-
SFPC Open House...it's finally here!
Today is the day! The open house mentor session/party is finally here! We spent all morning arranging and setting up tables and projects for the party, while continuing to prepare for the mentor sessions.
After lunch our first mentor session with Marius Watz began. I was nervous in the beginning, but he was super nice and really easy to have a conversation with so my nerves were gone instantly. He mostly gave us what he called the ‘scared straight’ speech, which is for people who are considering becoming artists. I really appreciated his rather brutal honesty and learned so much that I hadn’t really thought about or known before. Thanks Marius!
After a quick mingle break, we regrouped for our mentor session with Kyle McDonald. Kyle also gave us some insight into how to keep doing what we’re doing at SFPC, what his creative process is like, and went over a few specific projects of his with us. It was a lot of fun speaking with him. Thank you Kyle!
After finishing up the mentor sessions, we continued prepping, and then the party began. This was my first experience at an exhibition and it turned out to be really fun! It was nice to speak with people who are genuinely interested in your work and I Learned about a few more tools to try from some of the people who stopped by. It was also great to get a chance to see what other students were working on as well. Everyone is just so talented and I enjoyed all of their projects. During the party, there was also a ‘graduation ceremony’ where everyone received an award from the teachers. Mine was ‘Most likely to rewrite Shakespeare with floating point NaNs’ which is based on a bug I had in my code for a mini project I was working on. All the awards were really well thought out and fit the students perfectly. The night was a huge success. Thank you so much to all the teachers and students for their work in putting the day/night together! I had so much fun!
-
Epic prep day
This morning, Zach checked in with us about prepping for our final open house mentor session and party. After that, we had some time to continue preparing for the event by polishing up sketches and researching our mentors.
After lunch we had Ramsey’s last class. A bunch of students were able to show off some languages they had created which were super innovative. Check out Yuki’s Comic Strip language: changing the code changes the facial expressions in the comics…super cute!
Later on, we just spent the rest of the day and night continuing to prep for the final mentor session/party. I’m really anxious to meet with Marius and Kyle because they’re so awesome, but super excited of course. The party seems like it’s going to be a lot of fun - I know that Ida, Taeyoon, and all the other teachers have put a lot of work into making it a really memorable night.
-
My SFPC learning report
As a way of summarizing and sharing our experiences at SFPC, we’ve been asked to complete a learning report by answering 4 of the following questions in 200 words or less:
- What are some of your memorable learning experiences at the school?
- What are some things you created during the school? Please provide a brief description and a link.
- What would you like to teach and share after the school? and how would you like to teach?
- What questions are you leaving the school with? What questions did you come in with?
- What do you want the school to become?
- What would you like to be doing one year from now? and five years from now?
- What would you tell the person you were a year ago?
- What is going on with this world and how do you make stuff in it?
- If you could have one computational super power, what would it be? How would you use it to create?
- What is poetic computation?
Here are the few I’ve chosen to reflect on:
WHAT ARE SOME OF YOUR MEMORABLE LEARNING EXPERIENCES AT THE SCHOOL?
I don’t know that I can begin to quantify how much I’ve learned at SFPC. It has been one of the richest experiences I’ve had to date. Although I’ve been exposed to countless new technologies and tools to play with, my most memorable learning experiences have been those that weren’t technical, which really surprised me as I was reflecting on the answer to this question. I gained confidence in being forced to present work at our welcome party in front of a ton of people. I gained perspective in learning how much time goes into all these amazing projects we’re exposed to through our teachers and artist talks. It’s okay to start from a foreign place. It’s okay that it doesn’t work out - look at a failed direction as a new inspiration. I gained strength in my ideas through encouragement, reflection, and stimulation. I’ve been humbled over and over again by the talented students I’m surrounded by, and I’ve really enjoyed the few times I’ve (hopefully) been able to help them. I’ve truly loved learning for the sake of learning and I know what I want education to be.
WHAT ARE SOME THINGS YOU CREATED DURING THE SCHOOL? PLEASE PROVIDE A BRIEF DESCRIPTION AND A LINK.
