School
for
Poetic
Computation
How can code and automation help us see and manipulate large collections of videos in new ways? What do novel approaches in machine learning help make evident? On the flip side, what do these same approaches prevent us from seeing? What do they obscure? How can automated "content generation" be leveraged for political, poetic, and critical ends? In this experimental video art class students will explore the possibilities (and limitations) of using Python, command line tools, and machine learning models as a means to critically analyze, filter, sort, edit, and compose video. We will look at historic and contemporary examples of artists and activists working with video archives, with a focus on the political dimensions of experimental filmmaking. Students may bring their own video archives to work with, or use material we collect online. The class will conclude with a public screening of student work.
Images courtesy of teachers.
This class may be for you if:
Sam Lavigne is an artist and educator whose work deals with data, surveillance, cops, natural language processing, and automation. He has exhibited work at Lincoln Center, SFMOMA, Pioneer Works, DIS, Ars Electronica, The New Museum, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and his work has been covered in the New Yorker, the Washington Post, the Guardian, Motherboard, Wired, the Atlantic, Forbes, NPR, the San Francisco Chronicle, the World Almanac, the Ellen Degeneres Show and elsewhere.
He has taught at ITP/NYU, The New School, and the School for Poetic Computation, and was formerly Magic Grant fellow at the Brown Institute at Columbia University, and Special Projects editor at the New Inquiry Magazine. He is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Design at UT Austin.
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Ilona is a Minneapolis based mixed media artist, extrovert, teacher and technologist who sees his work as an opportunity to express and make meaning in a chaotic world. Ilona was formerly the Director of Tech at ,MoveOn.org, and brings experience in digital security adoption and practice from that role. He regularly supports local organizers and groups in thinking through digital security and technology questions.
These days he is particularly interested in the process of change both personally and collectively, and where our physical bodies intersect with our spiritual and digital ones.
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Jonathan W. Y. Gray (jwyg) is Director of the Centre for Digital Culture and Senior Lecturer in Critical Infrastructure Studies at the Department of Digital Humanities, King’s College London; Cofounder of the Public Data Lab; and Research Associate at the Digital Methods Initiative (University of Amsterdam) and the médialab (Sciences Po, Paris). His research explores the role of digital data, methods and infrastructures in the “composition of collective life”. More about his work can be found at ,jonathangray.org, and at @jwyg.
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Applications open until Applications closed on August 11, 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.
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