most cases, foster artistic innovation. Some of these projects can incorporate outside resources (such as the student's own computers and recordings), but the emphasis is on mastering the studio.

This course will introduce students to basic techniques of working with sound as an artistic material. As a prerequisite for many of the department's upper level offerings, the class is designed to familiarize the student with both the technology and the historical and aesthetic background relevant to our facilities and courses, to the field of 'sound art' and experimental music in general, and to the application of sound in other disciplines (video, film, performance, installations, etc.) Equipment covered will include microphones, mixers, analog and digital audio recorders, signal processors and analog synthesizers. Hard-disk based recording and editing (ProTools) is introduced, but the focus is on more traditional analog studio technology. The physics of sound will be a recurring subject.

Examples of music and sound art, created using similar technology to that in our studios, will be played or performed and discussed in class. The listening list will vary according to the instructors' preferences. Readings are similarly set according to the instructors' syllabus: some sections employ more or less reading than others, contact specific instructors for details.

Students are expected to use studio time to complete weekly assignments, which are designed to hone technical skills and, in most cases, foster artistic innovation. Some of these projects can incorporate outside resources (such as the student's own computers and recordings), but the emphasis is on mastering the studio.

This course will introduce students to basic techniques of working with sound as an artistic material. As a prerequisite for many of the department's upper level offerings, the class is designed to familiarize the student with both the technology and the historical and aesthetic background relevant to our facilities and courses, to the field of 'sound art' and experimental music in general, and to the application of sound in other disciplines (video, film, performance, installations, etc.) Equipment covered will include microphones, mixers, analog and digital audio recorders, signal processors and analog synthesizers. Hard-disk based recording and editing (ProTools) is introduced, but the focus is on more traditional analog studio technology. The physics of sound will be a recurring subject.

Examples of music and sound art, created using similar technology to that in our studios, will be played or performed and discussed in class. The listening list will vary according to the instructors' preferences. Readings are similarly set according to the instructors' syllabus: some sections employ more or less reading than others, contact specific instructors for details.

Students are expected to use studio time to complete weekly assignments, which are designed to hone technical skills and, in most cases, foster artistic innovation. Some of these projects can incorporate outside resources (such as the student's own computers and recordings), but the emphasis is on mastering the studio.

Consider how object based movement creates both meaning and tone, and how movement functions much like non-verbal communication. We'll attempt to approach the technical matters of controlling motion from the aesthetic perspective of an animator or a dancer. The course introduces basic techniques for creating moving parts appropriate for a broad range of creative and material practices. Technical matters covered through exercises include motors, speed control, fabrication of moving parts and simple circuits for motor control. Self-determined projects will demonstrate mastery of skills and concepts.

This team-taught, introductory course provides a foundation for most additional coursework in the Art and Technology Studies department. Students are given a broad interdisciplinary grounding in the skills, concepts, and hands-on experiences they will need to engage the potentials of new technologies in art making. Every other week, a lecture and discussion group exposes students to concepts of electronic media, perception, inter-media composition, emerging venues, and other issues important to artists working with technologically based media. Students will attend a morning & afternoon section each day to gain hands-on experience with a variety of forms and techniques central to technologically-based art making.

This team-taught, introductory course provides a foundation for most additional coursework in the Art and Technology Studies department. Students are given a broad interdisciplinary grounding in the skills, concepts, and hands-on experiences they will need to engage the potentials of new technologies in art making. Every other week, a lecture and discussion group exposes students to concepts of electronic media, perception, inter-media composition, emerging venues, and other issues important to artists working with technologically based media. Students will attend a morning & afternoon section each day to gain hands-on experience with a variety of forms and techniques central to technologically-based art making.

What are the concerns that drive one's creative practice? How does one set the terms for its future development? Sophomore Seminar offers strategies for students to explore, reflect upon, and connect common themes and interests in the development of an emerging creative practice that will serve as the basis of their ongoing studies at SAIC and beyond. Students will examine historical and contemporary influences and contextualize their work in relation to the diverse art-worlds of the 21st Century. Readings, screenings, and field trips will vary each semester. Presentations by visiting artists and guest speakers will provide the opportunity for students to hear unique perspectives on sustaining a creative practice. One-on-one meetings with faculty will provide students with individualized mentorship throughout the semester. During interdisciplinary critiques, students will explore a variety of formats and tools to analyze work and provide peer feedback. The class mid-term project asks students to imagine a plan for their creative life and devise a self-directed course of study for their time at school. The course concludes with an assignment asking students to develop and document a project or body of work demonstrating how the interplay of ideas, technical skills, and formal concerns evolve through iteration, experimentation and revision.

