Elective Courses

A PIMA MFA student is a graduate student of all five cooperating departments: Art, Computer and Information Science, the Conservatory of Music, Television, Radio & Emerging Media, and Theater. Thus PIMA students can take almost any of those departments' graduate courses as electives, with permission of the PIMA directors.

The courses below are past offerings, listed as examples. Check each department's current schedule.

Sonic Arts (Conservatory of Music)

Sonic Arts classes fall into two groups: creative/conceptual, and creative skill-building. PIMA students are welcome in nearly all of them if you have the skills needed. If you're unsure, talk to Doug Geers: DGeers@brooklyn.cuny.edu.

Classes Doug suggests as especially PIMA-friendly:

MUSC 7647 Sonic Arts Composition Seminar: compose and share weekly
MUSC 7379 Seminar in Audio Production: Pro Tools Proficiency
MUSC 7635 Special Topics in Sonic Arts: Amplified Music Performance
MUSC 7660 History of Electronic and Computer Music: Improvisation and Collaboration Techniques
MUSC 7375-6 Interactive Music (topic varies)
MUSC 7373 Building Electronic Music Instruments

The Fall 2025 MUSC 7375 was: Interactive Computer Music: Sensors and Microcontrollers

3 credits. Taught by Eric Singer.
A hands-on look at using sensors to make and perform interactive music and art. Open to students from Music, Art, PIMA and Theater. Students learn to program a microcontroller, attach sensors, and use sensor data creatively in the studio, onstage and in installations. Final projects build sensors into a new work of music, multimedia or performance.

In Spring 2024 it was: MUSC 7376 Advanced Interactive Music: Music with Transducers

3 credits. Taught by Red Wierenga.

Past Schedules:
Fall 2025 Sonic Arts & Media Scoring course schedule

Media Scoring (Conservatory of Music)

Program director Jonathan Zalben is happy to work with PIMA students in these courses, or through a PIMA independent study.

Note: Media Scoring classes sometimes carry extra tuition fees. Ask the registrar to waive the fee because you are a PIMA student.

MUSC 7342X Media Scoring Lessons I

45 hours; 3 credits
One-on-one composition lessons focused on scoring for media, with Jonathan Zalben.

Prerequisite: Permission of director.

MUSC 7378X Sequencing and Sampling

3 credits. Taught by Jonathan Zalben or Ron Gozzo.
Using a digital audio workstation (DAW) to create convincing instrumental performances and turn musical ideas and audio into finished compositions. Covers when to use ready-made samples and when to make your own, MIDI mockups and hybrid scores, virtual instruments such as Kontakt, and the history of sample-based music from Steve Reich to Skrillex. Also touches on copyright and on professional roles such as producer and orchestrator.

MUSC 7370X Music Technology for Media

45 hours; 3 credits
The technical and creative skills needed to produce audio for media. Hands-on projects in sound editing, sound design, foley, ADR, mixing, mastering, music editing and production, recording, audio restoration, and syncing music and sound to picture. Some projects are collaborative. Also covers how audio transmission and standards shape decisions in post-production. Through lectures, practice and critiques, students learn to create and edit their own soundtracks and to judge their own work and others'.

Prerequisite: Matriculation in a graduate visual, media, or performing arts program; or permission of instructor.

MUSC 7354X Scoring for Motion Pictures and New Media

45 hours; 3 credits
Refining the skills to combine live musicians and computer-based techniques in music for cinema and interactive artworks.

Prerequisite: MUSC 7203X and 7378X.

Art

ARTD 7086G History of Photography

30 hours plus conference; 3 credits
Seminar or colloquium. The technical and aesthetic history of photography, and its relation to other arts.

Prerequisite: Permission of the deputy chairperson.

ARTD 7091G Women in Modern and Contemporary Art

30 hours plus conference; 3 credits
The changing image and practices of women artists in modern and contemporary art. Units include rape as a feminist issue, gaze theory, masquerade and the construction of identity, the queer body, crafts and the decorative, feminism and race, the women of the Black Arts Movement, Latinx women artists, global feminisms, the abject, and spirituality as a feminist practice.

Prerequisite: Matriculation for the M.A. in art history or the M.F.A. in art, or permission of the deputy chairperson.

ARTD 7142G Subject, Creator, Consumer: Women and African Art

45 hours; 3 credits
The visual arts and cultures of the African continent, focusing on women as subjects, creators and consumers of art. Covers historical and contemporary forms, including masks and masquerades, beadwork, pottery, textiles and contemporary art, and the role of women in various African societies.

ARTD 7159G History of Urban Design and Planning

45 hours; 3 credits
Approaches to urban design and planning in Europe and the United States, from the ancient world to the present.

Prerequisite: Matriculation for the M.A. in art history or the M.F.A. in art, or permission of the deputy chairperson.

ARTD 7910X Writing and Practice

45 hours; 3 credits
A seminar taught by an eminent artist, critic, curator or historian. It builds critical thinking and skills in verbal and textual analysis, as a stimulus to art-making and a conceptual foundation for studio practice. Includes artists' writings and the development of students' own thesis proposals.

Prerequisite: Matriculation for the M.F.A. in art or the M.A. in art education, or permission of the deputy chairperson.

ARTD 7525X Public Art: Interventions, Monuments, and Memorials

60 hours; 3 credits
The complexities of making art for public spaces. Techniques for building models and prototypes of public artworks. Covers temporary interventions, socially engaged practice, public memorials and monuments, with readings, lectures and site visits.

