Electives offered within Digital + Media typically take the form of studio courses that support the development of technical skills and conceptual integrity. Electives may be run solely through Digital + Media or may be cross-listed with another collaborating program at RISD.
Electives
Fall, Spring
Participants in the Technological Landscapes research group are passionate but critical observers of today's living environment in relation to ubiquitous, integrated, and emerging technologies.
Fall
The Radical E-Threads seminar is a space of reflection and creation around aesthetics and practices that involve technology, culture, and social and communal dynamics. This seminar will explore the intersection of these topics through practical hands-on activities, lectures, and group discussions.
Fall, Spring
- Alex Chechile
- Michael Demps
Sonic Practices is a graduate-level research group focused on acoustic, electronic, and/or computer-based means of sound production and reception.
Fall
Using technologies ranging from the intimacy of handheld devices to the monumental scale of a building façade, in this class we will learn to activate the space through multimedia content and relational strategies.
Spring
Machine Learning: Aesthetics and Applications will look to early cybernetics as well as contemporary artists to explore the ontological, cultural, and practical implications of artworks produced with machine learning. Creative applications will include building and tagging datasets, training generative image networks (GANs), language models (GPT-3), custom deepfakes, and more.
Fall
Fungi Arts - Mycelium As Mode is a graduate-level collaborative studio for learning and making in conversation with fungi.
Spring
Juicy Carcasses, Abundant Futures: Detritus as Nourishment’ is a course that challenges creative practitioners to listen to the wisdom of non-human detritivores, and transform that which is discarded.
Spring
Machine Objects is a course that delves into the ever-evolving contemporary understanding of machines through the medium of physical objects in the context of design and art.
During wintersession, D+M graduate students are invited to design studio electives open to the entire student body in which “the digital” is both the means and the ends of inquiry. These are the student taught courses for Wintersession 2023:
Wintersession (student taught)
Wintersession
- Aya Abdallah
- Prithi Khalique
What is Glamour? Permanent pleasure seeking, polished perfection, and an intrinsically manufactured surface? Or is it simply a trap, a vulgar fetish or a scandalous word with very little substance?
Wintersession
- Catherine Ashley
- Yanran Bi
Nirvana. Heaven. Bliss — Utopia. This course is informed by the unbounded concept of “Utopia”. Utopia is a term meaning a heavily idealized or imagined perfect society, most often characterized by social, political, and economic ideals that are often unrealistic.
Wintersession
What makes the needle and thread such captivating storytellers? Embroidery: Material as Storyteller is a space for students to explore the narrative potential of traditional and digital embroidery.
Wintersession
Archives are repositories of primary sources that document the human experience, from official records
to personal papers, photographs, audiovisual recordings, and born-digital materials.