SFPC:The First Class at Eyebeam Art and Technology Center.

November 22nd, 2013

Presented by Taeyoon Choi, Co-founder of SFPC

SFPC: The First Class

This presentation is dedicated to the First Class of SFPC

I’d like to invite you to a day in SFPC in 33 Flatbush, Downtown Brooklyn.

We had four main teachers who are also co-founders of SFPC.

Zach

Jen

Amit

Taeyoon

Out of 60+ amazing applicants, we accepted 15 students from around the world as the first class.

Most classes were planned weekly, but schedule was variable upon needs of the students and availability of teachers.

Myself and Zach were in school 4+ days/ week to help students and also take care of administration. Casey also helped with admin.

There were classes on coding and hacking. * Zach explaining how pixels work in a morning class

There is poetics in the nature of computation: the place where logic meets electricity,

and math meets language, which we find beautiful.

* Learning logic gates with low level electronics in Taeyoon’s class

Zach taught Input and Output and many other classes.Amit taught Learning Curve.Jen taught Math for Artists and Art for Mathists and organized Open Dinners. Taeyoon taught Drawings and circuits, and organized Art of walking.

We planned classes for experimenting with teaching and learning.

Jen’s Open Dinner was communal cooking and sharing food and thoughts with special guests.

Taeyoon’s Art of Walking was walking and reading

What mattered was sharing time to make situations,

writing code and reading essays.

After few weeks, we started to call homework as ‘Propositions’.

Most importantly, student lead workshops ruled.

A lot of time just talking

Debugging together

Explaining how pixels workExplaining how pixels work

being attentive and present

and selflessly helping one another

Everyday we met our rockstars

*30+ visiting artists

Bret Victor

Ramsey Nasser

Brian House

Adam Magyar

Takahiro Yamaguchi

Paola Antonelli

Jacob Tonski

Caitlin Morris

April 17th, 2013 Christine Sun Kim

Dan Phiffer

Kyle McDonald

Syd Lieberman

Golan Levin

Zach Gage

Brian Droitcour

Jürg Lehni

And so many more*full list on http://sfpc.io/thefirstclass

and, everyday we found our new rockstars

Through small victories

* Meet the students from SFPC:The First Class

Simona de Rosa

Jonathan Dahan

Ishac Bertran

Andy Clymer

Jon Wohl

Jason Levine

Moises Sanabria

Claire Lin

Jesse Wolpert

Le Wei

Tega Brain

Mini Kim

Motoi Shimizu

Rachel Uwa

Paul Chang

Casey Gollan*admin superpower

Yoobi*special guest

Just a few special moments to remember

Everything is amazing during

The Golden Hour

Open dinners

hosted by amazing chef Jen

And many prototypes *Simona’s Tasted performance

everyone tried something for the first time.

*we also had Fruit Flies and few tough moments.

Most importantly, making friends

and making art for the future.

Info from Eyebeam website:

School for Poetic Computation, or SFPC, is an experimental education and research initiative in the form of a ten week learning environment. It is led by former Eyebeam fellows Zachary Lieberman and Taeyoon Choi with Amit Pitaru and Jen Lowe. In partnership with Eyebeam Art & Technology Center, the school will present SFPC: The First Class from November 20th to 23rd, a survey of unconventional learning processes featuring fifteen artists from their first class.

Through an open call, SFPC accepted these individuals from diverse backgrounds and locations around the world. Since September 15th, they have occupied a sun light filled loft in downtown Brooklyn attending lectures and workshops and averaging days of 12+ hours spent together. Classes covered topics from basic electronics, programming, math, cooking and walking and were accompanied by a program of guest lectures and workshops offered by leading artists and technologists.These students have produced teaching tools, software and hardware, interventions and provocations, asking questions on the poetics and creative use of computation.

http://sfpc.io