SFPC Week 4: The Grain of a Thing
Everything is programmable, somehow.
You just have to get to know its language.
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This week we kicked off our Craft class, dedicated to working with physical materials like paper and textiles.
When working with physical materials, you want to ask:
- What does this material naturally want to do?
- Am I imposing a behavior on this material?
More than anything, this class is about observation. To practice this, our class took 10 minutes to go out in the world and observe what was happening around us in detail.
The first 2 minutes of a 10 minute static window were harrowing (particularly in that day’s wind); but once I came to terms with the assignment and committed to seeing, I got swept up in the patterns without feeling self-conscious or hurried.
Our observations were then turned into flowcharts, instructions for our classmates to act upon by the time we met next.
To continue practicing observation, I’ve promised myself that I will go back to the same place every day for at least a week with absolutely no agenda and sit there for at least 30 minutes. No work, no cellphone, just unabashed observation.
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The art of observation showed up elsewhere at the end of the week. Alumnae and current TA for our Radical Outside class, Ann, hosted a failure workshop and walked through her process for creating her final showcase project.
Ann shared that when she bumped up against engineering hurdles, Taeyoon would ask her — what are the poetics of this? What are you trying to say?
Observation here is important, too. It’s easy to get wrapped up in a technical project with a visceral desire to finish, to prove you can. For me, it’s even easier to get wrapped up in many loft ideas and never get started because they feel too daunting. When those walls hit, observation becomes ever more important.
What is the direction you’ve started heading in? Is this what you’re trying to say? What are you imposing, and is it necessary?
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This is my weekly reflection about my experience at The School of Poetic Computation. Follow these links to read about my week zero; week one, week two; week three.
