I’m delighted to announce another new degree program in my university: the “Master of Tangible Interaction Design”, spearheaded by Professor Mark Gross, who also directs the Computational Design Lab at CMU. I’ll be one of the professors teaching in this progam, primarily in the areas of computation, interaction, and graphics. Here’s the full press release:

Master of Tangible Interaction Design Degree Announced at Carnegie Mellon University

PITTSBURGH—Carnegie Mellon University announces the establishment of the Master of Tangible Interaction Design degree, a new graduate-level program focusing on the speculative design of computationally embedded objects and places. The MTID degree is intended to bring together a community of talented and capable makers in all disciplines.

The MTID Program is a one-year course of study offered by the School of Architecture College of Fine Arts (CFA) at Carnegie Mellon. It draws on the university’s strengths in the arts as well as in robotics, software, and human-computer interaction. The MTID program aims to attract both computer scientists and engineers who want to exercise their know-how in creative and speculative design, as well as artists, musicians, designers, and architects who seek technical abilities to implement their ideas.

The new MTID program offers a environment to acquire these basic skills, drawing on the amazingly rich interdisciplinary learning opportunities at Carnegie Mellon. “Carnegie Mellon is uniquely positioned to integrate embedded computing and robotics in design,” says Mark D Gross, professor in the School of Architecture and director of the MTID Program.

The Master in Tangible Interaction Design is a studio-centered program with additional courses in electronics, programming, and the arts. The first semester’s “Small Things” studio focuses on embedding computational behavior into objects, furniture, and clothing. The second “Big Things” studio tackles interactive space at the size of rooms, buildings, neighborhoods, and cities.

“Recent developments in embedded computing, new materials, and digital fabrication enable anyone to design and prototype interactive artifacts,” adds Gross. “There will be remarkable opportunities for creative people who have skills and experience that cross the traditional disciplinary boundaries and who are comfortable making informed decisions about physical form, computational behavior, and human experience.”

Carnegie Mellon is now recruiting students for the first MTID class, which will enter in the fall semester of 2008. For more information or to apply, please contact Professor Mark Gross.

Worth clipping, here’s a quick re-posting of Yo-Yo Ma’s “Four Challenges for Future Learners”, via John Maeda. (Maeda’s full retelling is here, at his RISD blog.)

1. Make all communications memorable.
2. Realize passion-driven education.
3. Form disciplined imaginations.
4. Foster empathy for all.

I’m delighted to announce that CMU, where I teach, has just approved a unique new hybrid undergraduate degree program which combines Computer Science and the Arts. I had a hand in creating the new degree program, and I’ll be one of the principal academic advisors for these students.  Here’s the full text of the press release, taken from here.  

Carnegie Mellon Announces New Degree
Fusing the Arts With Computer Science   

PITTSBURGH—Beginning this fall, Carnegie Mellon University will offer a Bachelor of Computer Science and Arts (BCSA), a new interdisciplinary program that will equip students to explore and expand the connections between computation and the arts. Students enrolled in the program will work toward degrees that combine coursework in the university’s world-class School of Computer Science with complementary studies in its internationally renowned College of Fine Arts, which comprises the schools of Art, Architecture, Design, Drama and Music. 

The BCSA program is an “integrated double major,” which combines a sequence of full-strength computer science courses with a rigorous concentration in studio or performing arts.
   

“The unified Bachelor of Computer Science and Arts degree will allow a new generation of artist-technologists to create new forms of knowledge and influence culture at the highest possible level, by bridging fields in totally new ways,” said Franco Sciannameo, director of the BCSA, Bachelor of Humanities and Arts (BHA) and Bachelor of Science and Arts (BSA) programs. In creating the BCSA program, Sciannameo collaborated with faculty and administrators from the College of Fine Arts and the School of Computer Science.

Sophomore Alyssa Reuter, who will join the first cadre of BCSA students, highlighted some of the possibilities the new program could facilitate. “Computer science and art are already fused in fields like character animation, game design, electronic music, interactive graphics and information visualization and robotics,” Reuter said. “Meanwhile, new tools like rapid prototyping, motion capture and broadband Internet are spawning revolutions in architectural design, live performance and participatory culture. And computer science itself is increasingly oriented towards personal, expressive media. It’s exciting to have this chance to exercise both sides of my brain and the opportunity couldn’t have come at a better time.”
   
 

Eight Carnegie Mellon students are scheduled to transfer into the BCSA degree program this spring, while several first-year students are poised to enter the program in the fall. 

The creation of the BCSA degree closes a long chapter in my own life, since I chose not to attend CMU in 1989 when I learned that they had no such joint degree program. Happily, the new degree is already opening a new chapter in the lives of 8 young people at Carnegie Mellon.

In the eighth footnote for Sanford Kwinter’s essay “Flying the Bullet,” which accompanies the slim volume “Conversations with Students” by Rem Koolhaas, is a brief enumeration of different names for Samadhi-like states in which an interactant “becomes one” with an interactive system. I quote:

“Class four behavior” in Stephen Wolfram; “poised systems” and “edge of chaos” in Chris Langton and Stuart Kaufmann; “separatrices” and “catastrophe sets” in Ralph Abraham and René Thom; “bifurcation regimes” and “far from equilibrium states” of chaologists and thermodynamicists; “singularities” in Deleuze and Guattari; “flow” in Csikszentmihalhyi and optimal experience theorists; “one-over-f” systems in signal theory; the state of “highest or fulfilled tension” in Zen Buddhist disciplines . . . the list is beautiful, and long.

After 16 months of being offline, the Alphabet Synthesis Machine is now back. The ASM was commissioned in 2001 by Art21, and created in collaboration with Jonathan Feinberg and Cassidy Curtis. Huge props to Jonathan for getting this up and working again in his spare time.

The ASM had gone down due to a disk crash at my host. This taught me a thing or two about the fragile web we live in, and got me thinking grim thoughts about mortality (my own, and that of my data). Needless to say, to abuse a quote from John Gilmore, the Internet did not interpret my disk crash as censorship and route around it; instead, I found myself with the unglamorous prospect of resuscitating and maintaining a project from seven years ago. [I was reminded of a story Maeda once told me, about a significant pioneer of Japanese kinetic art, who gave up making sculpture in his later years because he got fed up receiving phone complaints about broken artworks in the middle of the night.] Well, web-wizard Mr. Feinberg came to the rescue and the ASM is restored (a tiny window into pre-911 Net.art!). The remaining casualty: several thousand user-created alphabets from 2003-2007 have been irretrievably lost.