Never been to a conference, this was very fun.
People using tech as creative medium - these are my people! It was nice to feel like I belonged.
Here's some notes and thoughts-
When my art started using computers more than paint and charcoal I stopped renting studio spaaaaaace. I was excited for this talk because I miss working in a studio, and am a bit jealous of Kitchen Table Coders and programs like the Recurse Center.
Concepts described included:
- Hacker spaces.
- Education programs with a focus on independent study, skill sharing, and group presentation.
- "Hacker in Residence"
- "Code Salons"
- Programmer apprentiships.
Which is a revelation, because these are all analogs to art education and practice!
I studied painting in a studio program - possibly the polar opposite of a computer engineering program. Technical/material skill was given as a foundation then expected to develop further as needed for your exploration of ideas.
I've heard of fine art departments offering digital/analog courses with the same studio format and am excited that it's emerging elsewhere. The tech ecosystem seemed to serve either business or tech for tech's sake. Is tech education enforcing this?
I've had a protege for 6 years who's 10 years younger than me. (I'm not much better than than him, it's just the relationship we fell into.) The mentor/protege thing is 2 way learning
He's about to finish a typical computer engineering degree, so I've got to see the kinds of projects and skills that involves. Fuck that noise. He's been shelving all his interesting ideas for the last 4 years.
Teach how to ask questions. A good question begats good solutions, the technicalities are trivial.
- Bots get famous. For technical novelty (eliza), or humorous failure (the two newsgroup bots stuck in an infinite flame war about Turkey - the country and the dinner). What makes a famous twitter bot? Personification? The oracle aspect of generated text is also important, possibly becuase you can give them meaning by curating retweets.
- Allison Parish is an incredible artist.
- Make your own programming languages, tools, engines, frameworks. So refreshing to hear people say this. That joke floating around of a sign that says "[0] days since the last javascript framework" is such a sad trope. Programming needs more wierd.