Last year I was part of an independent art school in NYC called SFPC. A lot of people have since asked me what it is, and what it means to be in such a school. The site has a blurb on what they do, but that description still leaves me and the people I explain it to slightly puzzled.

So what is SFPC? It is a school that teaches computation in the service of art. It strives to give students the tools to express themselves in the medium of computation. I think the choice of the word computation is deliberate. It encompasses more than software, and to me, is wider than the word ‘algorithm’, but it also implies some sort of mechanization. It also teaches students to look at technology critically.

So what really is SFPC? I think for artists, who are used to expression, it can be a way of learning the ’engineering’ aspects of working with hardware and software, much like how photographers might eventually have to learn the intracacies of zone metering systems. For engineers like myself, it was about learning about how artists see the world, and how to evaluate things qualitatively as opposed to quantitatively.

The artist Jer Thorp once said to me, “I’m allergic to outcomes”. I had asked him how he knew his St. Louis Map Room project was successful, and what metrics he was interested in in measuring its success. I highly recommend everyone to check out his blog post on it. I think artists believe, rightfully or wrongfully, that the process of asking questions will eventually lead to the right answers - the caveat being that the right questions are being asked, by the right people. Implicit in that is that there is no Right answer. This can be something pretty hard for an engineer to stomach.

10 weeks is a short time to unlearn some deeply ingrained ways of thinking.