Prerequisite: Must be a sophomore to enroll.

This course is offered for those students interested in developing skills in the creation and application of digital audio. Using Apple's Logic software, students interested in exploring sound or music are introduced to audio manipulation techniques that allow them to create soundtracks, to record and produce songs or dance tracks, realize abstract sound pieces or manipulate sound for installations.
Techniques of sound manipulation are introduced, including audio recording and editing, looping, and sound destruction. MIDI, drum programming, the use of software synthesis and basic music and composition techniques are addressed according to the needs of individual students.
The class is structured to encourage the interaction of students with a wide range of technical ability in audio from beginners to advanced artists in the early stages of a professional practice.

Mirrors, alter egos, polarities, doppelgängers, gender binaries, impostors, twins, and shadows. Many auditory illusions also arise from doubles. For example, the two sides of the human head can produce psychoacoustic phenomena, such as binaural beats. The dual nature of audio-visual experiences can produce complex illusions, such as the McGurk effect. To knock at the door of these doubles, we will read a few words on doubles by doubles--Jung and Lacan, Sontag and Butler, Sartre and Fosse, Fanon and Said, Artaud and Bataille--and listen to sonic doubles in contemporary practice. Automatic writing will prepare us to create our own auditory illusions in recorded and performed stereophonic sound. Will these doubles sublate?

This course introduces students to the fundamental materials of music composition, the structures used to shape these materials, and techniques and strategies students can use to create fully formed pieces of music. Referencing traditional and experimental practices from many cultures and histories, we examine the basic musical elements of rhythm, meter, tonal organization, harmony, and timbre. These are applied in a digital studio environment via sampling, sound synthesis, looping, and live recording using Apple's Logic digital audio workstation.
Musical works by artists from diverse backgrounds and identities are analyzed to understand how these materials and concepts are used to sculpt emotional expressions, narrative forms, abstract constructions, or conceptual statements. Students work with these references, elements, and materials to make their own work in genres of their own choice. No style of music is off limits.
Course work will vary but typically includes participation in weekly experiments and the presentation of self-devised projects at midterm and the end of the semester. Students work with the materials, structures, and techniques introduced to make their own work in genres of their own choice.

What can analog electronics teach us about making art in a world shaped by digital systems? This hands-on studio explores circuits as creative tools, focusing on sound, light, and motion as expressive media-without relying on code or software. Students can step outside the shadow of AI and mass computation to explore a more intimate relationship between materials, energy and creativity-while experimenting with performance, interactive objects, audiovisual instruments, and installations. Alongside studio practice, we will look at artists who have expanded the possibilities of analog media and study pioneering tools such as the Sandin Image Processor, a patch-programmable analog computer. Students will be invited to connect these histories and techniques to their own practices through the creation of a final project. No prior experience is required-only curiosity, imagination, and a willingness to learn.

Students will investigate scent as an expressive medium. They will have access to the ATS Perfume Organ and specialized lab equipment. Course content includes basic aromatic blending, hydro-distillation extraction techniques and how to impregnate scent into various media. At least TWO works of Olfactory Art are to be completed. The last one is considered the FINAL and should be an opus ready for gallery/performance/experiential application.Students should leave this class with the ability to thoughtfully engage Olfactory Work as practitioners, researchers and thinkers within personal, historical, theoretical and conceptual contexts.

This course focuses on the relationship of sound to moving image, and introduces post-production techniques and strategies that address this relationship as a compositional imperative. Thorough instruction is given on digital audio post-production techniques for moving image, including recording, sound file imports, soundtrack composition and assembly, sound design, and mixing in stereo and surround-sound. This is supplemented by presentations on acoustics and auditory perception. Assigned readings in theories and strategies of sound-image relationships inform studio instruction. Assigned projects focus on gaining post-production skills, and students produce independent projects of their own that integrate sound and moving image.

Artists include Chantal Dumas, Walter Verdin, Deborah Stratman, Lucrecia Martel, Martin Scorcese, Abigail Child, Frederic Moffet, Gyorgi Palvi, Francis Ford Coppola, Gary Hill, and others. Writings in theory include texts by Michel Chion, Rick Altman, and others.

The student?s independent image-and-sound work is foregrounded and supported; supplemental assigned projects include sound sequence composition and ADR recording and mixing.

