This is an open letter to SFPC participants and our community.
Hello SFPC 2014 Spring participants!
Here is a quick introduction to help you get set up for sfpc.
###Assignment:
For your first assignment, we want you to think of a single question (or if need be, a series of questions) that will inform your two weeks at the school -- it can be practical, impractical, personal or universal, but it should be a question. One of the first thing we do at SFPC is just sit as a group and list questions, as many questions as we can think of, and that really helps drive the school term. For this shorter term, we'd like to have these two weeks be an attempt to answer (or dive) into a question that you have and try to develop some sort of answer or response. The answer can be in the form of a poetic work, or in a very practical tool, or even in the form of other questions -- but it will be helpful, since have a relatively short time, to have this identified. At the end of the school term, depending on how things go, we'd like to publish a small journal documenting the questions and results of your research. We also will have a final event for the public, which you can think of as a poetry reading, part performance, part demo where we will invite members of the public to come.
Please share your thought process on this pad.
###Resource:
Here are some resource for you to get familiar with for next week.
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This book Form + Code has great introduction to artistic approach to code. You can find some examples on the website.
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10 print is one of the nicest software studies books we've seen, amazingly group written and free in PDF.
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Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software, by Charles Petzold is a remarkable book about how computers are built, and explains concepts like binary numbers and logic gates, etc.
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Some other books we like are Mary Ruefle's Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures is a great explanation of poetry, Kenneth Goldsmith's Uncreative Writing is a delightful investigation of computational approaches to language and creative writing.
It might be too late to order books from Amazon before you take off to NYC. We have these books for you! and also search around for sample chapters or epubs.
###Tools:
We would like to suggest you install OpenFrameworks, Processing and Arduino as that will be the primary platforms we work with at the school. Check out this collaborative attempt to make a book about OF. Also we will be using Github extensively to teach and also keep track of your work. We will also run intro workshop on using github. Try this helpful training.
We will have basic electronic tools and components to make simple prototypes, however feel free to bring in your own tools and materials. We have soldering irons, multimeters, breadboards and arduinos for you to share. We also have a digital camera, a printer, a scanner, a pair of speaker and a video projector. You will need to bring in your laptop.
--- SFPC Team