School
for
Poetic
Computation
Drawing data by hand is a way to attune our eyes to the hidden and so-plain-as-to-be-unseen dimensions of our world. In this course we will 'sketch' data as a way to engage with data concerning us, our communities, and the greater world. We might plot our fears, map our neighborhoods, graph our love lives, and chart the impact of our experiences. We will focus on the handmade, quirky, human-scale data that we can gather, clean, manage, and visualize without expert use of technology. As we develop our personal practices, we also enter the murky world of data as a text. Data is entangled in a knot-work of relationships. Work involving data cannot be divorced from the way that data is collected, stored, manipulated, bought, sold, and stolen by organizations, governments, and other entities. So, as we experiment with data as a tool for artistic curiosity and understanding we will ask questions about the materiality of data, its uses in surveillance, the positions of subject and collector, and the glories and dangers of classification.
Images courtesy of teachers.
Class 1: Thinking about thinking about data
Class 2: Observing & Collecting
Class 3: Organizing & Classifying
Class 4: Retrieval, Access, Storage
Class 5: Making Meaning
Class 6: Forms
Class 7: Visual Craft
Class 8: Jam Session/Workshop Day
Class 9: Critique & Discussion
Class 10: Celebration & Sharing
This class may be for you if:
This class may NOT be for you if:
Meghna Dholakia is a designer and artist fascinated by individual, collective, and geologic narratives of transformation. She enjoys long walks and collecting interesting looking leaves.
she/her
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Lia Coleman is a Chinese-American artist and AI researcher based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. Coleman’s work centers on the interplay of AI technology, art & design, coding, and ethics. They actively conduct research on creative AI at Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute and publish guides for artists to responsibly use machine learning. Coleman’s artwork explores themes of collective memory and loss. In assembling datasets, they attempt to record and archive the past– a process which is inherently never complete. They embrace the unpredictability of neural networks, as a reflection of their own experience of grappling with the elusive nature of truth and the past. Coleman is an alum of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the School For Poetic Computation. They have also served as an adjunct professor at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). Their work has been shown internationally in Dubai, Germany, Malta, Saudi Arabia, Canada, and the United States, and has been featured by Vox, Wired, Tribeca Film Festival, Mozilla Festival, Science Gallery Detroit, New York University, the NeurIPS Conference, and Gray Area. Their writing on AI art has been published by Princeton Architectural Press, DISEÑA, and Neocha Magazine.
they/them
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· twitter
· instagram
Applications open until Applications closed on August 13, 2023.
You can expect to hear back from us about the status of your application on August 25, 2023. Please email us at admissions@sfpc.study with any questions you have.
For 10 classes, it costs $1200 + processing fees, for a one-time payment. We also offer payment plans. Participants can schedule monthly payments of the same amount. First and last payments must be made before the start and end of class. *Processing fees apply for each payment.
SFPC processes all payments via Withfriends and Stripe. Please email admissions@sfpc.study if these payment options don't work for you.
For more information about what we look for in applicants, scholarships, and other frequently asked questions, please visit our applicant FAQ.
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