Learning & Engagement Center
Main Building
Image courtesy of Rashid Zakat for the Pew Fellowship.
Technology is the infinite canvas of human creativity. It begins as magic, transforms into a tool, and eventually becomes mundane—until artists push it into new territories. This workshop explores electronics and computing as raw material for artistic expression. Participants will engage with microcontrollers, circuits, and sensors, learning to create interactive artworks. Through this process, they will come to see that technology is not something outside of us—it is a reflection of us.
Participants will experience how technology can be hacked, repurposed, and reimagined for creative expression. Through experimentation with electronic kits, they will discover how art and technology are deeply syncretic, shaping and reshaping each other over time. This workshop encourages participants to explore computation as a medium for new artistic possibilities.
Registration required. $15 without museum admission, $45 with museum admission. All materials included.
In collaboration with Philly Tech Week.
About the artist:
Rashid Zakat combines film, music, photography, and creative space-making in work that engages with Black social and spiritual life. His short films, documentaries, and music videos feature original content and archival material, including images of migration, worship, uprising, dance, and popular culture. Embracing collaborative filmmaking practices, Zakat says he is “committed to video as a mode of honoring people and histories and as a form of accessing liberation.”
His ongoing project, Revival!, draws from personal and community archives of Black popular culture, dance, and music; religious traditions; and a variety of folk practices. Zakat’s work has been shown in Philadelphia at the BlackStar Film Festival, The Fabric Workshop and Museum, the Barnes Foundation, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, among others. He has received an Independence Public Media Foundation Filmmaker Grant, a Velocity Fund grant, and a Pennsylvania Humanities Council grant. He earned a BA in film and media arts from Temple University.
Learning & Engagement Center
Main Building
Paid tickets required; museum admission included
Check out the variety of events offered by this program, for members and the public alike.