Teaching
Detourning The Web (ITP/NYU)
Detournement is the practice of “hijacking” cultural or artistic materials and reusing them to produce new works that both counter and explicate the original intent or ideology of the source material. In this class students learn how to scrape massive quantities of material from the internet with Python, and then use that material to make satirical, critical and political projects.
Syllabus: https://github.com/antiboredom/detourning-the-web-2018
Automating Video (ITP/NYU)
An experimental video class in which students learn to use Python and command line tools to explore the possibilities of automating the film-making process. The class covers techniques for capturing, analyzing, editing and manipulating video with code. Video is treated as a textual as well as visual medium, with the aim of repurposing found footage to generate new compositions and narratives.
Syllabus: https://github.com/antiboredom/automating-video-itp
Experimenting with the Internet as Form (Eugene Lang/New School)
A project-based class where students explore the many esoteric possibilities of online expression, approaching the internet through the lens of experimentation and performance.
Syllabus: https://github.com/antiboredom/internet-as-form
Scrapism (School for Poetic Computation)
Scrapism is the artistic practice of web scraping, or of automatically collecting and transforming found digital material. It hinges upon a combination of curatorial practice, reverse engineering, and hoarding mentality. Each session we covers a different web scraping technique, with production assignments relating to text, image and video. The class explores surrealist, dadaist, situationist techniques such as detournement, collage, and cut-ups, and applies them to a contemporary digital context.