This is a nice video made by first year ITP students at NYU, asking students and faculty what ITP is and what it does. Also includes a brief discussion of how physical computing came into the curriculum.

I can certainly relate to that problem of finding it almost impossible to describe what you do — it was like this when I was at the RCA, and we spent a lot of time discussing amongst ourselves what we thought the course was about.

I would say this is really important on a programme that aims to be experimental and to explore, test and redefine the boundaries of a discipline, or even a number of disciplines… With a true experiment you just don’t know what the outcomes will be, or what you will learn from them.

But in the struggle to define something you also create something. Ultimately you’re redefining part of yourself in relation to the work that you do (and vice versa). Personally I found this really tough, but also really valuable; I couldn’t have imagined being on a more vocationally-oriented course somewhere in which all the students are expected to identify with a given role or title.

Of course going back out into the world changes everything once again — you need to be able to describe yourself to potential employers in ways they can understand, which can be a real problem. It’s almost 6 months after we graduated now and I think most of us have found it harder than we expected to find work. But then again maybe this is because we’ve had such a free and focused couple of years at college that slotting into a cubicle somewhere and becoming a web monkey or junior designer just doesn’t seem very attractive.