Issue date: 9/18/06 Section: Features>>Campus Life

Walking onto the Interactive Telecommunications Program floor is like entering some kind of trippy alternate universe — a place where mirrors are made of wood instead of glass and sweatshirts vibrate when touched. It's equal parts classroom, art gallery and high-tech playground.

Welcome to the ITP department, located on the fourth floor of the Tisch building at 721 Broadway.

ITP, a two-year master's program in Tisch, creates and employs technology to make life easier and better for the people who use it. Those ideas can take the form of anything from theoretical computer applications to physical pieces that blur the lines between art and technology, like the wooden mirror.

Tisch arts professor Red Burns is the co-founder and chair of the program.

"There isn't an occupation, a business, an operation or administration that hasn't been touched by new technology," she said. "And the question is, what do you do with all that power? A humanistic approach to technology is highly respected here. We really approach technology as something that can help people."

For example, an ITP project in 2005 was Cellphedia, a cellphone-based encyclopedia, similar to Wikipedia.com in that people add to it themselves.

"It seems like a funhouse, but it turns out tools that normal people can use," second-year Tisch graduate student Matthew Burton said.

But some of the projects are more artistic, like the wooden mirror created by adjunct professor Daniel Rozin, an ITP alumnus. The six-foot-tall "mirror" composed of more than 800 small wooden squares is hooked up to a tiny motor and a video camera. When someone stands in front of the mirror, the camera registers his image and transmits signals that rotate the wood to create a surprisingly accurate "reflection."

The learning is mostly hands-on and project-based. To a degree, the program is a structureless free-for-all where people can bounce from project to project. Students are given much freedom in terms of what, specifically, they choose to explore and focus on.

"It's just a really great space, a place that allows ideas to come to fruition," second-year Tisch graduate student Tikva Morowati said.

On the other, more computer-based end of the ITP spectrum is Dodgeball, a social-networking software created by two ITP alumni.

The free social networking service allows users to build a friends list, then it tells their friends about their whereabouts through an automated text messaging system. The site also sends a message to friends of friends in a ten-block radius.

Last year, Google bought Dodgeball for an undisclosed amount, and that sale is just one example of ITP students going on to become extremely successful in a variety of fields. Recent alumni have ended up at MTV, at HBO, running their own websites and more.

This reputation is part of why ITP is known as "the Harvard of new media schools," and now boasts an acceptance rate hovering around 10 percent. And at the helm of the whole thing is Burns, who, in her thirty-plus years of involvement with the program, has racked up superlatives like "visionary" and "genius" as well as a stack of press clippings two inches thick.

In 1971, she co-founded NYU's Alternate Media Center, which ultimately evolved into ITP. Her original inspiration for the program came in 1970 when she first got her hands on a Sony PortaPak video camera.

"I was completely taken aback by the realization that people not formally trained in media could create pictures that moved," Burns said.

According to Burns, what makes the program unique is the diversity of its students who come from 25 different countries and academic backgrounds as seemingly disparate as music composition and computer technology with an emphasis on group cooperation.

"The whole department is based on collaboration. An architect will look at something very differently than a computer scientist or a painter," she said. " With diverse inputs, you get different ideas."

In fact, there is a large room in ITP's space devoted entirely to socializing, and on any given day, you'll find dozens of students there, lounging on couches, listening to music and talking.

And according to students, it's the "sky's the limit" attitude that makes ITP the place it is.

"ITP is great because there really are no limits," second-year Tisch graduate student Lara Muzicant said. "Anything is possible."

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