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Emily Fuhrman

My name is Emily Fuhrman. I am a data artist based in London, previously New York.

Structured modes of understanding the physical world—such as data collection, computation, and programmatic analysis— operationalize, reify, and ultimately abstract away the contingencies of human perception. My work interrogates the foundations of systematic ways of seeing, inviting audiences to explore new ways to perceive, and thereby participate in, the world.

What brought you here? Where are you going after?

• I just moved to London, and in this moment of transition am interested in establishing new cadences around making work
• Making sense of a new environment
• Observing fresh phenomena
• This^^ transition brought me to SFPC
• A shake-up, and a source of inspiration
• I want to augment my practice to a broader range of media..
• ..but in a way that starts with the building blocks (or different building blocks)
• Different types than ones that have informed my previous work

Something you would want to have happened differently? How would you want it to have happened?

• I wish the wiki hadn’t died
• Good to have a space that feels shared, but also accessible
• Difficult to get here with Drive
• Still struggling with a bug in my code from Week 2
• Distracting me from making progress on other coursework

Something you would want to do again or more? What made you feel like that?

• More simple, hands-on activities/homework, like paper weaving
• Even with specific directions, there was a lot of room for creative interpretation
• Too much freedom around activities/homework made me:
  • Indecisive about which direction to take
  • Less confident about what I took on
  • Slower and less productive
• Less freedom around what materials, etc. to use made me:
  • Inspired to put my own stamp on something that seemed rigidly defined
• More reading recommendations and suggested materials to review
• \

What was your worst and best memory of each week?

Would you share a moment that you felt lost and one that you felt creative?

Lost:

• I still feel lost trying to figure out what’s wrong with my code from Week 2
• Building, in Processing, a stop-motion sketch similar to the output of ColorCode; it keeps overwriting itself and I cannot get to the bottom of it
• Also the code is too messy and strange to post for community help

Creative:

• Sketching out the steps of increasingly more complex cellular automata processes, with pencil on grid paper

Do you feel you have made a new connection? With people, subject, practice, idea, etc... Have you deconstructed one?

• Yes, with people 
• Yes, with new concepts
• Previously I thought of rules as a very linear mode of composition
• This class has expanded my understanding of how rules can operate
• Rules are not always ‘linear’ in the strict sense of only affecting things that come after them
  • Ex. A rule can change the cells ‘preceding’ the cell they are operating on; to the left, right, above, or below => around, in both time and space

Did you see any peer work or works that caught your attention?

• Very interested in Dave Ackley’s work after being introduced to it in class

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