Douglas Rosman

This team-taught introductory studio provides a foundation for creative work across contemporary media practices. Students explore how systems, tools, and materials co-exist in an expansive ecosystem of technical possibility, to be mixed and used to create works that engage with technology as tool, medium, and terrain for playful exploration.
Through hands-on workshop modules, individual projects and possibilities for collaboration, the course introduces approaches drawn from creative coding, electronics, 3D, games, and related media to create responsive, time-based, and interactive audiovisual works. Creative misuse, tinkering, hacking, probing and breaking are strongly encouraged. Students gain a broad interdisciplinary grounding in the skills, concepts, histories, and key areas of inquiry necessary for informed artistic engagement with technology.
Weekly sessions combine technical instruction with conceptual framing, encouraging students to develop their own ideas while introducing the broader AT/SP curriculum, pathways, and areas of practice. No prior experience required.

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.

This studio course investigates the creative possibilities in programming, from interactivity to information visualization. Students explore software art, generative systems, simulations and emergent behaviors, interactive narratives, and other code-based forms. Lectures and demonstrations provide a conceptual, aesthetic and technical foundation in programming as a creative practice. Techniques and concepts are presented through the open-source web-based creative coding library p5.js, along with an introduction to HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Midterm and final projects will build on in-class workshops, technical exercises, critical readings and discussions.

'Artificial Intelligence' (AI) has infiltrated many corners of our lives. Once used primarily to identify, track, and predict things in the world, AI (a convenient shorthand for 'machine learning') has now become generative - producing images, language, and anything else that can be parsed as data. Through a hands-on curriculum, students will explore AI tools to create images, video, audio and more, and will approach these AI systems as tools to augment a creative practice, as well as a medium and material in themselves. This course foregrounds experimentation and play as a means to develop a critical understanding of AI and the ethical implications of its use in creative production (and beyond), engaging in discourse around ideas of authenticity, authorship, and labor. Ultimately, students will leave this class with a broad understanding of how AI operates in the world today, and what it means to incorporate this technology into a creative practice.
The course will be technically rigorous, emphasizing a broad exploration of generative AI tools including but not limited to: text-to-image models like Stable Diffusion, text-to-video, Large Language Models, Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), and generative audio. Although having coding experience will benefit students, this course emphasizes flexibility with technology and software over coding proficiency. Readings and screenings will draw from the work of artists and thinkers like Sofia Crespo, Memo Akten, Mario Klingemann, Hito Steyerl, Trevor Paglen, Joy Buolamwini, Sarah Meyohas, Anna Ridler and Alex Mordvintsev who have been engaging critically with AI since the mid-2010s.
Students will work individually and collaboratively on smaller scale projects early in the semester, producing and sharing works each week. The course will culminate in a larger scale final project and critique. Students will also maintain a 'sketchbook' documenting their experiments and methods throughout the semester.

This seminar introduces topics, theories, strategies, and histories fundamental to the two complementary areas of Art + Technology / Sound Practices (AT/SP). Designed as an immersion into the department's intertwined legacies and curriculum, it is intended for first-year AT/SP graduate students, but open to all in the Graduate Program. The seminar is taught by two faculty who represent the AT and SP areas, each providing a focused approach in small-group settings.
Art + Technology: Hito Steyrel, Kelly Pendergrast, Jenny Odell, Wendy Chun, Antonio Negri, Raqs Media Collective, Olia Lialina,Trevor Paglan, Olia Lialina, Rafael Lozanno Hemmer, Micha Cardenas, Harun Farocki, Liam Gillick, Ian Cheng, Casey Reas, Auria Harvey, Stephanie Dinkins.
Sound: Samson Young, Mendi + Keith Obadike, Alvin Lucier, Eliane Radigue, Laetitia Sonami, Imai Norio, Christina Kubisch, Pamela Z, Cauleen Smith, Christoph Cox, George E. Lewis, Seth Kim-Cohen, Julia Eckhardt, Pierre Schaeffer, Jean-Luc Nancy, Joseph Grigely, Dylan Robinson.
Weekly readings and discussions are required, as well as informed responses to artists¿ works presented. students will present work for critique and fully particpate in critique sessions.

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.

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.