School
for
Poetic
Computation
Media Folklores unearths the Black feminist histories embedded in the labor of coding and asks how generative systems might move from control toward relation—from domination toward feeling. If, as Audre Lorde teaches, the erotic is a source of knowledge and power, what happens when we treat code not as a rigid instrument of order, but as a poethical medium of sensation, dispersal, and collectivity? Students will reflect on possible answers to this question through short film projects made with p5.js and Blender.
Images courtesy of teachers.
While this class is grounded in Black feminism, it is open to everyone.
This studio treats code as a poetic and political medium. Grounded in Black feminist theory, students will explore generative systems as expressions of memory, diaspora, and relation.
Working in p5.js, students will build animations using randomness, particle systems, and basic physics simulations. We will explore how these systems—often used to model order and prediction—instead become metaphors for diaspora, opacity, and relation.
Drawing from Denise Ferreira da Silva’s poethics—an entanglement of poetics and ethics that refuses separability—we will write code against neurological modalities of hierarchy and control and embrace computational forms that account for the histories embedded within.
Folklore operates here as a living method: a collective technology for holding memory across rupture. In archives fractured by colonialism and misogynoir, linear narrative often reproduces violence by demanding coherence. Through non-linear storytelling, we draw on Saidiya Hartman’s critical fabulation as a computational practice. Particle systems, noise, and generative dispersion allow us to model memory not as a fixed record, but as a relational field.
By the end of the class, students will produce a 3-5 minute generative film that transforms archival materials through coded animation and experimental sound. Students will leave with a working knowledge of p5.js and a critical understanding of how code can function as both poetic medium and political proposition.
This class may be for you if you:
This class may NOT be for you if you:
manuel arturo abreu (*1991 Santo Domingo) is a non-disciplinary artist working with what is at hand in a process of magical thinking with attention to ritual aspects of aesthetics. They recently exhibited at the Tufts University Art Galleries (Boston), the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, Konrad Fischer Galerie (Düsseldorf), the Portland Art Museum, SIMIAN (Copenhagen), Kunstverein München (Munich), Bergen Kunsthall, & Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler (Berlin). Since 2005, abreu has co-directed home school, a free pop-up art school and space of sacred duty in the Pacific Northwest which has been in curatorial residency at Oregon Contemporary (2023) and Yale Union (2019).
Zoe Butler is a New Media Performance Artist who uses abstract moving images to engage Caribbean folklore stories. Her work often takes an interest in the transformation of objects over time; whether reflected in the decay of family VHS tapes or the erosion of slave ship wreckage. Butler’s practice responds to the materiality of artifacts to embrace the abundance of counter-histories and to encourage people to see themselves beyond the representational.
Applications open until Applications closed on April 27, 2026.
You can expect to hear back from us about the status of your application on May 11, 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.
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