School of Machines, Making & Make-Believe

After a four-week intensive program on art and technology, we will have an interactive art tech show this Friday eve at Volkspark am Weinberg, 20h-23h, near Rosenthalerplatz, free for all. Come by if you can!

How can we investigate online imagery and counter digital misinformation? These are becoming necessary tools for the modern world.

In this class, students will get an introduction to basic strategies of countering over- mid- and dis- information. The class is going to not only demystify the basic Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT*) techniques by putting an emphasis on creative problem solving, it will also highlight the importance of critical assessment of methods and tools by pointing out their inherent biases and lapses.

Week 1: Introduction. Aesthetics and perception of truth.

Week 2: Basic techniques of OSINT investigation. Case studies and group exercises.

Week 3: Chronolocation and geolocation. Group work and collective review. Spatial reconstruction and blender interface.

Week 4: 3D reconstruction. Camera calibration and scene reconstruction in 3D.

Week 5: Visual and spatial investigation of known fake images. Generation of visuals and graphic notations.

Who is this class for?
The class is for anyone interested in applying basic open source investigation techniques to their research and art projects. It is also for those, who are simply overwhelmed by the crisis of truth in online publications and exchanges, and would like to gain agency and confidence by more actively participating in processes of image verification and investigation.

Instructor: Martyna Marciniak

9 May - 6 June
Five weeks
Thursdays 7-9 PM CET
Online!

More info at schoolofma.org

The endearing and lovely Mario Mu, Croatian visual artist and director, will be running his game-based filmmaking course at School of Machines soon! For more info and to join, visit https://www.schoolofma.org/programs/p/early2024-world-in-collision

One of his early films, Sites of Encounter (2020), can be seen here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWHVCcG5Rw4

“Maybe your memories need an architectural container – to keep them at one place,” posits one of the disembodied avatars we are introduced to in Mario’s virtual exploration of mnemonic architecture, Sites Of Encounter. Using the video game engine Unity, he has created a digital ecosystem that serves as a site of both memory and loss for two characters to unpack the emotional spaces they find themselves in.

Taking the form of an existential dialogue, Sites Of Encounter takes the gamification of the conditions of labour to its natural extension, following the two avatars as they navigate literal sites of labour as though exploring the open world of a video game. This hybrid virtual world built by Mario Mu takes the sterile interior of an office space and corrupts it with the continually crackling fire and billowing smoke of an industrial wasteland, an impossible amalgamation of old and new forms of labour.

The 5-week online course is slated to begin 24. April. Come join us!

Mario Mu - Sites Of Encounter “Maybe your memories need an architectural container – to keep them at one place,” posits one of the disembodied avatars we are introduced to in Mario Mu’s v...

**Tomorrow is the last day for sign-ups!** Come learn Python for artistic practices!

Back by popular demand, this course will take some time to review the basics of programming in Python before looking at a few interesting examples of how you can use Python to elevate, automate or activate your creative processes. There will be lots of time for questions and lots of opportunity to direct the examples together as a class.

In the first half of the course, instructor and students will review some programming basics and move on to some intermediate topics that will help get the most from Python.

The second half of the course will cover specific applications in response to the creative interests of the class. The intention is to show examples that will be most useful to students as they develop their own specific projects. For example, Python in relation to: Telegram bots, Large Language Models (LLMs) - e.g. GPT-3, working with hardware (rapsberry pi, sensors, etc.), data, Blender, TouchDesigner, OSC for communicating with other programs, and more.

If you have had experience with another programming language or worked your way through an “intro to python” class at some point within the last decade, you probably have the prerequisites for the course.

🗓️Starts 10. April
⌚️10 weeks
📌Online
👾 Students are strongly encouraged to develop a project of their own as the course progresses

More info at www.schoolofma.org



Images of work by instructor Meredith Thomas.

Social Design, a five-week online class to explore graphic design and code using thru the lens of being human will run again soon!

In it's first iteration during Covid, results from this course were so lovely that we are striving to create a book on the subject and participants in this upcoming course will have an opportunity to contribute!

Join for live sessions or weekly video download. Sign-ups until 10. April!

