I teach in different universities, and across disciplines. At NYU, I've taught at the NYU Game Center (classes in game development and game programming); in Abu Dhabi and in Berlin, I teach in the IMA bachelor program, particularly a class called Augmenting the Gallery.

I also teach courses in the master program Creative Technologies at the Filmuniversität Babelsberg Konrad-Wolf, on advanced programming and project development; in France, I teach a class on digital culture at the Middle-East campus of Sciences Po.

My academic background is in Political Studies and Game Design, and my professional background includes digital media work for cultural institutions (mostly museums).

Finally, I'm writing a PhD thesis on the aesthetics of source code, at Paris-3 Sorbonne Nouvelle, with a co-direction at MIT Comparative Studies.

The class is about imagining possible worlds, and about how to represent and communicate those worlds through 3-dimensional, interactive digital media. The main assumption here is that imagining and building new worlds allows us to have a critical and holistic approach to the worlds that we currently live in. We deconstruct what is around us in order to propose what could be. It isn't so much about proposing a new world, but rather about showing how it actually took place.

We will do so by introducing tools for imagination through daily exercises, and by introducing tools for digital design and development (with the Unity game engine) in order to present in a convincing way the worlds we have dreamed up (and researched).

All of this information (and any additional info) can be found on the class website.

There will be three kinds of exercises and homework that you will do during this term.

The preludes are short, conceptual exercises which will get you to think about the topics we'll discuss in the upcoming session. They focus on thinking and ideation, and will live on the discourse. For each day, a separate discourse topic will be created, and you will post your answers there.

The homework will be more technical, and will center around features of Unity, slowly building up in such a way that you will have all the necessary practical tools for your final project. Due to the large size of a Unity project, you will be asked to show your projects through screen recordings (you can use Quicktime on OSX, or FRAPS on Windows), and post them on the discussions section of the class GitHub.

Finally, all of these will contribute to a final project. This project will take the form of a virtual museum, telling the story of the virtual world you've chosen. The final versions (and prototype versions as well) will be exported to WebGL and uploaded to itch.io to easily share it with others.

Note that the syllabus, and the schedule as part of it, is a living document, and might evolve over time. Always refer to it for any last updates, or reach out to James or me for clarifications.

• The Missing Datasets project is a good example of how items, or even lack thereof, can hint at bigger societal problems. Categories themselves are meaningful, and presenting these categories one way or another can impact our worldview.
• New York Apartment is a project which aggregates information about the NYC housing market, using an accumulative approach to highlights the (dys)functioning of this current world, and at the same time projecting possibilities towards new forms of housing.
• Gone Home is an exploration game in which all the information is lying around a house, and in which the story is pieced together by the architectural organization.
• This is Ours is a demonstration of a media product which acts as a proof of a possible world, a webshop in a world in which far-right nationalism conflates with environmentalism.
• Actual Reality OS is an artwork flipping around the concept of augmented reality to look at the actual reality: through sci-fi art direction, it highlights crises in environments, in housing and in human rights.
• It is as if you were doing work is a great example of computer interfaces as theater stages: its aesthetics project us in the world of work, exclusively work, with its icons, sounds and processes.

The terrains are the broad topics and domains, (security/education/food/technology); the objects are the actual artefacts, or proofs of change (bullet-proof backpacks/google tablets/soylent/airpods); the directions are the dynamic lines (is it expanding, growing, stabilizing, decreasing); the moods are the emotions (hope, doubt, fear, anger, etc.);

These 4 steps (ideation, research, implementation and communication) are the steps that we will go through during this semester, in order to build a consistent and coherent world.

Ideation means coming up with a satisfying, convincing and strong idea. Such a qualitative criteria comes through a quantitative approach.

Research means grounding some aspects of the imagined world into things that already exist, grounding your approach into what already exists.

Implementation means developing it in practice, choosing which material aspects best represent and communicate your world.

Communication concerns all the peripheral media which surround your main project: texts, images, posters, websites, as they set up expectations before your audience comes into contact with the piece itself.

analyzing the past to make us dream about the future.

Additional aspects are:

• complete lack of connection with reality ("we never thought this would happen!")
• highly dramatized relationships and characters
• emotional language
• self-reference and connection to a foundational myth

As you develop it, think of the point of view that you choose: is it first-person or third-person? what difference does it make practically? and conceptually?