Our Courses
First year courses & learning outcomes
Fall quarter
CT 1 | Creative Interventions: A Colloquium in Contemporary Media
Online community colloquium on topics in contemporary creativity and creative practices. How does creative work address its most challenging problems, both in the arts and in broader social and professional contexts? How does creative labor intersect with other forms of labor to address power and inequity in society? Guest lecturers address the critical contexts—including racism, ableism, patriarchy, and other structures of power—for cultural work, and how those contexts, which are inseparable from the discipline of art-making and curation in 21st-century technological contexts, can be transformed. (Formerly CT 1B, Imagination and Intervention: a Creative Technologies Colloquium.)
Learning Outcomes
Contextualizing Creative Practice (Introduced)
Understand contemporary creative practices in their contexts: relating them to the impactful practices of our contemporaries and predecessors; contextualized by theory, history, and ethics in the arts, design, and media.
CT 10 | Understanding Digital Design
Introduction to digital design practices. How do contemporary design technologies and applications shape creative practice and expressive work? Students explore digital design tools and working methods, across a range of formats and mediums, through a project-centered framework. Technologies and projects are presented in conversation with visual design fundamentals, and a wide variety of historical and contemporary art and design works. Digital technologies for publishing and exhibiting work online are also introduced.
Learning Outcomes
Digital Literacy (Introduced)
Gain literacy in creative tools for digital expression, and in the effective use of technology in arts and design: including digital platforms and algorithms, AI- and algorithmic arts and design tools, and emerging technology in a variety of media.
Strategies for Creative Practice (Introduced)
Learn strategies for bringing complex work to completion, individually and collaboratively, across a variety of media, including written, image- and sound-based, performance-based, and socially engaged media.
CT 11 | Digital Media Perspectives
The proliferation of digital media since the early 2000s has shaped the way that we engage with every aspect of society. New social, political, economic, and creative forms have emerged, and so have our ways of relating to technology and each other. This course surveys a variety of digital media works, learning to analyze the expressive potential of a wide range of creative technologies. By the end of this course, students will have gained a deep understanding of the digital media landscape and its capacities (and limitations) toward creativity and social impact. (Formerly Issues in Digital Expression.)
Learning Outcomes
Media Studies (Introduced)
Critically comprehend media and media culture, potentially I ncluding institutions, creative labor and labor practices; the ethics of data, information, and digital platforms; with a focus on digital media’s diverse impacts on dialogues surrounding tradition, culture, and racial, social, and environmental justice.
Contextualizing Creative Practice (Introduced)
Understand contemporary creative practices in their contexts: relating them to the impactful practices of our contemporaries and predecessors; contextualized by theory, history, and ethics in the arts, design, and media.
Winter quarter
CT 1 | Creative Interventions: A Colloquium in Contemporary Media
Online community colloquium on topics in contemporary creativity and creative practices. How does creative work address its most challenging problems, both in the arts and in broader social and professional contexts? How does creative labor intersect with other forms of labor to address power and inequity in society? Guest lecturers address the critical contexts—including racism, ableism, patriarchy, and other structures of power—for cultural work, and how those contexts, which are inseparable from the discipline of art-making and curation in 21st-century technological contexts, can be transformed. (Formerly CT 1B, Imagination and Intervention: a Creative Technologies Colloquium.)
Learning Outcomes
Contextualizing Creative Practice (Introduced)
Understand contemporary creative practices in their contexts: relating them to the impactful practices of our contemporaries and predecessors; contextualized by theory, history, and ethics in the arts, design, and media.
CT 20 | Introduction to Creative Coding
Introduction to basic programming skills, including computer language tools and visual-interface programming tools for creative expression. Introduction to web authoring, image creation and editing, sound editing, and user experience design fundamentals, through skills acquisition-focused approach to individual and/or collaborative creative project(s). The final project is a work of playable media art/design, documentary media, interactive journalism/pedagogy/curation, or multi-media art/performance. Languages and applications will vary by instructor.
Learning Outcomes
Digital Literacy (Introduced)
Gain literacy in creative tools for digital expression, and in the effective use of technology in arts and design: including digital platforms and algorithms, AI- and algorithmic arts and design tools, and emerging technology in a variety of media.
Strategies for Creative Practice (Introduced)
Learn strategies for bringing complex work to completion, individually and collaboratively, across a variety of media, including written, image- and sound-based, performance-based, and socially engaged media.