For more info and to join:
https://www.schoolofma.org/programs/p/early2024-social-design

Discover historical developments in robotics and speculative fiction that can inspire to visualize a different relationship with the present and future. During this course, we will explore multiple speculative scenarios for our interactions with machines and how we can alter them. Join us and review contemporary and historical perspectives to inspire this vision.

n this course you will experiment with:

Twine, an open-source tool for telling interactive, nonlinear stories.

how to embed HTML, CSS and small JavaScript snippets to create worlds,

subjective robotic perspectives and possible conceptual entanglements

experimental coding exercises with ChatGPT

***19. March*** is the last day to join the course and to apply for a reduced fee scholarship.

With brilliant instructors and

For more info and to sign-up, visit: https://www.schoolofma.org/programs/p/early2024-algorithmic-poetry-fictional-robotics

What is it called when science fiction becomes reality? Meet the humans that care about exploring these questions and more in our upcoming course Algorithmic Poetry of Fictional Robotics!

-26. March - 23. April 2024
-Online!
-Five-weeks, Tuesdays, 7-9PM CET
-***Sign-ups and scholarships end 19. March., 2024, one week before class begins***

Sign up here!
https://www.schoolofma.org/programs/p/early2024-algorithmic-poetry-fictional-robotics

This class will explore many topics, including how acquiring a voice and breaking down can be one of the nodal points that can transform tools into robots. We will also review different interactive storytelling techniques to reveal details and new insights into our narratives about technology, agency, and designed behavior.

Week 1: Intro to algorithmic poetry and making stories about robots with the help of robots
Week 2: Robot Labor
Week 3: Swarms & Alien Logics
Week 4: Clones & Cyborgs
Week 5: The (Techno)compost Heap

Our instructors:
Kit Kuksenok: Multi-disciplinary artist, writer, and researcher
Mario Guzman: Researcher and new media artist

Back by popular demand: Algorithmic Poetry of Fictional Robotics! Join a fun and like-minded group of humans interested in alternative ways of looking at and thinking about robots and technology while reading and exploring together.

In this course you will experiment with:

Twine, an open-source tool for telling interactive, nonlinear stories.

how to embed HTML, CSS and small JavaScript snippets to create worlds,

subjective robotic perspectives and possible conceptual entanglements

experimental coding exercises with ChatGPT

***19. March*** is the last day to join the course and to apply for a reduced fee scholarship.

With brilliant instructors and

For more info and to sign-up, visit: https://www.schoolofma.org/programs/p/early2024-algorithmic-poetry-fictional-robotics

Come see yourself and others in a new light while exploring self-tracking with an enthusiastic like-minded community! Both sign-ups and scholarships for reduced fee participation for Radical Imperfections in Self-Tracking end tomorrow!

• 28. Feb. - 27. March 2024
• Online!
• Five-weeks, Wednesdays, 7-9PM CET
• Small class of participants

Visit our website for more info and to join. Link below and in bio.
https://www.schoolofma.org/programs/p/early2024-radical-imperfection-in-self-tracking

Do you have a creative and reflective mind? Radical Imperfection in Self-Tracking is a course we love. It aims to get us to contemplate deeply and see ourselves and all the things we care about in a new light which is a perfect exercise for the beginning of a new year!

This online course embraces the imperfection of every aspect of “self-tracking” practices and tools, and explores how these tools can themselves be made to tolerate ambiguity, imperfection, and surprising uses. Through discussion, drawing, data visualization, and creative code, we will explore perspectives on what self-tracking technologies are - and how they can be re-imagined and appropriated for subversive use.

In this course, you will experiment with:

Sketching with p5.js and simple JavaScript

Introduction to website hosting with github pages and using HTML and vanilla JS to add a scrolling interaction for storytelling (taking this as inspiration)

Conceptual tools for understanding and sketching complex systems

Pen and paper prototyping techniques to help design data visualizations and UI

Prompts and techniques for journaling and creative, expressive self-exploration with both analog and digital media

This course will be led by the wonderful human !

Come join us! Course sign-ups end Wednesday, 21. February!

