School
for
Poetic
Computation
Rhythmanalytics explores electronic music under platform capitalism, where prompts and metadata shape sound. Designed for students new to critical sound studies as well as experienced practitioners, this class operates as a simulated artist-critic ecosystem. Students will create and critique work, leaving with a collective zine and a compilation of original audio pieces.
Images courtesy of teachers.
This is a class made for BIPOC participants. Asian, Black, and Brown applicants will be especially prioritized in the application review process.
Rhythmanalytics frames rhythm as a diagnostic tool for understanding how culture, technology, and power synchronize bodies, platforms, and attention. This class draws on Henri Lefebvre’s theory of rhythmanalysis and Norman Kelly’s analysis of Black political economy in music.
As a lived experiment, students will work within a model artist-critic ecosystem designed to simulate contemporary music culture under platform capitalism. Students will be split into two roles: producers (sound-focused) and writers (text-focused). Producers will present work-in-progress and writers will respond with critical writing, prompts or analysis. This structure reenacts the rhythms of release, response, and circulation in the attention economy, allowing students to experience how creative and critical labor shape one another.
This class repositions music creation and journalism as convergent practices of prompt literacy: the ability to shape how sound is described, summoned, categorized, and interpreted across digital systems. Students will explore how albums, playlists, metadata, reviews, interfaces, and AI text-to-sound models function as contemporary instruments of governance, replacing critique with automation, and authorship with compatibility.
Through lectures, listening, writing, and studio practice, students will develop a post-journalistic practice that treats sound as a cognitive and social medium rather than a product. The class will culminate in a collective zine and sound compilation that reenacts—and critically reprograms—the artist-critic relationship under platform capitalism, preparing students to engage AI systems not as optimizers, but as culturally literate agents shaping the future of music, writing, and listening.
Students should expect to spend 3-5 hours per week on listening, reading, writing, and studio work. Participation includes presenting work-in-progress, responding to peers, and contributing to the collective final project.
Required
Recommended
No technical expertise required—just curiosity about sound and platforms. Writers, musicians, producers, and hybrid practitioners are encouraged to apply. If you can describe, respond to, or question how sound circulates, you’re experienced enough.
This class may be for you if you:
This class may NOT be for you if you:
DeForrest Brown, Jr. is an Alabama-raised, Ex-American rhythmanalyst, writer, musician, and curator living within the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ /Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. His written works focus on a diagnostic exploration of electronic music through considerations of applied metaphilosophy. He has released three albums on Planet Mu that channel the African American modernist tradition of rhythm and soul music as an intellectual site and sound of techno-vernacular expression. Brown’s debut book ‘Assembling a Black Counter Culture’ was released on Primary Information in 2022. In 2023, he co-curated HOPE, an international group exhibition presented by Museion Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Bolzano-Bozen as the final installment of the TECHNO HUMANITIES trilogy. He has performed or presented work at the Venice Biennale Musica 2025, HKW, Paris+ par Art Basel, Somerset House, Unsound Festival, Performa, and has also taught courses and lectured at Simon Fraser University, The New School, NYU, Harvard University, Brown University, and Princeton University, among others. Recent collaborations include metanarrative liner notes for Cybotron, Drexciya, and Dopplereffekt developed with Detroit techno pioneers Juan Atkins and Gerald Donald, with Berlin club/record label Tresor.
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Jaylyn is an interdisciplinary artist who follows their creative impulses wherever they lead, embracing curiosity over specialization. Her explorations span filmmaking, food, 3D modeling, writing, and design. With a love for observing the world and imagining new possibilities, she is passionate about uncovering the social underpinnings of her favorite subjects—film, video games, and pop music—and how their broad appeal shapes and reflects our world. Her work often explores connection, intimacy, and technology. Jaylyn was a contributing artist to the Open Source Afro Hair Library, a project dedicated to improving representation of Afro-textured hair in video gaming and fostering community among Black artists.
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Applications open until Applications closed on February 9, 2026.
You can expect to hear back from us about the status of your application on February 25, 2026. 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.
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