The focus of this class will be on improvisation within and without traditions and in relationship and juxtaposition to genre and structure. There are many manifestations across cultures of freedom and transformation through improvisation. We will look at improvisational sound, music and performance and their potentials and outcomes -- from moments of imaginative exploration inside the form, to the search for freedom, discovery and re-contextualization. We will dig into the need for improvisation, its effect on the audience, and its power to provoke cultural change. Can improvisation be a practice as a whole, an approach to all forms?
Improvisation in performance and practice takes us to new places that are of the moment and a way forward, as exemplified in the work of the provocative Egyptian vocalist Umm Kalsoum who broke gender norms; Sun Ra¿s sonic storytelling and myth building based on Black American cultural signifiers; the genre-bending deconstructive electronic manipulations of Mixmaster Mike. The students¿ individual and collective explorations of improvisation in their own practice will be fueled by discussions, recordings, performance documentation and texts by artists, practitioners, and writers, including Rob Mazurek, Tomeka Reid & Nicole Mitchell, Wadada Leo Smith, Sun Ra, Umm Kalsoum, Kid Koala & Mixmaster Mike, and more.
Students engage in a variety of in-class approaches to individual and collective improvisation. These include exercises on exploring and expanding one's instrument of choice, close-listening and responsive-listening projects aimed at increased attention to collaborators in the moment, and projects in which cross-cultural and historical approaches to improvisation are analyzed and mobilized towards individual interpretation. These are amplified by meetings with visiting artists who share their experiences of improvisation in a wide range of contexts.

With a concentration on creative practice in online environments, students will focus on the work of women, from the early days of computing, to the late 20th century, to the 21st century. In addition to lectures, readings, and traversals, practicum segments will guide student creation of online works that explore and expand on the role of women in cyberspace. Beginning with the work of women software engineers, such as black mathematician Katherine Johnson, engineer and transgender activist Lynn Conway, and Margaret Hamilton -- and with a project-oriented focus -- the course will look at the cyberspace-based work of women artist innovators, including ECHONYC founder, Stacy Horn; Cave Automatic Virtual Environment developer Carolina Cruz-Neira; and Ping Fu and Colleen Bushell's role in graphical interface design for Mosaic. At its core, the course will focus on the works of women cyberartists, including Joan Jonas, Sherrie Rabinowitz, Nancy Paterson, Brenda Laurel, Pamela Z, Char Davies, JR Carpenter, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Shu Lea Cheang, Tamiko Thiel, Carla Gannis, and Micha Cardenas. Students will create women-centered virtual art works, including graphic narratives and electronic manuscripts, and/or archives, online essays, or criticism.

Note that because Women Artists in Cyberspace is an asynchronous class, attendance on a specific day or time is not required.

This is a class is hardware hacking for audio applications (and a little video as well). No previous electronic experience is assumed. Basic soldering skills will be learned through building contact microphones and coils to sniff electromagnetic fields. We will then open up a range of battery-powered 'consumer' technology (radios, boom boxes, electronic toys), observe the effect of direct hand contact on the circuit boards, experiment with the substitution of components, and listen to unheard signals running through the circuit. Knowledge acquired through this process will be applied to building circuits from scratch (oscillators, amplifiers, fuzztones, sequencers etc.), both from documented designs and as invented by yourselves.

Video and audio playback and performance as relevant to the class projects. Readings from the required textbook, Handmade Electronic Music -- The Art of Hardware Hacking.

Numerous projects to be completed in and out of class; final project based on course material.

This course explores the foundations of modular analog synthesis, working hands-on with oscillators, amplifiers, and filters to create original sound works. Students will use both vintage and contemporary equipment to learn frequency and amplitude modulation, sequencing, frequency shifting, and other core processes that shaped the history of electronic music.

Historical case studies situate these techniques within the work of pioneering composers such as Stockhausen, Radigue, Koenig, Subotnik, Oliveros, and Spiegel, connecting classical studio methods to contemporary practice. Weekly compositional projects encourage students to apply specific technical strategies while developing their own aesthetic approach. By the end of the course, students will have produced a portfolio of analog compositions that reflect both technical fluency and creative exploration in modular synthesis.