Art also offers studio courses in drawing, printmaking, painting, sculpture, ceramics and more.

Television, Radio & Emerging Media

TREM 7797X Technology, Media, and Democracy

Katherine Fry. Spring 2024.
A joint course with graduate programs at Cornell Tech, NYU, Columbia and The New School. Students from media studies, design, performance, journalism and engineering explore threats to a healthy information ecosystem, including misinformation, media manipulation and harassment, and how they affect democracy. Includes expert guest lecturers and a collaborative project.

Theater

THEA 7437X Projection Design for Theater and Live Performance

45 hours; 3 credits
An introduction to projection and video design for theater and live performance. Covers early pioneers of video integration and the most innovative new work in the field. Students learn the technical side of projection and video design, and through projects build the skills to create their own designs.

Prerequisite: Enrollment in the MFA or permission from the program director.

THEA 7615X Fundraising for the Performing Arts

30 hours plus conference; 3 credits
The philosophy and methods of raising contributed income for professional nonprofit performing arts institutions. Fall term.

Prerequisite: Corequisite: Theater 7621 and permission of the head of concentration.

Independent Study

You can also take an independent study with a PIMA faculty member for elective credit, for example in Max or creative coding.

MA in Media Studies at Queens College

Douglas Rushkoff's program, for "activists, makers, artists and researchers working to effect social change through media." Most classes meet at 25 Broadway in Manhattan, home of Brooklyn College's Graduate Center for Worker Education, where some PIMA classes meet. Register via e-permit. See the current and past course listings.

MEDST 758 Interactive Narrative

Douglas Rushkoff. Fall 2026.
A seminar and lab on how interactivity changes traditional narrative structure, exploring non-linear digital forms. Discussion is combined with workshop exercises in interactive storytelling.

MEDST 752 Media Theory

Douglas Rushkoff. Spring 2027.
The thread of interactivity in cultural media, through theorists such as McLuhan, Foucault, Deleuze, Hall, Haraway and hooks, with a focus on new media.

MEDST 759 Magick and Media

Douglas Rushkoff. Spring 2026.
The relationship between influence techniques, media technology and the occult, from Crowley to contemporary digital culture.

MEDST 769 Tactical Media (Digital Hacktivism Lab)

James Cohen. Spring 2026.
A seminar and hands-on workshop in web, app and physical computing applied to activist and cause-related work. Theory and case studies, plus project-based skills training.

MEDST 758 Global Performances and Movements of Resistance

Aniko Szucs. Spring 2027.
The histories, practices and aesthetics of artistic and political resistance, including performance under military dictatorships, state socialism and in movements today.

MEDST 758 Socially Engaged Archives in Theory and Practice

Chloë Bass and Alexandra Juhasz. Spring 2025.
Brings together MA, MFA and PhD students to study contemporary socially engaged art through theory and practice, with community mapping projects and weekly zines.

IMA MFA at Hunter College

Hunter's Integrated Media Arts MFA is another option. Register via e-permit. Some courses from the Fall 2026 schedule:

IMA 78081 Sound Environments

Hans Tammen. Fall 2026.
Sound in relation to space and architecture: installations, immersive environments, sound walks, acoustic ecology and urban noise, drawing on artists such as Pauline Oliveros, Alvin Lucier and Hildegard Westerkamp. Students make sound installations, performances and sound sculptures, with a focus on spatializing sound across many speakers. May use Reaper and Max/MSP.

IMA 76600 Memory Chamber: Virtual Environments for Interactive Media and Film

Poyen Wang. Fall 2026.
A project-based introduction to 3D computer graphics. Students build 3D virtual environments in Maya and Substance Painter: modeling, lighting, texturing, basic animation, effects and rendering, with attention to how contemporary artists use 3D imagery.

IMA 78065 Language to be Looked At

Andrew Demirjian. Fall 2026.
Language as a visual and sonic medium: sound poems, conceptual writing, video poems, erasure, the cut-up method, textual scores, generative art and electronic literature. Students make a substantial new work, such as video poems, sound poems, computer-generated texts or text-based installations.

IMA 78087 Digital Resistance

Kara Lynch. Fall 2026.
How power is built into technologies, and how people use media to push back. Students study models of anti-racist and decolonial media, develop their own research projects, and build a shared digital platform for their work.

IMA 77100 Community Media and Advocacy & The Urban Environment

Amber Bemak. Fall 2026.
A collaboration in East Harlem with the environmental justice group WE ACT. Students research local environmental justice history and make a participatory film with community members about issues such as extreme heat, flooding and gentrification.

Full schedules:

Taking Undergraduate Courses

To count toward the MFA, an undergraduate course must be taken as PIMA 7040 (independent study), with permission of both the course instructor and the PIMA directors.

TREM 3881 Storytelling for Virtual Reality

Jason Moore.
An introduction to telling stories with virtual reality. Hands-on practice with the basic techniques for writing and directing VR content.

TREM 4881 Advanced Directing for Virtual Reality

Jason Moore.
Builds on TREM 3881. Advanced single- and multi-camera directing for VR, using PCVR headsets, virtual cameras and virtual collaboration platforms. Each student pitches, produces and directs an advanced project. Includes exchanges with international students and VR professionals.

Contact Jason Moore at jmoore@brooklyn.cuny.edu if you're interested.

Undergraduate Digital Art classes in the Art department can also be taken this way.