Spring quarter
CT 1 | Creative Interventions: A Colloquium in Contemporary Media
Online community colloquium on topics in contemporary creativity and creative practices. How does creative work address its most challenging problems, both in the arts and in broader social and professional contexts? How does creative labor intersect with other forms of labor to address power and inequity in society? Guest lecturers address the critical contexts—including racism, ableism, patriarchy, and other structures of power—for cultural work, and how those contexts, which are inseparable from the discipline of art-making and curation in 21st-century technological contexts, can be transformed. (Formerly CT 1B, Imagination and Intervention: a Creative Technologies Colloquium.)
Learning Outcomes
Contextualizing Creative Practice (Introduced)
Understand contemporary creative practices in their contexts: relating them to the impactful practices of our contemporaries and predecessors; contextualized by theory, history, and ethics in the arts, design, and media.
CT 100 | Digital Platforms: Observations and Practices
Explore media technologies by directly engaging digital platforms, transmission, and storage, as direct rather than indirect practices. Topics covered, through lenses of both theory and practice, include global circulation of media—emphasizing the contemporary digital image, relations between sound and mobile-technology media and the environment, and the technical infrastructure of digital interfaces and data visualization. Critiquing data collection, representation, and curation, student projects build a vocabulary for critical engagement with cultural production and conditions.
Learning Outcomes
Digital Literacy (Introduced)
Gain literacy in creative tools for digital expression, and in the effective use of technology in arts and design: including digital platforms and algorithms, AI- and algorithmic arts and design tools, and emerging technology in a variety of media.
Media Studies (Introduced)
Critically comprehend media and media culture, potentially I ncluding institutions, creative labor and labor practices; the ethics of data, information, and digital platforms; with a focus on digital media’s diverse impacts on dialogues surrounding tradition, culture, and racial, social, and environmental justice.
Contextualizing Creative Practice (Introduced)
Understand contemporary creative practices in their contexts: relating them to the impactful practices of our contemporaries and predecessors; contextualized by theory, history, and ethics in the arts, design, and media.
CT 120 | Intermediate Creative Coding
Project-driven practicum in arts and design applications of computer languages. Students apply new approaches to ongoing individual and collaborative projects. Students learn to code “from scratch,” rather than through the modification of prototype examples. Explore how programming languages function not only as tools but as institutional frameworks, sometimes invisibly shaping social norms and contemporary art and design practices; learn conscientious uses of code that can contribute to accessible technology and the empowerment of audiences, users, and media consumers.
Learning Outcomes
Digital Literacy (Introduced)
Gain literacy in creative tools for digital expression, and in the effective use of technology in arts and design: including digital platforms and algorithms, AI- and algorithmic arts and design tools, and emerging technology in a variety of media.
Strategies for Creative Practice (Introduced)
Learn strategies for bringing complex work to completion, individually and collaboratively, across a variety of media, including written, image- and sound-based, performance-based, and socially engaged media.
Cultivation of Collaborative Growth (Introduced)
Cultivate a mindset of curiosity, dialogue, and growth, with respect to one’s work and process, and its social and ethical impact. We learn from mistakes as well as triumphs—ours and others’—as we work toward meaningful creative work and social change.
Second year courses & learning outcomes
Fall quarter
CT 101 | Persuasion and Resistance: Power in Contemporary Digital Media
The study of power in contemporary media environments. How do audience, genre, medium, and other contexts impact our reception of a message? Explores contemporary theory and practice of media, applied to commercial and institutional promotion, advertising, and activism. Enables critical views of media in social, cultural, and political contexts. Projects combine scholarship and creative work to invite students’ imagination of a media world in which learning, dialogue, contemplation, fun, and play can help enable flourishing and just communities.
Learning Outcomes
Media Studies (Demonstrated)
Critically comprehend media and media culture, potentially I ncluding institutions, creative labor and labor practices; the ethics of data, information, and digital platforms; with a focus on digital media’s diverse impacts on dialogues surrounding tradition, culture, and racial, social, and environmental justice.
Contextualizing Creative Practice (Practiced)
Understand contemporary creative practices in their contexts: relating them to the impactful practices of our contemporaries and predecessors; contextualized by theory, history, and ethics in the arts, design, and media.
Social Practice and Engagement (Introduced)
Learn to engage in informed social practices, shaped by reflection on individual and collective identity, and informed by the pursuit of sustainability, equity, justice, a world that works for all of us and our communities.
CT 125 | Collaborative Production Practicum
Project-driven practicum in technology-engaged creative collaboration in a range of hardware, software, and media contexts. Students develop a project while reimagining and questioning assumed relationships between technology and application. Course materials traverse creative collaboration comprehensively: from envisioning a project scope, to grant-writing and other fundraising. Students may use their final project in this course as a basis for their “capstone” project in the Senior Studio Production course.