This kinetics course will explore the activation of art projects with materials that flow, inflate, pump, pour and move in unique ways. Demonstrations will introduce: basic electronics, pneumatics, air-muscles, inflatables, pumps, motors, actuators and the necessary means to power these devices. This course will explore materials and their unique properties when activated by these processes. Students will learn various techniques to animate and control art projects, including the use of the Arduino micro-controller and sensors.
Throughout the course, screenings and readings will introduce students to artists who work with kinetics, robotics and related fields. Artists shown and discussed in class include: Theo Jansen, Rapheal Lozano-Hemmer, Chico Mac Murtrie, Rebecca Horn. Students will be introduced to organizations, galleries and networks that support this type of art work including ARS Electronica, Rhizome and Bitforms gallery.
A series of workshops and smaller assignments will expose students to the potentials of these devices and processes in art making. Next, students will develop projects that utilize one or more of the systems covered in class. Students will be guided in project proposal development where ideas will be explored in group discussions. Mechanical and electronic fabrication techniques will be further explored through project development. Completed projects will be evaluated in group critiques.

Computer vision allows machines to see and understand their environment. This course will equip students with the practical skills and critical theory needed to both employ and critically engage these techniques. Processing images and video with code, real-time body tracking and object detection with machine learning will be emphasized. Techniques and concepts are presented through the creative coding library p5.js, and through node-based tools like TouchDesigner. Students will explore and critique contemporary applications ranging from automated mass surveillance to interactive installations. A final project will build on in-class workshops, technical exercises, critical readings and discussions.

Light is a material that can be shaped to express ideas, create experiences and increase the communicative potential of objects and spaces. Through a combination of lectures, demos, fields trips and most of all, hands-on lab work, students develop a degree of self sufficiency in the design, construction and prototyping of illuminated objects, physical graphics and environmental lighting. Students learn basic electronic and electrical circuit design, lamp specification and experiment with illumination technologies including incandescent, LED and cold cathode (neon).

In this course we will work in collaborative teams to produce projects to enter the first annual Biodesign Challenge, a competition to envision the future of synthetic biology.

Synthetic biology is the design and construction of life itself; the engineering of living organisms as biological machines. The field consists of scientists, industries, artists, and citizens using known fundamentals governing how biology works on a submicro-level in order to create meaningful alterations to how life functions. This hybrid studio/science course will introduce students to the theory and techniques of microbial genetic engineering while placing it in a larger cultural, ethical and artistic context. Students will learn and explore the basics of biology of all living organisms with an emphasis on single celled organisms, supported by lab work with bacterial cultures, DNA extraction and manipulation, polymerase chain reaction and gel electrophoresis. Fluency with these lab techniques will enable critical consideration of research and experimentation in biological science and in art and design. Studio projects will focus on designing systems and experiments to utilize this technology conceptually and creatively.

The course will culminate in a design summit in New York City, an exhibition of winning projects, and a publication in print and online.

What is a feminist sonic memory practice? This studio will explore the intersections of feminist theory, memory, and creative, sonic practices. We will explore the social, cultural, cognitive, political and technological influences on how, what and why individuals, groups and societies remember, and importantly how we forget. How is the creative use of sound and music used to remember and to engage in the production of personal, historical and cultural memories? How might it be used to transform memory and practices of remembering and listening?
We will explore rich and complex artistic and research methods to work with archives, memory materials, and feminist theory and practice from an interdisciplinary approach that draws from memory studies, archive theory, experimental and electronic music, soundscape and musique concrete, media studies and cultural theory.
We'll examine the work of an eclectic, interdisciplinary group of artists and theorists engaged in sonic and multimedia archival projects including: Matana Roberts, Yvette Janine Jackson, Gascia Ouzonian, Stephanie Syjuco, Marshall Trammell, Tacita Dean, Salome Voegelin, Domietta Torlasco, and Annea Lockwood.
Coursework will include weekly readings/listenings/watchings as well as short written or creative sonic responses. The required mid-term and final projects can be individual or collaborative and can take the form of interdisciplinary sound works, or hybrid artistic research approaches like sound essays. Students will be expected to actively engaged in class discussions and be self-guided in their research and individual creative practices, applying concepts to their own projects.

