School
for
Poetic
Computation
How often do you try to take a picture of the moon only to realize it doesn’t look how you imagined? How many people are uploading their photos of the moon to the Internet at this very moment? Considering the ubiquity of screen images in everyday life, ,Imperfect Pictures, examines our approaches to them: linking, clicking, saving, discarding, editing, dumping, forgetting. Participants will slow down to consider the role of photography outside of a “hi-res” context. We will look at and create ugly pictures, spam, compressed images, screenshots, facetuned selfies, .gifs, stock photography, boring images, useless images, memes, and badly performing social photographs.
What is expected of me?
Each participant should be prepared to have the following:
By taking this class, you can expect to gain the following:
This class may be for you if:
This class may NOT be for you if:
Molly Soda is an artist based in New York. Her work predominantly exists online, evolving, interacting (and decaying) within its networked ecosystems. Her interdisciplinary practice incorporates performance, video, photography, websites, and installation. Soda is an avatar, a flattened 2D version of herself entering an infinite sea of content, refreshing with each new upload. She is a file to be looked at, swiped past, downloaded, forgotten about, printed out, or discarded.
she/her
· website
· twitter
· instagram
Kayla is an artist and educator based in Queens, New York. She makes websites, screensavers, and stages performances within the desktop environment. Previously, she was a programmer and designer for QuaranTV, a 24/7 public access livestream, and has taught computer classes at the Enoch Pratt Free Library and with Code in the Schools in Baltimore, Maryland. She holds a BFA in sculpture from MICA. Currently, she is program assistant at Rhizome. You can find her online at kayla.world.
she/her
· website
· instagram
Will Allstetter (he/him)—a writer, computer scientist, and artist based in New York City—studied English and computer science at Brown University. He looks to digital logic as a methodology for exploring, interrogating, and exposing analog social systems and structures. His art often utilizes random numbers, large language models, and found images. His work has been featured in i-D, Document Journal, Syntax Magazine, The College Hill Independent, the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, and the RISD Museum. He has curated work from artists in various mediums for new media and digital exhibitions.
he/him
· website
· instagram
Our programs are conducted in spoken English with audiovisual materials such as slides, code examples and video. Online programs are held over Zoom.
Please take care and be well. We hope you are comfortable in your housing, living, and working situation in general. Never hesitate to ask us for advice and reach out if you have accessibility requests or need any assistance during your time at SFPC. We will work closely with you towards co-creating the most accommodating learning environment for your needs.
What is the last image you deleted off of your phone or computer? Why did you discard it? What was the last image you saved? Why did you save it and where do you think it'll end up?
Applications open until Applications closed on April 15, 2024.
You can expect to hear back from us about the status of your application on . 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 weekly or 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.
SFPC processes all payments via Withfriends and Stripe. Please email admissions@sfpc.study if these payment options don't work for you.
Upon payment, your space in the class will be reserved. We offer scholarships for those who cannot pay full tuition. Read more about scholarships below.
If you can’t pay full tuition, we really still want you to apply. Our application will ask you how much you can pay. We will offer subsidized positions in all of our classes, once each one has enough participants enrolled that we’re able to do so.
We have also started a scholarship fund, and we will be offering additional scholarships as community members redistribute their wealth through SFPC. We direct scholarship funds towards participants who are low-income, Black, Indigenous, racialized, gendered, disabled, Queer, trans, oppressed, historicially excluded and underrepresented.
Right now, tuition is SFPC’s main source of income, and that is a problem. It means that we can only pay teachers, pay for space, and organize programs when participants pay full tuition to attend. Tuition is a huge barrier to entry into the SFPC community, and it disproportionately limits Black participants, indigenous participants, queer and trans participants, and other people who are marginalized, from participating. Scholarships are not a long term solution for us, but in the short and medium term we hope to offer them more while we work towards transforming SFPC’s financial model.
For SFPC to be the kind of place the community has always meant it to be, it needs to become a platform for wealth redistribution. If you are a former participant, prospective participant, or friend of the school, and you have the financial privilege to do so, please donate generously. There is enough wealth in this community to make sure no one is ever rejected because of their inability to pay, and becoming that school will make SFPC the impactful, imaginative, transformative center of poetry and justice that we know it can be.
Interested in more learning opportunities at the School for Poetic Computation? Join our newsletter to stay up to date on future sessions and events, and follow us on Instagram and Twitter. Support our programming through scholarships. Get in touch over email.