Jonathan Thirkield
Part-time Assistant Professor
Email
jthirkield@newschool.edu
Office Location
A - 66 West 12th Street
Profile
Jonathan Thirkield is a digital artist, educator, technologist, and poet. For the past decade, he has taught computational media and design with a focus on data, code, visualization, and digital storytelling at The New School's Graduate Media Studies program, Parsons' School of Art, Media, and Technology, and Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. His research investigates the ways computational spaces operate as sites of power, performance, expression, and knowledge-production, and how the formal/linguistic systems of data, algorithms, AI/Machine Learning, and visual design shape experience, identity, community, and culture. His latest book, Infinity Pool, was published by the University of Chicago Press' Phoenix Poets series. His interactive work has been accessioned into the Rhizome ArtBase, and his recent writing has appeared in Conjunctions, The New Yorker, and The Paris Review. He has over a decade of experience as a full-stack developer and interaction designer for media and arts organizations, and he has taught creative writing and literature at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop and Deep Springs College. All of his work across media is dedicated to exploring what it means to see, read, communicate, and be human in our hyper-visual, computationally driven culture. To view some of his interactive projects go to floatingmedia.com
Degrees Held
MFA in Poetry from the Iowa Writers' Workshop
MS in Data Visualization from Parsons.
Current Courses
- Media Practices: AI
NMDS 5406 - Fall 2026 - Data Structures
PGDV 5110 - Fall 2026 - Intro to Data Visualization
PSAM 5010 - Fall 2026
Future Courses
- Data as Material
PSAM 5170 - Spring 2027
Past Courses
- Projects: Transforming Data
NMDS 5517 - Spring 2026