(Descriptions can be found in linked posts)
- Binary games
- Cat in paper.js
- Recreation of circle visualization in d3
- Crochet/knitting workshop
- Puzzlescript game, also here
- John Whitney animation
- Creature animation
- Word particle system
- Image generation
- Poetic Science Fair at Silent Barn
- 3D sketches
- Cat ‘hardware’
- Shader sketches
- This blog!
All videos can also be found on my Vimeo channel.
WHAT QUESTIONS ARE YOU LEAVING THE SCHOOL WITH? WHAT QUESTIONS DID YOU COME IN WITH?
The main question I’m leaving the school with is how can I keep doing what I’m doing at SFPC? Before SFPC I graduated from undergrad and got a job at a startup that did a lot of work with computational linguistics and natural language processing. I really loved working there, but they unfortunately failed after about 4 months. I’ve also had experience in a more corporate setting, but I’ve had trouble finding what the best fit is for me. SFPC has been a stark and refreshing contrast to everything I’ve done in the past. I remember telling Casey, our admin, about halfway through the 10 weeks that I didn’t think I wanted to go back to a traditional job, or at least a job like I had in the past. How can I find the type of learning and openness to experimentation in my future career? Can I be fulfilled with a ‘traditional’ job? Is freelance or returning to school the best option?
More specific to my interests: How can I combine my interest with language, text, and code with my interest in sewing and crocheting? My math/stats background lends itself to data visualization – how can I fit that in? Can I mix fashion and data visualization?
Questions I came in with mostly focused on how I can combine by learned math/stats background with my passion for art and being crafty. I think SFPC has given me a short term glance into how this can happen, but now I need a long term execution plan.
WHAT WOULD YOU TELL THE PERSON YOU WERE A YEAR AGO?
I don’t know if I’ve been more satisfied with what I’m doing in my life than I have been at SFPC. So I would tell the person I was a year ago to only take on opportunities that you’re passionate about, even if it seems risky or if its something you feel as if you know nothing about. I felt like accepting a spot at SFPC was a career risk, but I’ve learned so much about myself and what I really enjoy doing. I can’t imagine doing anything different now.
Here’s a few words of wisdom from Zach and Taeyoon that I’d also like to tell my year ago self (these are not direct quotes, just mainly what I interpreted):
Program like your parents aren’t in the car with you. – wisdom from Zach
Don’t ask for permission. (In the context of scraping vs using APIs) – wisdom from Zach
Do things, hang out with people, you don’t know what can come out of it. – wisdom from Taeyoon -
Ekene Ijeoma and our CTOT zine
Today began with check in and artist talk with Ekene Ijeoma. He’s done a large amount of amazing work with techniques I’d really like to try including really cool manipulation of 3D forms. He even created his own javascript library called ijeoma.js which I really want to try out!
After lunch, we had Allison’s last CTOT class where we had a peer proof reading/edit/design session to create our zine. The finished product looks incredible thanks to Meghana’s design skills and can be found here.
Later that night, a bunch of us checked out Big Screens, a show put on by ITP on some…big screens! I thought most works shown were pretty cool, but some of them were a little underwhelming or confusing. There was good cheese, other snacks, and drinks supplied, so we had fun!
-
Fun with hardware and shaders
This afternoon started with another hardware class from Taeyoon. His idea for us was to think about illustrating some hardware concept through a simple object/process/contraption. Naturally my brain goes to cats…In a previous class, I had tried to illustrate the concept of memory with cats. It sort of worked out, but it inspired what I made for this class as well. Overall, the technical concept isn’t revolutionary - just completing a circuit to light up an LED but I’ve had the most fun making this project as well as working with a similar idea for the Poetic Science Fair at Silent Barn. I think I just really miss sewing and making physical things with my hands.
Later on, Jason Levine led an intro to Shaders class which so much fun. Shaders feel so much more accessible to me on a technical level now (my mind is still churning through them conceptually). Here’s a few examples of what I made in class: