Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder
Prior Art
Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2019 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.
On Friday, May 3rd, in Cleveland, Ohio, USA, as part of PyCon North America, I'm leading an arts festival called "The Art of Python". The call for proposals is open now, deadline 28 February. And I'd love your help not just proposing work, and helping publicize this, but helping me understand what's new and not new about this.
"The Art of Python" will focus on narrative, performance, and visual art. We intend to encourage and showcase novel art that helps us share our emotionally charged experiences of programming, particularly but not necessarily in Python. We hope that, by attending, our audience will discover new aspects of empathy and rapport, and find a different kind of delight and perspective than might otherwise be expected at a large conference. We are interested in how fictional narrative, visual and performance art, and different presentation formats can make different kinds of teaching and representation possible.
There's more about this at my co-organizer Erty Seidohl's blog post, including an invitation to also propose your "not-talks" to !!Con starting in a few days. "The Art of Python" is seeking your proposals now and the deadline for submissions is 28 February. And if you've never written a play and want guidance so you can write your first, we have a guide and sample scripts!
So why did I call this entry "Prior Art"? Because I'd like to know more about past artworks about the experience of making technology at technology conferences that have resonated with you, especially fictional narratives and live performances.*
A few of our inspirations are recent works of mine, like "Pipeline", my critique video about the tech industry, and the plays I made with Jason Owen ("Python Grab Bag: A Set of Short Plays" and "Code Review, Forwards and Back").
I must be following in footsteps I don't know. So: Who else did full-on plays at tech conferences? I wouldn't be surprised if someone did it a decade before me and I never knew. Go ahead and comment on this GitLab issue to share your comments.
Thanks to Erty and to Brendan Adkins for co-organizing "The Art of Python" with me! Thanks to PyCon's Hatchery program for new PyCon events, which makes this festival possible! Thanks to Jackie Kazil for the festival name! (My codename was "Spectacle!" which is probably misleading and less accessible.)
* A footnote here about music and webcomics and Halt and Catch Fire and whatnot grew enough that it'll be its own entry.
