In December 2015 the School of Poetic Computation (SFPC) had the exciting opportunity to participate in the Day for Night, an electronic art and music festival in Houston, Texas. The organizers of the festival approached the school to create an installation and provide a sample of their talent and pedagogical outlook. SFPC co-founder Zach Lieberman, students from the fall 2015 session, and the larger SFPC community worked together to create SFPC re-coded, a project that presented over 50 animations from more than 30 different contributors.
The installation was inspired by pioneering digital artists and the ReCode Project, a crowd-sourced platform that seeks recreations of early digital works using new tools. The participants were asked to follow specific guidelines that included being in a square format and resized easily, Coded in openFrameworks, Processing, p5.js. and including variables that could be changed interactively (since the final setup would include GUI that would allow all artworks to be manipulated by the audience). The installation presented re-worked digital visuals on one screen next to a second screen displaying the code generating the visuals. The public could see the artworks change in real-time – and the code causing the changes. The project is one of SFPC’s many initiates and projects with various organisations and festivals, promoting a collaborative and transparent approach to learning, and bringing students and audience together.