Drawing Machines is a studio course that introduces the use of mechanical apparatus and digital technology to produce drawings, paintings and sequential images. Course participants will experiment with ways that their creative expression can be produced using rules based systems, chance operations and disembodied practices. These methods of translation will be used as starting places for studio based outcomes using pen plotters, CNC machines and other mechanical devices. Prior experience with digital modes of making is useful but not required.
Drawing Machines will explore both historical and contemporary developments in technology that have made it possible for artists, designers and architects to use mechanical devices to express their ideas and produce images. Readings, screenings and examples will engage course participants with a range of critical and theoretical positions towards machine made and systems based forms of production. Artists will include Alberto Aguilar, Arno Beck, Daniel Catt, Sougwen Chung, Andee Collard, fingacode, Licia He, Jean-Pierrre Hébert, Eva Hesse, Carl Lostritto, Jennifer McCoy, Manfred Mohr, Vera Molnár, Wangechi Mutu, Lisa Orth, Casey Reas, Marcelo Soria Rodríguez, Sonia Sheridan, Maksim Surguy, Sol Le Witt, Emily Xie and more.
Course participants will produce a body of work drawn from their personal creative interests using analog rules based systems, coded instructions and machine made outcomes.

In this introduction to the theory, tools, and techniques of three-dimensional imaging, students study the structure of light and the ways in which it can convey information, and familiarize themselves with the basic tool of holography, the laser. Students make several different styles of holograms, some viewable in laser light, and some in white light. Techniques involving spatial juxtaposition and montage are also explored. The focus is on developing a working knowledge of the medium from the perspective of its artistic possibilities.

Readings will include journal articles that touch on the history, techniques, and aesthetics of holography. Some of the artists we will consider include Sally Weber, Mary Harman, Paula Dawson, and John Kaufman. We will also look at prior student work and discuss holography as an interdisciplinary, installation-based practice in addition to holography as a medium in and of itself. Lastly, we will discuss the unique issues around and strategies for exhibiting holographic works.

Over the course of the semester, students should expect to produce a body of work of laser- and/or white-light-viewable holograms over a sequence of assignments that conceptually build off one another, and work collaboratively to produce a digital hologram.

How do organisms, environments, and technologies communicate with one another? This hybrid studio invites students to explore unconventional channels of interaction¿across human, non-human, and technological systems¿through hands-on experiments in art and science. Students will learn methods for growing and caring for organisms such as plants, fungi, and slime molds, and pair them with electronic interfaces to create surprising collaborations: mushrooms generating sound, houseplants controlling machines, or slime molds participating in digital processes. Along the way, students will gain skills in coding, electronics, and robotics, while considering the ecological and cultural contexts of interspecies communication. Course projects culminate in a final work shaped by each student¿s own practice. No prior experience is required¿only curiosity, imagination, and a willingness to experiment.

Advanced Neon expands the possibilities of light as an artistic medium, guiding students from foundational bending techniques into projects that merge craft, technology, and conceptual exploration. Students will experiment with animation, CAD-based design, phosphor coating, Arduino-driven systems, and professional-standard installation and assembly methods, including alternatives using modern tools such as 3D printing. Readings and demos will draw from both technical sources as well as the work of artists who have extended neon into sculpture, performance, and cultural critique. By the end of the course, students will have designed and produced an exhibition-ready neon work grounded in both technical skill and conceptual perspective.

Note: Students not meeting the pre-requisite may contact the instructor to seek permission to join the class.

Through lectures, presentations, listening, and construction this course surveys traditional and folk instruments of many cultures-mostly non-Western ones. Some theory of how sound propagates from materials and shapes is explored. Students build instruments initially from readily available materials of the instructor's choosing¿harps, xylophones, wind chimes, etc. The form final projects take is chosen by students and may include performing instruments, sound sculptures, simple electro-acoustic devices, etc. Instrument craftspeople may visit the class. Students may be required to make field trips to material suppliers and instrument factories and schools to inspire their individual projects.

Public Sound and Space explores situating sound-based art practices, including performance and installation, into public space. Projects are conceptualized and developed in response to specific locations found in and around Chicago, determined by students in coordination with the instructor. The course examines public space and architecture through historical and contemporary sound practices, as well as the non-art uses of sound and its employment in public space. Technical workshops emphasize sound projection, acoustics, and mixing for complicated sonic environments and playback systems. In collaboration with the Public Light and Space course, students will work in pairs to mount a large-scale sound and video work to be projected onto the Merchandise Mart, a significant building in the Loop. Bi-monthly in-class meetings between Public Sound and Space and Public Light and Space will catalyze collaboration, hold technical and conceptual critiques, and accommodate workshops to address sound and image workflow. Facilitated by Art on the Mart, an art initiative presenting international artists, the work will be on view daily for 6 weeks capturing an audience of roughly 300,000 people.
We will study the works of artists including Susan Philipsz, Park McArthur, Ryoji Ikeda, Cevdet Erek, and Cameron Rowland. Readings include Miwon Kwon, Niall Atkinson, and others.
In addition to the collaborative Art on the Mart project, students will research, propose, and develop a public sound work in response to a site of their choosing for the final.

