programs
SCHOOL OF MACHINES OFFERS YEAR-ROUND IN-PERSON AND ONLINE EVENING COURSES THAT MEET WEEKLY.
OUR INSTRUCTORS ARE WELL-ESTABLISHED ARTISTS AND TECHNOLOGISTS WORKING DIRECTLY WITH THE TOOLS THEY TEACH. LEARN MORE ABOUT OUR COURSE OFFERINGS BELOW.
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intensive programs 2026
School of Machines offers in-person, immersive 4-week programs in Berlin.
Our four-week full-time programs are project-focused courses, aimed at bringing thoughtful humans together to connect with each other and with themselves. We explore the latest technologies while simultaneously questioning their usage, the world around us, and ourselves. Program sizes are small and participants actively engage their new-found skills and collaborators each step of the way, creating individual and group work towards a public exhibition at program’s end. Caring creative humans and family vibes included.
Additionally, each month-long program includes a one-month residency following program completion, giving you one extra month to continue your work or to begin something new.
More info below! Tell your friends! <3
August 2026
Performative Media as Artistic Practice, Research, and Public Action
This is a practice-based course that explores the intersection of the physical body and real-time audio-visual media. In a world where our sense of meaning is increasingly fragmented by a flood of digital content, this program reframes performance not as a spectacle, but as a vital form of public action and a tool for reconnection with ourselves and others. By placing the human body at the center of immersive, real-time environments, we will investigate how we have shifted from "reading" the world to "sensing" it, and explore how we can reclaim agency in both digital and physical spaces.
Over the duration of the course, you’ll learn to build your own audiovisual performances using tools like TouchDesigner, Ableton, and MadMapper. More importantly, you’ll learn to use these technologies as an extension of your own physical expression. Through a combination of mindfulness exercises, technical workshops, and public experiments, you’ll develop skills, confidence, and courage to create work that moves beyond the gallery and into the world.
The program ends with a final public performance where you’ll translate your conceptual research into a live, mediated experience.
September 2026
Data Stories & Worldbuilding for Reclaiming Collective Agency
We live among systems that continuously collect, classify, predict, and narrate the world around us. Data-driven models decide what we see, predict what we might do, and shape how institutions respond to us. These systems often present themselves as objective, efficient, and inevitable, while hiding the values, assumptions, omissions, and power relations embedded in their design. Models do not simply describe the world: they help produce it.
Data Stories is a one-month full-time program exploring data and AI as materials, tools, and prosthetics for investigative storytelling, artistic research, and public exhibition. Inspired by whistleblowing and citizen-led investigation, and drawing on themes from data feminism, cyborg theory, and eco-feminist thought, the course combines technical workshops, critical discussions, guest sessions, peer exchange, and project development for a final group exhibition.
