Synthesis Studios

ITP: Interactive Telecommunications Program

Along with our in-office work, we are dedicated to sharing our expertise with a larger audience through ongoing education efforts.

ITP is an acronym for the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. Founded in 1979, it was the first graduate-level program focusing exclusively on what is now called new media. In 2006, BusinessWeek listed ITP as one of the top design programs in the world.

That same year, Raffi began teaching what would ultimately become his "flagship class" -- Every Bit You Make. The course concentrated on the concept of electronic identity and surveillance via the analysis of technologies like Internet protocols, cellular networks, and radio-frequency identification (RFID). The students not only put those technologies to work, but also hacked them. Final projects varied from sneakers with the ability to hack open WiFi networks to musical sonatas composed of a network interface's raw data.

Raffi followed Every Bit You Make with another class, Physical Computing without Computers, focusing on creating computers sans the use of electricity. Participants used materials ranging from wood and metal to plastic and glass to determine whether or not it was possible to create technology with such raw resources.