All our early 2024 online and hybrid classes are out! Our classes aim to approach creative technology--and life!-- thoughtfully, critically, politically, and with hope. What the heck is going on with the world? With technology? With society? With ourselves? Let's explore all of these things together while looking more closely at data and self, algorithms and poetry, the confusing world of python, design, care, and code, filmmaking, life aquatics, and the distillation and discernment of fake everything!

Soon we'll be sharing more about what is new and coming up for this, our 10th year of existence as a non-profit alternative education platform that puts our human experiences and connection at the center of all the work we do. Group hug! More soon!

Organised Crime: A Global Business, 24-26 November To learn more and get your ticket visit Organised Crime conference website now!

This new data poisoning tool lets artists fight back against generative AI The tool, called Nightshade, messes up training data in ways that could cause serious damage to image-generating AI models.

How can research using public libraries and freely-available resources help us hack our own imaginations, giving us deeper insight into our own minds?

Join this course and find new, unmediated connections back to your own imagination through the exploration of surveillance-proof resources that can be found in the city and set your mind free.

14. October - 11. November 2023
In-Person at School of Machines (Berlin)!
Five-weeks, Saturdays, 11AM-1 PM CET
Small class of participants

SIGN-UP BY THIS FRIDAY AT NOON!

Berliners, come join us for this exciting course on accessing publicly available resources for artistic research which you probably didn't even know were out there! We begin next Saturday. Sign-up! Your brain will be happy you did! 🤩

https://www.schoolofma.org/programs/p/fall2023-libraries-ultimate-open-source

Berliners, come join us tonight for another edition of Cereal Party: 5 strangers, 5 minutes, and a bowl of cereal over deep conversation at the Opening Night 2023 event at !!!

Spaces are first come, first serve but you can sign-up for a golden ticket to jump ahead of the line here: https://www.schoolofma.org/programs/p/pictoplasma2023-cereal-party (Link also in bio).

School of Machines Cereal Party will run from 8pm - 9:30pm along with other fun and exciting character-themed events throughout the ACUD compound. Bring your friends and see you there! w/ Rita Eperjesi

‘The Godfather of A.I.’ Leaves Google and Warns of Danger Ahead For half a century, Geoffrey Hinton nurtured the technology at the heart of chatbots like ChatGPT. Now he worries it will cause serious harm.

What can we learn from transforming small self-tracking datasets into creative computational sketches that explore our human bodies as complex systems? Our 5-week online program aims to bring a small group of thoughtful humans together to find out.

(Image 2) In a past course on self-tracking by the prolific multi-disciplinary artist and researcher, Kit Kuksenok {), participants from Radical Imperfection in Time Tracking started a Data Visualisation Exquisite Co**se during and beyond their class. It started with one person creating a data visualisation, which they passed onto the next person with no contextual information, who would then responds creatively to this with another data visualisation, before sending it onto the next email in the list. Like this, the chain kept growing with each response interpreting and building upon the last. Projects shown from

The conversations in class around what data is and isn't, and what we are and are not, are always thought-provoking and insightful! If this is an area you'd like to explore further, sign-up! Link in bio and: https://www.schoolofma.org/programs/p/spring2023-body-data-and-complex-systems

Interactive Berlin: Designing Interactive Artworks for Public Space
How does our message change when we take art out of the gallery and into public space?

Course description:

This program is about creating artworks not for the gallery but for residing in public space: it aims to produce collaborative public artworks to be displayed in Volkspark am Weinberg in Berlin Mitte. We will use electronics, various materials and fabrication techniques and explore how they can work seamlessly together to help students express themselves.

The goal is for students to develop ways to approach, navigate, and realize those ideas that just seem too big, too deep, or too powerful to become real. With some tools and guidance, any idea can be broken down into a process and series of steps to take.

Students will be introduced to:

_How to concretize ideas
_Electronics
_Basics of coding and sensors
_Building interfaces and circuits
_Creating interaction with sound
_Working with paint and other materials
_Installation and fabrication techniques
_Project management + Professional development
_Critical and conceptual development of projects
_An amazing network and community of like-minded creative beings and potential future collaborators
_With brilliant instructors and more!

This month-long intensive program will equip artists with the technical expertise and confidence needed to continue working on their own projects long after the program has ended.

