Welcome back to Radiator University! Although it's been 7 years since we last offered any courses, we wish to assure you that we're absolutely open for business and/or scholarship, thanks to a fresh funding injection from Hegemony Capital, which will never compromise our academic mission in any way.
Here's a sample of our new course offerings for the upcoming Spring 2025 semester:
AG 3532 - FOLIAGE AND TERROR
What is the reality of a forest, and how do we reconcile this with the virtual plantations infesting video games? While studying forest ecologies, we will survey various digital foliage tools such as SpeedTree and TreeIt. Students will then work in groups to "plant" virtual forests; with each week, the virtual forest must undergo 10 years of simulated growth. Then in partnership with Landwirtschaftliche Rentenbank, students will spend the second half of the semester in Austria training as industrial arborists while studying the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke. Even as arborist-poets, can we ever truly know the whole of the forest, across all time and space, virtual and material? As Rilke would say - every tree is terrifying. (2 credits)
($30000 USD lab fee, 50% deposit required upon enrollment. Work Study students ineligible. Prerequisites: Advanced Austrian German or equivalent.)
GAME 304 - ASSET STUDIES
This course explores fundamental game development skills, such as using an asset store. We will begin with a history of digital assets such as old 8-bit clip art drawings and WordArt fonts, learning how to excavate old floppy disks and CD-ROMs. The midterm project is to preserve these "lost assets"... by repackaging them for sale on asset stores. Students must earn at least $500 USD in revenue to pass. As a final project, we will cheaply renovate substandard housing stock in the gentrifying neighborhood surrounding the university campus, shielding our tangible asset from tax liabilities by gifting it to the "nonprofit" university under the guise of a final project in a course about asset studies. (3 credits)
(By enrolling in this course, students agree to forfeit any wages or ownership stake in their final project. Note that Work Study students are ineligible for this class.)
MUSIC 235 - WEEKEND WHIMPER WORKSHOP
Across every worldwide institution, experts agree: we currently live in an apocalypse, a revelation and revealing of the end of everything as we know it. Shall this world end with a bang or a whimper? Currently the bangs seem to be unevenly distributed, concentrated in developing economies -- for the rest of us, especially in rich Western nations, we must perfect our whimpers. In this intensive weekend workshop, students will sequester themselves in the fallout shelter underneath the music school to perform the apocalypse by whimpering repeatedly for an entire weekend. No other vocalization shall be permitted, though students taking this course for a Pass / Not Pass grade shall be permitted to wail. (1 credit)
(Prerequisites: none. Work Study students ineligible.)
***
We know you have many choices when it comes to imaginary speculative universities; thanks for choosing Radiator University. In these dark and uncertain times, may we all take solace in our school motto: "Caveat emptor!"
