The School for Poetic Computation is organized around exploring the creative and expressive nature of computational approaches to art and design. The school approaches writing code like creative writing — focusing on the mechanics of programming, the demystification of tools, and hacking the conventions of art-making with computation. Currently, SFPC is organized by Lauren Gardner, Zach Lieberman and Taeyoon Choi.   @sfpc
Francis Tseng is a designer and data developer, interested in how automation, simulation, and machine learning relate to social and political issues. In the past he has worked on community data analysis infrastructure for the Coral Project as a Knight-Mozilla OpenNews fellow, dystopian machine learning workshops, taught about journalism and technology at the New School, developed an automated music remixer, and prototyped news automation software under a Knight Prototype grant. He is currently working on interactive economy simulations and visualizations as a DBRS Labs resident.   @frnsys
Lynn Cherny is a data analysis and visualization consultant and currently a visiting Knight Fellow at University of Miami. She has a Ph.D. in Linguistics from Stanford and an M.Phil. in Computer Speech and Language Processing from Cambridge University. Her career began in research in an HCI group at Bell Labs (later AT&T Labs), but she left research to work in industry as a UI designer. She spent 18 years in various UX, UI, and usability roles in Silicon Valley, Paris, Seattle, and Boston, at companies including Excite, TiVo, Adobe, Autodesk, the Mathworks, and Solidworks.    @arnicas
Gene Kogan is an artist and programmer who is interested in generative systems and the application of emerging technology into artistic and expressive contexts. He writes code for live music, performance, and visual art. He contributes to open-source software projects and gives workshops and demonstrations on topics related to code and art.   @genekogan
Hannah Davis is a programmer/artist/musician based in New York. She is interested in everything, but at the moment is focused on data sonification, generative music, weird datasets, and new ways of exploring abstract systems. She is currently working on TransProse, a program that translates literature into music. She has a master's degree from NYU's ITP program and her work has been featured in TIME, Wired, Popular Science, and others.   @ahandvanish
Golan Levin develops artifacts and experiences which explore the expressive use of computation, combining equal measures of the whimsical, the provocative, and the sublime in a wide variety of online, installation and performance media. A graduate of the Aesthetics and Computation Group at MIT, Golan is presently an Associate Professor of Electronic Art at Carnegie Mellon University, where he also directs the Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, a laboratory dedicated to atypical and anti-disciplinary research at the intersection of art, science, technology and culture.   @golan
Kathryn Hume leads sales and marketing for Fast Forward Labs, a machine intelligence research company, and teaches courses on law and technology at the University of Calgary. Prior to joining Fast Forward Labs, she advised global law firms on data privacy and security, and earned a doctorate in comparative literature from Stanford. She loves languages and drawing lessons from history to understand new technology.   @HumeKathryn
Mario Klingemann is a code artist and a skeptic with a curious mind. His interests are manifold and in constant evolution, involving glitch art, data visualization or robotic installations. If there is one common denominator it's his desire to understand, question and subvert the inner workings of systems of any kind. Since he taught himself programming 30 years ago he has been trying to create algorithms that are able to surprise and to show almost autonomous creative behaviour. The recent advancements in artificial intelligence, deep learning and data anaysis make him confident that in the near future "machine artists" will be able to create more interesting work than humans.   @quasimondo
Heather Dewey-Hagborg is a transdisciplinary artist and educator who is interested in art as research and critical practice. She has shown work internationally at events and venues including the World Economic Forum, Poland Mediations Bienniale, Norway Article Bienniale, Ars Electronica, Transmediale, Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona, the Science Gallery Dublin, PS1 MOMA, the New Museum, and Eyebeam Art and Technology Center in New York City. Her work has been widely discussed in the media, from the New York Times and the BBC to TED and Wired. She is an Assistant Professor of Art and Technology Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a 2016 Creative Capital award grantee in the area of Emerging Fields.   @hdeweyh
Mike Tyka studied Biochemistry and Biotechnology at the University of Bristol and went on to work as a research fellow at the University of Washington, studying the structure and dynamics of protein molecules. In 2009, Mike and a team of artists created Groovik’s Cube, a 35 feet tall, functional, multi-player Rubik’s cube. Since then, he co-founded ATLSpace, an artist studio in Seattle and has been creating metal and glass sculptures of protein molecules. In 2013 Mike went to Google to study neural networks, both artificial and natural. This work naturally spilled over to his artistic interests, exploring the possibilities of artificial neural networks for creating art.   @mtyka
Rebecca Fiebrink creates new technologies for digital music and art, and she designs new ways for humans to interact with computers in creative practice. Much of her current research combines techniques from human-computer interaction, machine learning, and signal processing to allow people to apply machine learning more effectively to new problems, such as the design of new digital musical instruments and gestural interfaces for gaming and health. She is a Lecturer in Computing at Goldsmiths, University of London, and was previously an Assistant Professor at Princeton University.   @RebeccaFiebrink
Jason Levine is a musician, performer, and computational poet. On a mission to bridge different artistic disciplines, he sees computation as a universal language for translating and communicating between different mediums. Inspired by the need to improvise, Jason focuses on the performative and generative qualities of coding and creates real-time software systems for live performance. He holds a degree in Computer Science and is a graduate of the School for Poetic Computation. He is currently most excited by applying live coding, machine learning, and parallel computing to his artistic practice. Jason has designed generative visuals for Ms Lauryn Hill, 7up, and Twitter. He has done research for Harmonix’s game Fantasia:Music Evolved and Zach Lieberman's DevArt project Play the World and contributed to the CLOUDS documentary. He recently became a Senior Creative Technologist at Local Projects.   @xululululuuum
Cassie Tarakajian is an artist and technologist based out of Brooklyn, NY. After studying electrical engineering and music at Johns Hopkins University, she worked as a software developer at Bloomberg and Big Human. Last fall she was an artist-in-residence at Pioneer Works, and she is currently a researcher-in-residence at DBRS labs working with machine learning, virtual reality, and cryptocurrency.   @hellothisiscass
Brian Whitman teaches computers about music. He received his PhD from the Machine Listening group at MIT’s Media Lab in 2005 and his masters in Computer Science from Columbia University’s Natural Language Processing group in 2000. His research focuses on the automated understanding of music listeners: parsing the global discussion of music and how fans interact with their favorite artists. In 2005 he co-founded The Echo Nest, and later became its CTO. The Echo Nest’s open platform with trillions of data points about the world of music grew to 70 employees and powered the music intelligence for almost every music service until it was acquired by Spotify in 2014. At Spotify, Brian serves as the Principal Music Scientist, coordinating existing music intelligence efforts and directing R&D for future products.   @bwhitman
Allison Parrish is a computer programmer, poet, educator and game designer who lives in Brooklyn. Her teaching and practice address the unusual phenomena that blossom when language and computers meet. Allison is currently the Digital Creative Writer-in-Residence at Fordham University and an adjunct professor/”something-in-residence” at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, where she teaches a course on writing computer programs that generate poetry.   @aparrish

alt-AI

exploring the intersection of artificial intelligence and art

2016 May 20 + 21 + 22

@ school for poetic computation

New York, NY   [map]  [directions]

alt-AI is over! Watch the talks and highlight videos here.

alt-AI explores artificial intelligence through the lens of artistic practice. What role can artists, writers, coders, and curators play in mediating scientific research to the public? How do we critically examine the implications, artifacts, and applications that follow?


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Thank you to Spotify for their generous donation.