What does it mean for intelligence to exist beyond the human? What happens when human intelligence becomes coupled with material, biological, or artificial intelligence?

Critical Matter course explores emerging relationships among the body, emotion, artificial intelligence, and responsive material systems. Moving beyond conventional understandings of intelligence as exclusively human, cognitive, or computational, the course considers intelligence as embodied, affective, material, and relational. Students will design and prototype new spatial experiences and installations, exploring how technology can extend bodily perception, how machines can interpret and mediate emotion, and how responsive materials can sense, adapt, and communicate through dynamic behavior.

The course combines critical theory, design research, and hands-on experimentation. Through three focused investigations—Body, Emotion, and Material Intelligence—students will develop experimental projects that connect conceptual questions with physical and computational making. Topics may include embodiment and body extension, wearable technologies, participatory design, affect and emotion theory, machine perception and artificial intelligence, responsive and active materials, soft robotics, and material agency.

Rather than approaching technology solely as a tool for solving problems, the course asks students to use design to critically examine the assumptions embedded within emerging technologies. What does a machine actually know when it recognizes an emotion? Where does the body end when perception is technologically extended? Can matter itself have intelligent behavior? And how might these systems reshape our relationships with ourselves, one another, and our environments?

DESIGN EXPERIMENTS

Three short design experiments introduce the core themes of the course and build toward the final project:

1. BODY: Embodied Intelligence: Explore how technology can sense, extend, augment, or transform the body, perception, or agency.
2. EMOTION: Affective & Machine Intelligence: Investigate how machines perceive, interpret, express, or respond to emotion, and critically question what it means for a machine to “understand” affect.
3. MATTER: Material Intelligence: Experiment with materials and physical systems that sense, respond, adapt, transform, or communicate.

These projects are intended as critical experiments rather than finished works. Each combines conceptual inquiry with hands-on making and provides a foundation for the final design research project.

COURSE OUTCOME

Students will develop a final design research project that brings together body, emotion, machine, and matter to investigate new forms of intelligence and interaction. Building on three focused "Design Experiments", students will translate critical inquiry into a physical, computational, or hybrid prototype.

Final projects should demonstrate conceptual depth, critical inquiry, and experimental making, using design not simply to solve problems, but to question how emerging technologies reshape our understanding of intelligence, agency, and the body.

The course concludes with a public presentation and critique of student work.

COURSE REQUIREMENTS

The course combines critical reading, discussion, experimentation, and design research. Students are expected to arrive prepared to actively engage with assigned readings and contribute to discussions, workshops, critiques, and peer feedback.

The semester is structured around three short “Design Experiments (Body, Emotion, and Matter)” followed by a final design research project. Each experiment connects a critical question introduced through readings and lectures with physical, computational, or experiential making.

Students will receive project briefs, learning goals, deliverables, and assessment criteria at the beginning of each assignment. Regular in-class critiques and feedback sessions will support the development and iteration of the work.

Throughout the semester, students will engage in both individual and collaborative experimentation. The final project may be completed individually or in small teams and should synthesize the conceptual and experimental territories explored throughout the course.

The semester concludes with a public presentation and critique. Students will also submit documentation of their research, process, prototype, and critical reflection.

GRADING BREAKDOWN 

Design Experiment 01               15%

Design Experiment 02               15%

Design Experiment 03               15%

Final Project                                          35%

Engagement & Critique              20%