Learning Outcomes
Strategies for Creative Practice (Demonstrated)
Learn strategies for bringing complex work to completion, individually and collaboratively, across a variety of media, including written, image- and sound-based, performance-based, and socially engaged media.
Cultivation of Collaborative Growth (Practiced)
Cultivate a mindset of curiosity, dialogue, and growth, with respect to one’s work and process, and its social and ethical impact. We learn from mistakes as well as triumphs—ours and others’—as we work toward meaningful creative work and social change.
Social Practice and Engagement (Practiced)
Learn to engage in informed social practices, shaped by reflection on individual and collective identity, and informed by the pursuit of sustainability, equity, justice, a world that works for all of us and our communities.
Winter quarter
CT 110 | Sensors, Signals, and Interaction
Introduction to computing for physical and sensory interaction, including machine-based sensors for audio, vision, and motion, and their uses in designed participatory experiences. How sense-like functions in hardware and software compare and relate to the physiology of sensation and perception on which they are modeled? What are the implications of sensory interaction, ableism, disability, and accessibility? Student projects explore collaborative approaches to the production of interactive digital art and design.
Learning Outcomes
Digital Literacy (Demonstrated)
Gain literacy in creative tools for digital expression, and in the effective use of technology in arts and design: including digital platforms and algorithms, AI- and algorithmic arts and design tools, and emerging technology in a variety of media.
Strategies for Creative Practice (Practiced)
Learn strategies for bringing complex work to completion, individually and collaboratively, across a variety of media, including written, image- and sound-based, performance-based, and socially engaged media.
Spring quarter
CT 195 | Creative Technologies Senior Studio
Students culminate the creative technologies degree by assembling artist/designer statements, curating their portfolio, learning a range of professional practices in the presentation of a body of work. Prepares graduating seniors to share creative findings, voice, and vision, commencing public life as artists, designers, and curators who take leadership in the complex communities and information landscapes of the 21st-century.
Learning Outcomes
Strategies for Creative Practice (Demonstrated)
Learn strategies for bringing complex work to completion, individually and collaboratively, across a variety of media, including written, image- and sound-based, performance-based, and socially engaged media.
Cultivation of Collaborative Growth (Demonstrated)
Cultivate a mindset of curiosity, dialogue, and growth, with respect to one’s work and process, and its social and ethical impact. We learn from mistakes as well as triumphs—ours and others’—as we work toward meaningful creative work and social change.
Social Practice and Engagement (Demonstrated)
Learn to engage in informed social practices, shaped by reflection on individual and collective identity, and informed by the pursuit of sustainability, equity, justice, a world that works for all of us and our communities.
CT Upper Division Special Topics courses
CT 167N | Narration and Participation: Modes of Representation in 20th- and 21st-century Media
Story-building, participatory creativity, and performance in a wide range of time-based arts and design. Models for storytelling are drawn from film, television, music, theater, gaming, and other media, including collective improvisatory practices, mixed transmission environments from game-based narration to hip-hop. Special emphasis is placed on activist, experimental, and counter-hegemonic narration, Black, Indigenous, feminist, and queer contributions to contemporary arts, design, and performance practices.
Learning Outcomes
Contextualizing Creative Practice (Demonstrated)
Understand contemporary creative practices in their contexts: relating them to the impactful practices of our contemporaries and predecessors; contextualized by theory, history, and ethics in the arts, design, and media.
Cultivation of Collaborative Growth (Practiced)
Cultivate a mindset of curiosity, dialogue, and growth, with respect to one’s work and process, and its social and ethical impact. We learn from mistakes as well as triumphs—ours and others’—as we work toward meaningful creative work and social change.
Social Practice and Engagement (Practiced)
Learn to engage in informed social practices, shaped by reflection on individual and collective identity, and informed by the pursuit of sustainability, equity, justice, a world that works for all of us and our communities.
CT 167Q | Queering Arts and Media
Introduces and develops literacy in queer arts practices and subcultures, exploring vital queer art communities as cultural phenomena. In the face of rising homophobia and transphobia locally, nationally, and internationally, this course affirms queer artists and students’ transformative work, in solidarity with indigenous, immigrant, non-white, and disability justice communities. Students read critical perspectives on varied media, conduct interviews, and examine media collaboratively to generate novel and generative dialogue on queer arts practices in their contexts.
Learning Outcomes
Contextualizing Creative Practice (Demonstrated)
Understand contemporary creative practices in their contexts: relating them to the impactful practices of our contemporaries and predecessors; contextualized by theory, history, and ethics in the arts, design, and media.
Social Practice and Engagement (Demonstrated)
Learn to engage in informed social practices, shaped by reflection on individual and collective identity, and informed by the pursuit of sustainability, equity, justice, a world that works for all of us and our communities.
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