More info and application on our website! Link in bio and https://www.schoolofma.org/

3. - 28. July, 2023
Based in Berlin, Germany
Four weeks, full-time
Small class of participants
Discounted rates till May 1st

We're excited to be working closely with and their international conference on Computation, Communication, Aesthetics & X taking place 5-7 July 2023, in Weimar, Germany.

one of the festival's brilliant co-founders attended our very first School of Machines program in 2014, one year after their festival was founded. And now it's 11 years old. Oh, how time flies! :)

Tickets to attend the conference are now available from our website. More info about the official program coming soon. If you plan to be in Germany this July, consider joining us!

Visit their site for more info: https://xcoax.org/

Who wants to take a much deserved work vacation to come and learn and play this summer at School of Machines?

How can we create meaningful experiences and tell stories by making things interactive? This course will focus on physical computing, interactivity, materials and fabrication, with the goal of creating a series of interactive public artworks by programs end. We will use electronics and various materials and fabrication techniques and explore how they can work seamlessly together to help you express the ideas inside your head now and in the future.

This program is geared toward anyone involved in creative fields (conceptual artists, architects, designers, makers, builders, visual artists, performers, production workers in theater, film, and tv, etc.) interested in expanding their creative practice into designing interactive artworks for the public domain. No previous experience necessary.

Photo from our 4-week summer program Waiting and Escaping in 2019 during 's short visit to the school. This summer he'll be with us for the month of July! 🎉 Can't wait! 🎉

🗓️Interactive Berlin runs 3. - 28. July, 2023
⌚️4 weeks full-time in Berlin, Germany
📌Participants will develop projects for public showcase at programs end
🕶Professional development for Artists workshop included
👾 Additional month-long residency (August) for those who join us

More info, link in bio and at: https://www.schoolofma.org/summer-2023-interactive-berlin

Early fees until 1. May

Python for creative practices.

This course will take some time to review the basics of programming in Python before looking at a few interesting examples of how you can use Python to elevate, automate or activate your creative processes. There will be lots of time for questions and lots of opportunity to direct the examples together as a class.

In the first half of the course, instructor and students will review some programming basics and move on to some intermediate topics that will help get the most from Python.

The second half of the course will cover specific applications in response to the creative interests of the class. The intention is to show examples that will be most useful to students as they develop their own specific projects. For example, Python in relation to: Telegram bots, Large Language Models (LLMs) - e.g. GPT-3, working with hardware (rapsberry pi, sensors, etc.), data, Blender, TouchDesigner, OSC for communicating with other programs, and more.

If you have had experience with another programming language or worked your way through an “intro to python” class at some point within the last decade, you probably have the prerequisites for the course.

🗓️Starts March 14th
⌚️10 weeks
📌Online

More info at www.schoolofma.org

Our friends at Theater are running Clown workshops for beginners! 6. & 7. March, and again 4. & 5. April. If you know somebody, who might be interested, please feel free to share with them this information and links:

https://www.acud-theater.de/programm/5335-2-x-2.html

and

https://www.acud-theater.de/programm/5336-2-x-2.html

Many peeps write us to inquire about teaching at School of Machines. Now here is your opportunity to come get to know the community first and then submit your pitch, this Sat. 11. March!

You do not need to have a plan to pitch in order to join but we will only accept pitches from those who have participated. For more info, and to sign-up, visit: https://www.schoolofma.org/class-pitch-conversation-sign-up

I WANNA START MAKING MORE MONEY AS AN ARTIST!

Everyone talks a lot about making art but not enough people talk about how to make a living from art. If you have unanswered questions about the professional side of your art practice, from how to begin and beyond, we invite you to join our Professional Development for Artists class 25. - 26. March in Berlin!

The world needs more thoughtful artists realizing the true value of their voice and leveling up their art practice for all to see. We're here in support! If this sounds like your own interests and goals, come join us!

This weekend workshop will be led by the wonderfully inciteful human and profi artist manager, Michele Walther.

Raving testimonial:
"Working with Michele all these years has been a true godsend. She's the best! Don't miss out on the opportunity to glean her knowledge about being taken seriously in the art/digital art/new media art space. Seriously." - School of Machines :)

For more info and to sign-up, visit: https://www.schoolofma.org/programs/p/spring2023-professional-development-for-artists