This studio course challenges students to rethink conventional ideas of 'the future' using design, gaming strategies, and visualization methods to create compelling alternatives. Through live-action role play (LARP) and guided reflection, students collaboratively design an emergent world over the course of a semester. Each session introduces new challenges, pushing students to respond to evolving scenarios while considering their ethical implications. The class combines LARP tools, game strategy, design principles, scenario planning, and speculative design to explore speculative ideas and create immersive, thought-provoking futures. The course structure is episodic, encouraging creative problem-solving and ethical engagement throughout.
Some of the artists/ designers/ futurists / studios we will study in this course include artist, researcher, game designer Carina Erdmann, artist and designer Ash Eliza Smith who employs storytelling, worldbuilding, and speculative design to craft new realities. Chris Woebken and Elliott Montgomery's Extrapolation Factory explores experiential futures through workshops and object visualizations. Stuart Candy, a futurist, also contributes to the field. We will review and discuss works such as *War Game*, a future-set simulation; Alternate Reality Games at UChicago with Fourcast Lab; and *Papers*, a playful LARP that explores corporate culture.
Course work will include weekly practical and research based assignments: students will develop visualizations of spaces, objects, or graphics that bring to life their proposals related to scenarios for the game scenario and gather knowledge of a range of new technologies and the future scenarios they imply.

This studio course challenges students to rethink conventional ideas of 'the future' using design, gaming strategies, and visualization methods to create compelling alternatives. Through live-action role play (LARP) and guided reflection, students collaboratively design an emergent world over the course of a semester. Each session introduces new challenges, pushing students to respond to evolving scenarios while considering their ethical implications. The class combines LARP tools, game strategy, design principles, scenario planning, and speculative design to explore speculative ideas and create immersive, thought-provoking futures. The course structure is episodic, encouraging creative problem-solving and ethical engagement throughout.
Some of the artists/ designers/ futurists / studios we will study in this course include artist, researcher, game designer Carina Erdmann, artist and designer Ash Eliza Smith who employs storytelling, worldbuilding, and speculative design to craft new realities. Chris Woebken and Elliott Montgomery's Extrapolation Factory explores experiential futures through workshops and object visualizations. Stuart Candy, a futurist, also contributes to the field. We will review and discuss works such as *War Game*, a future-set simulation; Alternate Reality Games at UChicago with Fourcast Lab; and *Papers*, a playful LARP that explores corporate culture.
Course work will include weekly practical and research based assignments: students will develop visualizations of spaces, objects, or graphics that bring to life their proposals related to scenarios for the game scenario and gather knowledge of a range of new technologies and the future scenarios they imply.

This course explores what it means to engage in dialogue with an AI prompting system, focusing on the design of multi-modal interfaces and their effects on both the quality of interaction and the creation of prototypes and artifacts. Students will experiment with different 'languages' for AI communication, such as voice (tone, cadence, emotion), bodily gestures, and environmental factors (light, sound, humidity), as ways to influence¿and be influenced by¿AI behaviors. Through a series of hands-on experiments, the course navigates the space between biological ('human') and cultural ('AI') processes, offering new perspectives on hybrid outcomes co-generated by these interactions. The aim is to foster a critical understanding of emerging AI systems, positioning students to engage with AI thoughtfully rather than as a mere technological tool.
The course builds on Cultural and Feminist Studies, as a way to depart from the dichotomy human/AI, and move towards their understanding as entities that collaborate and promt each other. References include Donna Haraway's Cyborg Manifesto, Langdon Winner's politics of artifacts, which addresses the ways in which technology embeds social and cultural values; Rosi Braidotti's work on Posthumanism. Theoretical foundations will be accompanied by the discussion of existing practices and past interactions, including the work of John Funge, Sherry Turkle, Meredith Broussard, and the study of other formats, linked to the design of bots for social media use.
Across the semester, there will be a range of assignment asking students to explore the impact of different non-normative `languages¿ -such as body, sight, the environment, on the crafting of new dialogic modes with AI.

