The ACTLab is shaped and distinguished by the extraordinarily diverse backgrounds and skill sets of its faculty, students, and guests. From its inception, the ACTLab has been a major international presence in defining the nature and direction of new transdisciplinary organizations. ACTLab principles of risk-taking, extreme interdisciplinarity, and openness to innovation have been extensively quoted and debated at institutions worldwide as they attempt to chart their own future courses.
  
ACTLab courses are concept-driven, rather than skills-driven; but we believe that theory flows from the act of making, rather than the other way around. The point of each ACTLab course is to help you define, develop, and produce a project that reflects on the social, cultural, aesthetic, political, and personal issues raised in that particular class. For undergraduates and for masters students doing projects and reports, our aim is to teach you critical thinking about media and technology and to help you develop a portfolio of representative projects to take with you when you graduate. For masters students doing theses and doctoral students, our goal is to quicken your appreciation of technology's foibles and potentials, but to ask research questions that interconnect with these technologies and their social, economic, aesthetic, political, and personal environments.