November 26, 2024
Photo by Minu Han. It’s a photo of teacher JWords holding headphones with both hands over her head. She's looking at a computer that two students are using.Dear community,
This year has emphasized that computation cannot be separated from its political and social impact. Together we’ve nurtured a community that provides opportunities for those who are most oppressed by technology to reshape it in service of a beautiful world. In 2024, School for Poetic Computation became a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization and gave away more than $335,000 in scholarships to people excluded from art, technology, and higher education spaces—the most wealth redistributed than in any other year in our history.
This year we organized 17 classes, with 50 teachers, and reached over 580 students. We studied:
- How do the logics of computer interfaces and circuits obscure our realities?
- What if all of our software was made by people who love us?
- How do we cultivate infrastructures of solidarity with each other and reimagine technology from a grassroots perspective?
We created a community-centered, peer-led educational space in the midst of co-occurring ecological, humanitarian, and political crises, witnessed through social networks, shaped by tech executives, and transformed by hardware and software alike. Through the study of poetic computation in tandem with other coalition-building efforts, SFPC is empowering people to learn how they are already capable of transforming the world beyond existing technological, political, and social systems.
Please help us raise $25,000 for scholarships at SFPC to expand access to this urgent education. Thanks to a generous donation from a SFPC alum who is redistributing their inherited wealth, we are already halfway to this goal. With your help, SFPC can become a school where no one faces a financial barrier to study art, code, hardware, and critical theory.
In solidarity and with gratitude,
Todd Anderson, Neta Bomani, and Celine Wong Katzman
Co-Directors, School for Poetic Computation
Photo of students sitting in a circle, writing down something. Behind them, the word ‘Power’ is projected.2024 Program Highlights
Instruments of the Black Gooey Universe
Photo by Kedrick Walker. Two students show a PCB board with LEDs to the camera.This tuition-free hardware and critical theory class taught by American Artist, Che-Wei Wang, Taylor Levy with Zainab Aliyu examined the origin of computer interfaces, surveillance technology, and incarceration, alongside basic principles of circuit building. Students made speculative instruments of the “Black Gooey Universe,” Artist’s conceptual framework which considers Blackness, rather than whiteness, as computational default. This class was supported by the Art for Justice Fund.
Solidarity Infrastructures
Meghna presents on the many ways cow dung is used by their family in southern India (Screenshot from a virtual class held on BigBlueButton).Taught by Alice Yuan Zhang, Meghna Mahadevan, and Oren Robinson, this class offered a critical space to reframe technology from a grassroots perspective. Students developed technical skills for running a situated server practice to apply the idea of “computing in place” to their own locale, working with the neighborhood library, community garden, elderly home, or mutual aid coalition.
SFPC Block Party
Video by Andre Fernandez. Melanie Hoff is interacting with Dance Poem Revolution, an installation where they’re using a Dance Dance revolution mat to compose a poem. This summer we organized a celebration for our students, teachers, and extended community. Students from many classes including Interrogating Computational Approaches to Art; Reading Into the Past, Writing Into the Future; Sex Ed, and more shared their learnings with our community! We ate tacos, explored artwork on computer terminals, vibed to a live code performance by Roxanne Harris, and participated in Dance Poem Revolution, SFPC teacher Melanie Hoff’s interactive installation where players are invited to write poetry for revolution with their whole bodies.