This course explores what it means to engage in dialogue with an AI prompting system, focusing on the design of multi-modal interfaces and their effects on both the quality of interaction and the creation of prototypes and artifacts. Students will experiment with different 'languages' for AI communication, such as voice (tone, cadence, emotion), bodily gestures, and environmental factors (light, sound, humidity), as ways to influence¿and be influenced by¿AI behaviors. Through a series of hands-on experiments, the course navigates the space between biological ('human') and cultural ('AI') processes, offering new perspectives on hybrid outcomes co-generated by these interactions. The aim is to foster a critical understanding of emerging AI systems, positioning students to engage with AI thoughtfully rather than as a mere technological tool.
The course builds on Cultural and Feminist Studies, as a way to depart from the dichotomy human/AI, and move towards their understanding as entities that collaborate and promt each other. References include Donna Haraway's Cyborg Manifesto, Langdon Winner's politics of artifacts, which addresses the ways in which technology embeds social and cultural values; Rosi Braidotti's work on Posthumanism. Theoretical foundations will be accompanied by the discussion of existing practices and past interactions, including the work of John Funge, Sherry Turkle, Meredith Broussard, and the study of other formats, linked to the design of bots for social media use.
Across the semester, there will be a range of assignment asking students to explore the impact of different non-normative `languages¿ -such as body, sight, the environment, on the crafting of new dialogic modes with AI.

Public Light and Space explores how artists use light to shape public environments, creating works that invite interaction, alter perception, and transform shared spaces. The course engages with histories and theories of public art while critically examining the dynamic role of light in selected movements and practices. Students will conceptualize and plan site-responsive projects for specific locations across Chicago, with attention to methods such as digital projection, controlled light sources, and light-responsive materials.

The course offers a distinctive opportunity: a collaboration with Public Sound & Space (led by Austen Brown) to produce new large-scale projection and sound works for Art on the Mart, the monumental projection site on the historic Merchandise Mart building. Each student team will design an original artwork to be exhibited nightly for six weeks, reaching an audience of nearly 300,000 viewers.

A sequence of technical workshops supports skill development, while visiting artists, critics, and community members provide feedback throughout the creative process. The semester culminates in the public debut of student works on one of the world's largest projection canvases.

This course fosters an actively engaged micro-community to support the successful development and completion of advanced projects in experimental media and sound. An advanced project is an ambitious endeavor that may require special technical skills, hardware, or software as well as an environment for in-depth technical and conceptual research. Advanced projects in this class will have a measurable or tangible outcome, flowing from a formal peer-reviewed proposal. Works produced may be showcased in thesis shows, the department's Waveforms festival, or in self-organized exhibitions or events making use of department facilities or affiliated venues in the city. Students will participate in discussions informed by the project proposal and share technical skills while working individually with the instructor for advising, tutorials and discussion as needed to facilitate the advanced project.

Using the historic technological resources of the Retro Lab, this class examines the signal generation and processing potential of early audio and video synthesizer devices and laboratory test equipment. Through hands-on access to these materials, the class explores what happens when these often-modular systems for sight and sound are interfaced with each and set to interact, feedback, and/or generally wreak havoc as signals cross the audio and visual domains. Synesthesia, pareidolia, and euphoria are all explored alongside Muzak, screensavers, and wallpaper.
Through the work of artists such as Steina and Woody Vasulka, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Nam Jun Paik, Brian Eno, and others we will explore themes that include sound and video cross-synthesis, generative systems for art, feedback, iteration, using fithe studio as an instrumentfl, and real-time vs. non-real-time studio production.
Course work will vary but will generally include weekly studio exercises to build proficiency with the technology and two to three portfolio projects that will be shared during formal class critiques.

As a growing, hybrid form of art, experimental video games deal and intersect with themes of politics and society, architecture, design, storytelling; they subvert common commercial tropes of popular games, and more. Students will play, analyze, and discuss a variety of recent and older games, increase their literacy with the field, and apply the ideas learned in creating their own games or interactive digital artworks. Access to a Mac or Windows computer for playing and developing games is required. Workshops will be taught for the Twine and Unity 3D (C#) game creation tools. No prior experience required.

This experimental studio explores the token-a small unit that carries outsized meaning. Throughout history, tokens have served as ritual offerings, markers of exchange from knotted Andean quipu cords to arcade tokens, and the elemental units of language: letters, words, bits of code. As figures, tokens may expand meaning or collapse it into the trivial. In contemporary AI, tokens are the building blocks through which machines generate text, images, and voice. Together we will approach the token as both material and metaphor, reshaping how language and symbols circulate in artistic practice.

