headed back to canada for the weekend to see the AGO’s yayoi kusama exhibit (RAD!) and attend a funky dance (RAD!). i’m back at the airport now and made it through (phewf). explaining this school at customs is always complicated, and i’ve been pulled into secondary each time.

with this week’s readings on “security” + surveillance for our crit theory course (“the radical outside”) fresh on my mind, the customs experience was heightened. last time reached an ABSURD level of invasiveness with questions about my family. this time was just lots of silence as i pondered what the neural nets were cooking up.

lil thought: upon saying i quit my job just over a month ago, the agent said “oh - that’s a really long time”. Work is a weed we’re feeding 🌱 neoliberal capitalism, “we eat for you”, soapbox, etc.

I made this website in early 2014 to document projects I worked on at Hacker School. Though I’ve changed a lot since then and worked on all sorts of problems, the site hasn’t updated to reflect that. After three years working on Khan Academy’s engineering team, I left to pursue art and activism full time at the School for Poetic Computation. I’m posting snippets at sfpc.rileyjshaw.com. At some point I’ll update this site to reflect my current focus. For the time being, I’ve merged my waaay outdated portfolio into the lab. For more about what I’m focusing on at the moment, you can check out my application to SFPC. It’s half a year out of date at time of writing, but that’s more recent than…

I’ve decided to post my response to the three questions SFPC asks potential participants.

Before I start any application process I try to learn as much as I can about the place. That involves learning about the folx involved. I hope this post helps a future SFPC attendee get started on their application.

If you’ve landed here from a search and are considering applying, I recommend doing so! It’s fun here and the people are nice.

A disclaimer before we get into it: everyone who goes through SFPC comes from different backgrounds. If you see something on my application that you haven’t experienced, please don’t take it as a requirement. Batches are carefully selected to include different perspectives and skillsets. And you’re awesome 💕