Today was my first day at the School for Poetic Computation [SFPC], and it was amazing! It started with basic mingling and administration stuff, but I can’t articulate my excitement for what’s in the works. One of the founders, Zach Lieberman, said ‘We work for you’ which was surprising, awesome, and extremely refreshing. The amount of ownership we have in this research experiment is pretty empowering. Zach and the other founder, Taeyoon, handpicked this amazing bunch of indivuals which I’m very proud, intimidated, and lucky to be a part of. Everyone is friendly and diverse, coming from a huge range of experience levels, backgrounds, and locations. There are a few students who are coming to America for the first time for SFPC - and I can’t even fathom what that’s like - kudos to you guys! I am surrounded by so many extremely talented artists, designers, coders, and makers, and I’m incredibly excited to learn from all of them. I hope that I can contribute some perspective and expertise as well!

We spent the second half of the day experimenting with human fax maachines. Toru, Meghana, Christos, and I had to design a way to decode and encode an image between two groups of people. We started with simple shapes, graduated to shapes with diagonals, and then with curves. We even thought about freeform shapes as well. It’s amazing what complex images you can translate with such minimal rules!

We finished with a dinner in the 2nd floor kitchen which consisted of homemade salads and himalayan food - it was my first time with himilayan food and it was pretty good! I listened in on a great conversation with Lauren and Christos about their backgrounds and opinions in news/publishing/advertising. Both have some really interesting experience and thoughts about the polictics of those fields. Day one is over and I’ve already learned so much!

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