School
for
Poetic
Computation
A class for artists and writers wanting to explore storytelling and choice across different mediums, from objects to spaces to sunsets. From Choose Your Own Adventure books to video games to immersive theater, we’ll be exploring stories that change and adapt according to the player’s choices. We’ll be creating our own interactive narratives through a series of small projects, with a final project to play and share. Lecture topics will include a survey of various types of physical and digital interactive storytelling, including narrative installations, immersive theater, mail-based art, immersive audio and phone plays, and location-based game design. We’ll also have an intro to Twine, an open-source tool for creating web-based interactive nonlinear stories. We’ll also cover safety and taking care of your audience, how to prime your audience before a work begins, choice and story structures, how to construct endings, and various ways of documenting interactive choice-based work.
Images courtesy of teachers, participants and class documentarians.
Participants should have comfort with reading and writing in English.
This class is for:
April Soetarman (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist, designer, and writer who creates public art, immersive installations, games, and weird side projects. Her site-responsive works play with the language of everyday objects and speculative institutions to explore complex human emotions. Her installations have been supported by the Seattle Art Museum, the Seattle Office of Arts and Culture, and CultureHub, among others, as well as anonymously installed in dozens of public spaces across the country. April was also known for WeirdSideProjects.com, her previously-anonymous series of ongoing experiments in code, text, and street art. Her most notable projects include The Museum of Almost Realities (2017), The Department of Emotional Labor (2019), and The End of the Day (2020). April has a BA in architecture and music from UC Berkeley and was an Experiential Design Founding Fellow at Experience Institute.
she/her
· website
· twitter
· instagram
Lee 소라 Beckwith is sometimes an educator but always a learner. They currently teach high schoolers computer science, math, and creative writing on Lenape land (Bronx, NY). Their recent research centers on rethinking classroom power dynamics through curriculum negotiation. These days, they are thinking a lot about fractals and film scores.
they/them
· website
· instagram
Todd Anderson is a digital poet, software artist and educator based in New York City. He has been making experimental software art for over 10 years including the live interactive poetry project Hotwriting, the Chrome Extension ARG 'An Experience', the performance-inside-the-browser extension HitchHiker, and multiple plays and performances with the multidisciplinary group H0t Club. He is perhaps best known as the host and curator of WordHack, the monthly language+technology talk series in NYC running every third Thursday since 2014.
he/him
· website
· twitter
· instagram
Applications open until Applications closed on February 10, 2023.
You can expect to hear back from us about the status of your application on February 24, 2023. Please email us at admissions@sfpc.study with any questions you have.
For 10 classes, it costs $1200 + $12.26 in 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.
Interested in more learning opportunities at the School for Poetic Computation? Join our newsletter to stay up to date on future sessions and events, and follow us on Instagram and Twitter. Support our programming through scholarships. Get in touch over email.