| title | layout | location | contact | slides | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Code Subversions - Summer '16' |
participate |
westbeth |
sfpc |
|
- Two-Week Session, Monday Aug. 15th – Saturday Aug. 27th
- @ SFPC, 155 Bank Street, West Village, NYC
- 7pm – 9pm, Evening Classes
Instead of coding from scratch, we will be remixing, modding and collaging existing technologies to critically explore them. We'll learn about the physical infrastructure of the internet, underlying logic of programming languages and the code behind popular corporate web platforms. We will then use this knowledge to create playful projects that subvert the computational systems we use every day.
- Ramsey Nasser - radical computer scientist, game-designer and educator
- Tega Brain - artist, environmental engineer, Processing Foundation fellow
- Sam Lavigne - data collagist, ITP fellow, Stupid Hackathon founder
- Ida C. Benedetto - transgressive place maker, experience designer, game maker
- Ingrid Burrington - writer, map maker, infrastructure demystifier
- Todd Anderson and Lauren Gardner are organizing the session. SFPC Team including Zachary Lieberman and Taeyoon Choi will provide additional support.
In this class we will develop online interventions to rethink institutional agendas and critique mainstream tech culture. What are the dominant narratives used by institutions and industry to describe their goals, activities and politics? And what if you could rescript them?
We will look at the history of culture jamming and apply speculative design strategies, using the contemporary web as medium. Taking delight in the banal, we will experiment with basic web scraping, text manipulation and browser add-ons to provide a glimpse of the world we'd like to see.
"I don't need to waste my time with a computer just because I am a computer scientist” — Edsger Dijkstra
The foundational ideas behind computer science have little to do with actual physical computers or textual code. Together we will explore viscerally the evaluation of code, the manipulation of data, the ambiguity of our minds, and even start to think about what new programming languages could look like, all without staring at a glowing screen. The light we’ll cast on these core ideas will make any code you write or language you design in the future that much more powerful.
How can the feeling of infiltration, be it through bodily trespassing, mediated projection, or retrieval of taboo knowledge, create radical possibilities? Ida will draw on her history of creating experiences in place you aren't supposed to be to ground your code poetry experiments in the affective and interpersonal.
In this workshop we'll use Python and basic command line tools to explore the possibilities of manipulating video with code. We'll treat video as a textual as well as visual medium, and focus on repurposing found footage to generate new compositions and narratives.
How do the physical conditions of the network influence our ideas about its history and politics? During this workshop, we'll explore different sites in Manhattan relevant to internet infrastructure and history while developing methods for commemorating and critiquing that history with site-specific interventions.
Classes are held in the evenings Monday-Friday from 7-10pm. There will be a workshop during the first week on Saturday and the session will culminate in a party where students can invite their friends and share what they made and learned.
Students will have full access to the space for the two weeks of the session to work on projects between classes and mentors wil be readily available for technical, conceptual, and artistic guidance. Read our Participate page for more information.
$1,500 USD for the 2-week program. You’ll also need to cover your own cost of living, including housing and meals (recent alumni report this to be in the range of $800 - $1400). Upon payment, your space in the class will be reserved.
We are committed to being fully transparent about how we make and spend money. In the spirit of radical openness and generosity, on which the school was founded, we open-source our finances on Github. There, you can read financial reports and download raw statements.
- Yes, we can give you 100% refund up to 5 days before class starts
- 50% refund after 5 days, until the first day of class
- No refunds can be given after the first day of class
- Come to all classes and thoughtfully engage with your classmates and teachers.
- We are looking for autodidacts from all backgrounds who are curious, generous and open.
- We welcome students with a broad array of technical experiences--no coding experience is required, but a basic comfort level with technology is preferred.
- B.Y.O.Laptop (Mac / PC / Linux)
Sorry, applications are now closed
We accept up to 15 students on a rolling basis. We will respond to your application within ~1 week of submission. Rolling admissions means there are fewer and fewer slots the longer you wait, so if you’re interested in the program get your application in early!