We started off the afternoon with an artist talk by Laine Nooney called the ‘Domestic History of Computing’. She had an article published in the Atlantic yesterday about the first erotic computer game. Her talk focused mostly on the life of Roberta Williams, the first female computer designer in the United States, and Sierra Entertainment/Online Systems (her and her husband’s company). She used Roberta’s story as a case study into how computers focused in a domestic setting: how they were introduced, why they felt accessible, etc. It was a super intersting and extremely detailed perspective into an area of computer history that I had never really even thought about. She revealed how a chronological timeline wasn’t really best for her exploration as much of Roberta’s story is not well known in computer history. Instead she focused on organizing history by theme rather than time and getting history ‘more’ rather than getting history right.

After her talk, a few of us met to have a conversation about what’s next for us after SFPC. We’ve all really enjoyed our time here and have been feeling anxious about how to continue doing what we’re passionate about - finding time, motivation, a good process, accountability, and a way to sustain ourselves all at the same time. We spent some time reflecting two questions that sparked a lot of conversation: ‘what do we not want to do? and ‘what do we want to do?’ I’ve never thought about asking myself what I don’t want to do before and it felt like a strange question at first, but it was nice to think about what I don’t want to do so that I could feel like I’ve cleared some sort of path for something that I do want to do. There’s been a lot of anxiety for me about being exposed to so much, and this helped curb it a little. As for the what do I want to do question - I’m still figuring this out, and so are a lot of other students. It was nice to hear that a lot of them are having similar anxieties and concerns as me though. It sounds like everyone wants to continue to keep in touch as a means for motivation, accountability, and a safe place for sharing, conversation, and questions which I’m really happy about.

Later, Giorgia Lupi visited for her artist talk which I’ve been really excited for for a long time. Her talk at Eyeo was one of my all time favorites. I just really love the style of the visualizations that Accurat creates and I really hope one day that something I make will look like that as well! It was nice to hear her reiterate her design process of drawing, because I really enjoy drawing, but its something that I’ve been taking for granted lately. It gives me inspiration to get back into it. You should also check out Accurat’s friends in space project which is so so cool!