The story of ITP -- the
Interactive Telecommunications Program -- is the story of people
exploring new
forms of communication and expression. It began in 1971 with the
creation
of the Alternate Media Center (AMC) by George Stoney and Red Burns.
ITP grew out of the work of the AMC – the AMC set the stage for the
experimentation and exploration which would follow as well as the
informing
spirit of collaboration, and the ongoing emphasis on crafting social
applications and putting the needs of the user first. A pioneering
center
for application development and field trials, the AMC initially focused
on
exploring the then-new tool of portable video made possible by Sony's
introduction of the “Portapak” and Apple II computers, and brought
together
academics, community activists and artists.
Red Burns and her colleagues at the AMC came from backgrounds in
documentary
film and traditional media -- they shared a vision for a freely
accessible,
grass-roots technology which would enable users to create their own
documentaries and distribute them widely. Their efforts led to many
significant developments in the field, including lobbying Congress for
the
creation of what is now public access cable television and significant
field
trials for two-way television in community settings, the use of Teletext
in
major urban centers and communications technologies for the
developmentally disabled.
Professor Burns believed that a graduate course of study was needed to
train
creative, forward thinking, ethical new media developers for what she
saw would
be a new and growing field. The first 20 graduate students entered the
program in 1979 -- and it grew quickly from there. In 1983 Professor
Burns turned her full attention from AMC to ITP and was appointed Chair
of the department, a position she held until 2010. Under her leadership
the
department became an internationally renowned center for scholars and
practitioners eager to engage the newest technologies and put them in
the hands
of media-makers.
Currently, Professor Dan O’Sullivan is Chair of ITP. Since joining the ITP faculty in 1991, Dan’s interests have involved creating more evocative online public spades and richer computer interfaces. He is internationally recognized as having established the field that has come to be known as “physical computing” and he is the co-author with ITP Professor Tom Igoe of the seminal text on the subject “Physical Computing: Sensing and Controlling the Physical World with Computers.” (Muska & Lipman, 2004).
Michael Mills, former full-time faculty member of ITP, went on to Apple
Computer to develop what later became Quicktime. Dan O'Sullivan, during
his student years, served as an intern at Apple and created the
prototype for
the first navigable interactive movies. Dan went on to introduce the
first widely used interactive television application in NYC, produced
and
broadcast directly from ITP by way of Manhattan Cable Public Access.
Industry leaders, artists and visionaries who have lectured at ITP over
the
years include Academy-Award winner, Chairman and CEO of R/GA Digital
Studios
Robert M. Greenberg, musician and founder of immersive virtual reality
Jaron
Lanier, multimedia artist Vito Acconci, creator of the ethernet Bob
Metcalf,
CEO of New York Times Digital Martin Nisenholtz, artist Toshio Iwai,
artist,
musician and performer Laurie Anderson, ITP alum and founder of
FourSquare,
Dennis Crowley, and Masamichi Udagawa and Sigi Moeslinger of Antenna
Design, to
name but a few.
Current ITP full-time faculty members are known for their contributions
to the
new media field: Red Burns has served on numerous boards and is the
recipient
many industry awards including the Chrysler Design Award, for "Design
Champion," and a leadership award from the NY Hall of Science; Daniel
Rozin, a recipient of the Chrysler Design Award, has had his interactive
artwork
shown in major museums and galleries around the world; Clay Shirky is a
widely
published author and commentator on social software and peer to peer
networks;
Marianne Petit is an artist well known for her interactive stories as
well as
her work in assistive technologies and social applications; Tom Igoe is
one of
the developers of the ground-breaking open-source “Arduino” platform for
physical computing development and regularly teaches and lectures
internationally; Marina Zurkow is
artist whose work is shown around the work, and who is a 2011 recipient
of a
Guggenheim Fellowship; Nancy Hechinger has had a distinguished career
running
major projects in the museum and educational spheres, including serving
as the
Founding Director of the National Center for Science Literacy, Education
and
Technology at the American Museum of Natural History; Daniel Shiffman is
acclaimed for his work in developing the open-source Processing coding
language
and is the author of the text “Learning Processing: A
Beginners Guide to Programming Images, Animations and
Interaction.”
