by ann
Week 2 of the fall semester marked the first full week of classes for SFPC. Energized after the weekend, students came ready to debate singularities, jump into soldering and coding, and introduce themselves and their work to the community.
Day 1: Vera Molnár and The Algorists
Day 1 started with a class on media art with Zach Lieberman.
First, students shared the programming languages they had created as part of last week’s homework. Some highlights were a language called ‘pretty please’ that requires programmers to ask the computer nicely in order to get operations to execute, and a physical object interpreter for cooking.
Next up was a lecture on the Algorists, and a group research session on the work and life of Vera Molnár, a pioneer of computer art.
Starting in 1959, Molnár created paintings using what she called the “Imaginary Machine.” Molnár would follow a series of set instructions with slight variations to create paintings that explored “the subtleties that turn a collection of forms into the ‘epiphany’ of art.” In 1968, she began working with a computer and plotter to expand her examination of algorithmic art.
“This may sound paradoxical, but the machine, which is thought to be cold and inhuman, can help to realize what is most subjective, unattainable, and profound in a human being.” — Vera Molnar
Day 2: Political objects, Silicon Valley, and Women in Computing
Morehshin Allahyari’s class, The Radical Outside, began with a discussion of the week’s reading. Students debated if creators with biases and beliefs about the purpose and audience of the technologies they are making can intentionally or unintentionally bias the objects they create. Students talked about snapchat filters and automatic soap dispensers as examples of technologies that perpetuate the biases and skin tones of their developers. There was also a lively debate over whether certain technologies necessitated particular political systems, as argued in the article, Do Artifacts Have Politics?
“Who is we? Who gets to decide to create technologies?” — Morehshin Allahyari
Next, two students, Amit Runchal and Matt Ortega, presented their research on Silicon Valley ideology and women in computing, respectively.
Amit argued that, “The suggestion that we should expect new technologies to reduce the gaps between the haves and have-nots” is too simplistic, and posited that the current technological revolution “will give birth to new forms of political philosophies” as it exposes the limitations in previous philosophies, such as capitalism and socialism, birthed from the industrial revolution.
Matt asked the class to think about the role of images in how we perceive certain roles and industries, and where we choose to work: “How important is it to see ourselves reflected via gender and race to provide a definition of what is possible in our world, and encourage us to work at the boundaries?”
Day 3: Buttons and blinking lights
Wednesday marked the first hardware lesson of the semester! Students met Pam Liou who is co-teaching the class along with Taeyoon Choi.
Pam is a computational designer working with textiles, who also has a background in jewelry design. Formerly a resident at Eyebeam Art and Technology Center, working on an open source jacquard loom, Pam’s work investigates the “tensions between craftsmanship, technology, and commerce.”
Taeyoon also lectured on the basics of hardware. He introduced the class to his handmade computer project and his work on demystifying computational technology.
“There is a sense of beauty in how computers are designed.” — Taeyoon Choi
The technical portion of his talk started with a discussion of voltage and current, resistance, and LEDs. He then quickly moved to circuit diagrams and translating drawings to life. He then threw the class into the deep end, having them soldering their own circuits and experiment with different kinds of switches.
Day 4: Field trip to the MoMA Library
Thursday started with a field trip lead by Taeyoon to the MoMA Library, which houses an extensive collection of books, exhibition catalogs, correspondence, and other articles about individual artists and art collectives.
The students met Jennifer Tobias, who’s a librarian at MoMA, and learned about E.A.T (Experiments in Art and Technology), a collective established in the US in the 1960s to facilitate collaborations between artists and engineers. The group was set up by engineers Billy Klüver and Fred Waldhauer and the artists Robert Rauschenberg and Robert Whitman, who founded the group after the success of their event, “9 Evenings: Theater & Engineering.” The conversation lead to appreciation of artists and engineers like David Tudor who’s practice influenced music, conceptual art as well as engineering.
Students spent the morning reading over notes, letters, postcards, and speech transcripts from E.A.T members.
Day 4 cont’: Meet the Students!
The week ended with a coming out party for the fall 2017 class. In a rapid fire salon-style evening with alumni and community members, each student gave a four minute presentation on their work and their motivation for coming to SFPC. It was an intimate and welcoming audience excited to hear about what this semester’s SFPC is up to. Afterwards, students and attendees mingled and discussed art, media, and future collaborations.
For their presentations, student shared their work and plans for SFPC:
- Colin gave an overview of his work as a mechanical engineer and woodworker, including the process behind his pieces.
- Kaitlin talked about her evolution as a photographer from traditional landscape photography to digital photo manipulation to VR.
- Matt O. showed his projects that combined his love of music and technology.
- Yumi gave an overview of her work as a motion graphics designer and told the group that when she read the SFPC motto, “more poetry, less demos” she knew it would be the right place for her.
- Fernando talked about his game Panoramical, a game he made about navigating the US healthcare system, and his responsibility as an artist and maker in today’s political climate.
- April shared her weird side projects.
- Guillermo talked about his creative coding school in Chile, and his work as an electrical engineer and musician.
- Heather talked about her company’s work in equality and sustainability, her interest in algorithmic biases, and her love of pair programming.
- Niklas told the group about how he taught himself graphic design, ran his own agency, and traveled to Japan.
- Qiao talked about her frustrations with teleconferencing with international colleagues, and her plans to build a real time translation app that would take into account the speaker’s mood and intention.
- Matt J showed off his mesmerizing, math-based looping GIFs.
- Stacy talked about her background in cognitive science, her love of the outdoors, and her hopes for SFPC.
- Diego shared his 36 days of type challenge, his agency, and the complexity of running a restaurant.
- Ying shared his love of photography and the powerful emotions a single image can evoke, and wondered how the same effect could be achieved through code.
- Hyojin talked about her evolution from designer to artist and her interest in how identity is constructed.
- Wei talked about his time at the New Inc. incubator and his artistic collaboration with his wife (together they form the creative duo He & Hu).
- Ann shared her love of cyborgs and their relationship to the mixed race experience, and her interest in exploring discomfort as an artistic tool.
- Amit closed the night by inviting the audience to choose one of three potential presentations. After taking a survey of the room, he shared a recent philosophical conundrum that’s been nagging at him: if you were to die right now and be given the choice to continue life but with no knowledge this choice had been presented, or to move on to a state of nothingness, which would you choose?
Next posting will be October 2nd, 2017.
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