Students will engage digital poetics in many forms: lettristic and visual compositions, interactive and algorithmic writing, and performances where language becomes embodied or extended through code. Tokens will be reimagined as digital embroidery, augmented reality overlays, and hybrid artifacts that straddle physical and virtual worlds, while also functioning as the generative units of such outputs across media.

Weekly workshops introduce concepts in creative coding, media theory, AI, and generative poetics in ways accessible to all backgrounds, while ample time is devoted to experimentation, risk-taking, and collaboration on self-devised projects. No prior technical experience is required, but students should be prepared to assert creative agency, draw upon their unique skills and backgrounds, and contribute to a collaborative, exploratory classroom environment.

This course introduces sound production techniques, basic acoustics, and fundamental listening skills that can be incorporated into many studio practices, including installation, performance, cinema, new media, and others. It is directed at graduate students who have little formal training in sound who want to incorporate sound more robustly into their work. The focus is on sound production tools, techniques, and skills that are readily available to the individual without the need for specialized facilities.
The course is skills-based and not historical or theoretical. Readings will include information on basic acoustics, sound production tools and techniques, Pauline Oliveros's 'Deep Listening' exercises, and fundamentals of auditory perception.
Individual production projects based on each student's practice and specific needs.

This seminar focuses on the presentation of technological and sound works in exhibition and live performance contexts. It is a required seminar for second-semester AT/SP graduate students. Students will develop skills for presenting their work in a professional manner to maximize the public's encounter with media installations, live performances with media and/or sound components, video/sound screenings or installations, conceptual art works, and alternative curatorial scenarios.
We will survey a number of artists' works specifically as they were presented in exhibitions or events, and include visiting professionals who are experts in exhibition installation, media arts presentation, and live performance production. We will specifically draw on SAIC staff for these expertise.
Students will present their work and that of others in small- and large-group exhibitions and presentations both on and off campus.

This seminar focuses on the presentation of technological and sound works in exhibition and live performance contexts. It is a required seminar for second-semester AT/SP graduate students. Students will develop skills for presenting their work in a professional manner to maximize the public's encounter with media installations, live performances with media and/or sound components, video/sound screenings or installations, conceptual art works, and alternative curatorial scenarios.
We will survey a number of artists' works specifically as they were presented in exhibitions or events, and include visiting professionals who are experts in exhibition installation, media arts presentation, and live performance production. We will specifically draw on SAIC staff for these expertise.
Students will present their work and that of others in small- and large-group exhibitions and presentations both on and off campus.

This interdisciplinary seminar explores the use of the human voice in performance, sound art, text-based work, social practice, installation, etc. The root of our investigation is the voice as human utterance and material encounter, both live and mediated. We shall interrogate and experiment with the interaction of the voice¿s semiotic and acoustic aspects, its potential to unite and rupture, and the aesthetic, situational, technological, gendered, racial, political, historical, and social aspects of text, language, voice, expression, and communication. Critiques of student work are supplemented by readings and screenings of works by artists, writers, historians, theorists, and linguists.

Works by artists, writers, historians, theorists, and linguists include Sarah Hennies, Christine Sun Kim, Benjamin Lee Whorf, Mendi and Keith Obadike, Alessandro Bosetti, Norie Neumark, Clarice Lispector, The Last Poets, Jeanne Favret-Saada, Roland Barthes, Jaap Blonk, Pamela Z, Mladen Dolar, Douglas Kahn, Sarah Nooter, Frances Dyson, Gregory Whitehead, Daniela Cascella, F. T. Marinetti, Timothy Donaldson, Alfred Wohlfson, and others.

All speech acts and vocalizations -- and the way those are listened to by others -- carry with them a panoply of cultural, gendered, historical and political implications, overtly or covertly. Thus, the topic is inherently one that embraces discourse on diversity, inclusion, identity, and power relations.

Taken every semester, the Graduate Projects courses allow students to focus in private sessions on the development of their work. Students register for 6 hours of Graduate Project credit in each semester of study.

Taken every semester, the Graduate Projects courses allow students to focus in private sessions on the development of their work. Students register for 6 hours of Graduate Project credit in each semester of study.

Taken every semester, the Graduate Projects courses allow students to focus in private sessions on the development of their work. Students register for 6 hours of Graduate Project credit in each semester of study.

Taken every semester, the Graduate Projects courses allow students to focus in private sessions on the development of their work. Students register for 6 hours of Graduate Project credit in each semester of study.

Taken every semester, the Graduate Projects courses allow students to focus in private sessions on the development of their work. Students register for 6 hours of Graduate Project credit in each semester of study.