“We should not use our intelligent machines to return to nature (we would not be able to retrieve it anyway, since it was never there); on the contrary, we should make our machines go wild….To some, such technoromanticism might seem preposterous; for me, it is nothing less than an absolute necessity. My only question is: Can we, and will we, ever be Romantic enough? Will we ever be able to restore the feelings and care we had for things? … If the machines of modernism were meant to cleanse and purify, our machines will bastardize and hybridize.”
— Lars Spuybroek, The Sympathy of Things
Course Overview
In this course we develop strategies of relation, liberation, and creation suited for life on a planet circumscribed by and interwoven with computing machines. We will bastardize machines and create machines that bastardize. We will rejoice in the dubious offspring of the digital and physical. We will hack machines, learn to whisper commands, roam as nomads across all borders, fold the pre-modern into today, write poetry in code, and dance through Cartesian coordinates.
Data Sculpting
We use Grasshopper and other software to explore algorithmic processes, hands-on.
History
We draw upon a rich history of others who have developed and employed technologies of making.
Societal Impact
We examine the the ways that computational systems permeate society and the planet.