Today, the main option people have for expressing themselves powerfully is through machines.
— Mark Pauline of Survival Research Laboratories (1987)
What is Physical Computing?
Physical computing can be described as a way of designing and building computing systems that use a mix hardware and software to sense and respond to the surrounding world. Our goal is to build things based on simple behaviors (interactions with the physical world) in carefully thought-out contexts to convey information, meaning and/or capture someone’s imagination. We can do this by imbuing tangible objects with digital information and computational behavior and capture elements of the physical world so as to have them drive or influence computational processes.
Some of the topics we will cover include:
- Basic Electronics
- Sensors
- Interactivity, Interaction Design & Experience Design
- Communication
- Motion, Gesture, Touch, Distance
- Materials
- Wireless Communication and IoT
- Philosophical, theoretical and conceptual aspects of human-technology relations
- Reflective & Critical Design
We will do this within the context of an ethos that emphasizes collaborative learning and knowledge sharing, creative problem solving, disrupting expectations, “creative misuse” of technology and critical thinking and reflection.
Note: this website borrows ideas and content from numerous colleagues in the Physical Computing fields. In the spirit of the course itself, it is a combination of material from the course designer/instructor Carlos Castellanos and colleagues W. Michelle Harris, the late Stephen Wilson, Ali Momeni and the folks at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU.