Tickets on EventBrite for this Saturday, October 14 · 12 – 3pm EDT workshop

How do we challenge how Western and capitalist hegemonies shape technology to serve systems of oppression and extraction? Drawing from mystical practices of the global majority, we will speculate ways of building harmonious relationships between machines, humans and non-humans. This workshop considers both ancient and historical precedents as well as contemporary artists to illustrate ways technological artifacts carry sacred value, particularly in non-western and post-colonial contexts, and furthermore, how rituals themselves can be seen as forms of computation in their ability to transmit information and create and/or maintain networks. Taking this discussion as an entry point, participants will design their own oracles, thinking critically about intention, interpretation, and interaction. We will be using simple generative text models (Markov Chains) to develop browser-based (p5.js) scrying tools. Participants may work in pairs or individually. Participants are required to bring a laptop or optionally share if they are working in pairs. We recommend bringing something for note-taking. No prior programming knowledge or experience required. Openness to playing with code is encouraged.

The Digital Divination project began as a course that ran in 2019 at Parsons School for Design. Since then, we have continued to gather research and materials at Digital Divination — Are.na and to expand the curriculum into different knowledge shares and collaborations.

Aarati Akkapeddi is an artist, designer, coder, and educator based in part of Lenapehoking known as Flatbush, Brooklyn. In their art practice, they use code, video, printmaking, and other techniques to challenge commonly held assumptions by weaving together perspective-shifting connections. They currently work as a designer and developer at The Experimental Humanities Collaborative Network.

Erica Kermani is a transdisciplinary artist dedicated to movement building and collective liberation through art and media, technological sovereignty, and Iranian, Jewish, and queer mysticism. Her artwork utilizes scholarship, memory and archive to produce video, installation, and speculative fiction that interrogate and unsettle dominant narratives, towards healing of self, community, and Earth. She is a founder and worker-owner at Shadow Work Media and an educator and technologist at Community Tech New York.

This is a masks optional workshop.

Tickets are sliding scale:

$25 – low-income, BIPOC

$50 – General

$75 – Pay it forward (if you have financial means to pay more and support our future work)

This workshop does require 6 participants to run, so we will let you know 24 hours in advance if it is cancelled due to low enrollment.

Pay-what-you-wish tickets for this Wednesday, October 11 · 7 – 10pm EDT workgroup are on EventBrite.

this is an artificial general intelligence work group. the reason the term agi has been chosen over, say, machine learning, or artificial intelligence, or generative ai is because those terms have become more to do with the industrial use cases of certain human capacities rather than to do with the exploration of how information and knowledge are navigated by minds. the topics of machine learning and neural networks are still crucial. in fact, the purpose of this group as far as there is one is to take the increasingly impressive technical results coming out of those fields and contextualize them within social, aesthetic, psychological, economic, etc, paradigms we find ourselves within.

if you have found yourself drawn to the ideas that are expressed in books like /godel escher bach/, /the machinic unconscious/, /the lathe of heaven/, /the dispossessed/, /metaphors we live by/, /the c programming language/, and/or the nsa/ncsc rainbow series, show up. if you find yourself in awe of 256 byte demos, neural annealing, the edges of perception, or/and langsec, come by.

bring a piece of text you find interesting, bring a song, bring some code, bring some funny little puzzles, bring questions and maybe someone else will have brought an answer. this intends to be a collective conversation and action.

The host space:

In the tradition of NYC Resistor’s early Microcontroller Study Group, we are happy to provide our hacker space for meeting to explore emerging technology.

Who is the group for?

this group is for anyone interested in both deep diving on the newest technical advances and the wildest implications of those new technical developments. come with a willingness to share your perspective and your work in whatever form of expression it might take. if you use machine learning in your art, come. if you work on ASIC accelerators come. if you are obsessed with experience itself, come. if you care about people and their relationship to each other and the tools they use, show up!

The suggested donation of $15-20 will both be put towards drinks (Club Mate), and support the space.

This is a masks optional event.

Tickets for this Saturday, October 7 · 7 – 10pm EDT open mic are available on EventBrite

Pay-what-you-wish (Admission only) or $20 with complimentary drinks

Come hang at a uniquely attentive and supportive open mic, where we joyful share a stage with first time performers, professionals, and everyone in-between. Come sing, dance, recite, act, play in any form and be heard and appreciated.

Sign-up will be first-come first-serve. Each performance will be 6 minutes. Inquire about featured slots. Slots reservation can be gifted for consistent attendance.

Your host:

Winston has been hosting mics around the city for 3 years, performing poetry and curating spaces for artists at any level to share and hone their art forms. He is proud of the friends who have been brought up, but is extra encouraging to brand new performers, trying to find an audience or share for the first time.

Event is open to all people, bring your full self, celebratory clothing, and a friend! (no robots unless they are performing)

This is a masks optional event.

Tickets for this Saturday, September 30 · 12 – 3pm EDT workshop are on EventBrite

A three hour workshop exploring how to create music with code, using a web-based tool called Strudel. Preview of the workflow: Creating a song from scratch with Strudel, a browser version of TidalCycles.

Your instructors:

Dan Gorelick is a musician, creative technologist, and organizer who is based in the Bay Area and has a presence in Brooklyn and Berlin. He creates live audiovisual performances, blending his classical cello experience with the practice of live-coding: creating music with code. He is a co-founder of the Bay Area live audio-visual collective AV Club as well as Club Code, a non-location-specific collection of artists focusing on live-coding performance. He is also an organizer and member of the LivecodeNYC and TopLap Berlin collectives. His workshops explore live-coding as well as the creative possibilities when using technology to create music.

Viola He (sandpills) is a Shanghai-born, Brooklyn-based artist, educator, and cultural organizer. Their creative practices engage with DIY electronics, programming, movements, and time-based media. Using algorithmic approaches to enhance, alternate, and obfuscate sounds and images, they work to explore pathways towards alternative structures, systems and interfaces. Viola often dreams about clowning, computational humor, and infiltrating digital spaces with physical bodies as tools for intervention.

This is a masks optional, but recommended, event.

Tickets on Evenbrite for this Friday, August 25 · 6 – 9pm EDT workshop

Join this workshop to learn about a variety of urban art forms and work on your own art with help from our guide. We’ll go over a broad range of artistic expression and social commentary that people chose to display in public, and get into all you need to know to join them in a responsible way. We will discuss ethics, safety, and focus on a few specific types — going through production techniques for stickers, posters, and stencils.

Expect to get hands on with tools and materials to develop a sense for a few of the virtually limited options this form of art encompasses, then use them for your own project. We’ll have a variety of markers and surfaces for practice (and some to keep!), and participants can bring their own supplies and computers if they want.

Participants will work on their own project. Bring an idea that you want to start with or develop further. All are welcome to continue their work at any of our open craft nights. Anyone who wants to work together may do so. If you arrive without a concept, you will work on art to promote personal privacy. Any message and form of expression is valid and welcome except anything promoting hate. We’ll have a small group for this event to make sure that everyone can get help to bring their idea to life.

This workshop is masks required.

2 pay-what-you-can tickets available for folks experiencing financial hardship.