Applied Saturdays invites you to...
What would it look like to prototype a different configuration of the internet, one that is less oriented toward broad public visibility, and more grounded in intentional, localized forms of engagement? This workshop looks at the practical potential of AI-assisted coding for community leaders to build small, independent tools for shared use. Drawing from the artist’s experience building a bespoke digital ecosystem for Plot 田, a curated community of creative practitioners, the workshop invites participants to imagine the collective capacity and limitations of AI assisted coding tools as shared resources. Participants will get hands-on exposure in building and hosting their own apps, shared web tools and community platforms.
Bring your laptop and project ideas! No technical experience necessary.
Date: 06/06/2026
Time: 2-5pm
Capacity: 20
Cost: Sliding Scale $25-40
Register: https://luma.com/mfqfz3de
Alice Yuan Zhang is a Chinese-American media artist with skills across design, coding, communications, research, cultural production, writing and teaching. These days, she is mostly focused on running an interdisciplinary project room called Plot 田 in Chinatown Los Angeles.
What does it mean to store data collectively, on hardware you own, in a space you share? This workshop invites participants to bring their old PCs, external hard drives, and discarded devices and put them back to work as nodes in an experimental distributed storage network built together in the room. Participants will learn the basics of NAS (Network Attached Storage) building and distributed server architecture, working hands-on with e-waste as the raw material for a shared digital commons. A website that only exists when your computer is on. A server whose deployment is a public act. Storage that decays, depends, and requires tending.
There is no prior knowledge required, we will cover the basics. We suggest at least bringing a device or notebook if you want to take notes.
There is also no requirement to bring e-waste, but we suggest bringing devices such as:
Come liberate your own device, help us assemble a few servers from components we’ve gathered, contribute to a project wiki, or just observe and witness – all forms of participation are welcome.
We will be demonstrating software and practices like:
Date: 06/13/2026
Time: 2-5pm
Capacity: 20
Cost: Sliding Scale $25-40
Register: https://luma.com/qy8dmafm
Whisper is an artist based in Los Angeles, working across poetry, performance, software, and hardware. She dreams of computing that feels like augmented presence, cultivated through generations of loving care. Lately, their work has been almost entirely collaborative, with her partner Hal as Resonant.love, and with her friends in Secret Server Club.
Nat Decker is a Los Angeles-based artist working across digital media, sculpture, and performance. Disability is the lens through which they explore embodiment, virtuality, alienation, access, and liberatory networks. Their practice critically engages technology as both assistive and oppressive. Presently they are experimenting with autonomous internet infrastructure, a/v feedback loops, and 3D computer graphics. Nat is a 2026 United States Artists Fellow, LACE Lightning Fund grantee (with Secret Server Club), 2025 Supercollider SciArt Ambassador Fellow, 2024 Eyebeam Democracy Machine Fellow (with Cripping_CG), Y10 member of NEW INC, 2024 Processing Foundation Mentor and 2023 Fellow, 2024 Coaxial resident, 2024 fellow at the Decentralized web camp, 2023 resident at Latitude Chicago, 2023 Leonardo CripTech Metaverse Lab Fellow, and 2021 resident and current staff of ACRE Residency. They have exhibited work and delivered talks internationally.
Sick of relying on iCloud to store your precious photos, videos, and text messages? Concerned about privacy, digital security, and surveillance? Afraid Apple might delete your personal archive? Or maybe you’ve already lost things to the digital ether? Join T.A.P.E. Los Angeles for a workshop about getting off of iCloud, by building a system of backups and alternatives. Combating digital alienation and building autonomy for us all!
Taught by audio visual archivists Jackie Forsyte and Sydney Kysar, the workshop will cover the following skills and tools:
The Workshop’s hands-on portion will be a step-by-step walkthrough of how to download data off of icloud.
Please bring your computer, your iphone, and, if possible, a harddrive/flashdrive/solid state drive.
Date: 06/20/2026
Time: 2-5pm
Capacity: 20
Cost: Sliding Scale $25-40
Register: https://luma.com/43cz4yq2
T.A.P.E — Teach. Archive. Preserve. Exhibit – is a Los Angeles-based 501(c)3 nonprofit dedicated to facilitating support for analog media through free digitizing, education, hands-on-training, equipment rentals & volunteer opportunities.
When pressure mounts to delete, where do your most sensitive files actually go? What infrastructure exists to hold what matters most - securely, on your own terms? Drawing on best practices from Open-source intelligence (OSINT) journalism and data decentralization strategies, this workshop is primarily grounded in an understanding of contemporary digital (in)security conditions:
From there, participants will prototype their own storage infrastructure capable of holding files that are sensitive precisely because publishing them carries risk: immigration records, legal documents, personal testimony, organizing materials. Participants will:
Date: 06/27/2026
Time: 2-5pm
Capacity: 20
Cost: Sliding Scale $25-40
Register: https://luma.com/unprrhhp
Virginia Zangs is an architect, computational designer, and researcher investigating how socio-technical infrastructures of intelligence shape ecological, political, and cultural realities. Her practice spans cultural institutions, research labs, and design studios, combining theoretical research with computational and spatial design. She is founding partner of the design studios interMediations and ZangsMichalove. She is currently a Ph.D student in Media Arts & Practice at the School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California.Her work has been exhibited at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2025 “ Intelligens” and "City in the Cloud - Data on the Ground" at the Architektur Museum Munich (2025-2026). She has presented at symposiums, conferences, and hackathons, including the BlockchainGov International Symposium at Université Paris Panthéon-Assas, the AI & Cities - Digital Double Symposium in Rome organized by ETH, UZH, Digital Visual Studies Max Planck Society, and FCL Future Cities Laboratory (2024), and the Open Source AI Hackathon at Brown Institute, Columbia University (2024).
Maisa Imamović (BiH/NL, 1994) is a researcher, web designer/developer, and experimental educator. She critically studies the role of the single user and user behaviors generated by code. She codes to challenge the ideology of user-friendliness, support cultural platforms, respond to political gems, and socialize. Text + Code are her main mediums. In 2022, her first book The Psychology of the Web Developer, Reality of a Female Freelancer was published by the Institute of Network Cultures. In the academic year of 2024-2025, she taught creative coding and the history of cyberfeminism as an adjunct professor at USC Media Arts Practice, UCLA Design Media Arts, ArtCenter Interaction Design, CalArts Critical Studies and Integrated Media. She holds an MA degree in Aesthetics & Politics from the California Institute of the Arts. In 2025, her second book entitled Maisa in Webland: Detouring UX Destinies was published by Set Margins. She is ⅓ of Rip Space, where she co-curates, organizes discursive events and radical knowledge-sharing programs, and supports with design & archival maintenance. Currently, she is pursuing a Ph.D. in Media Arts + Practice at the University of Southern California.
Applied Saturdays operates as a program running adjacent to the exhibition Wake Me Up Inside, through a series of four hands-on, artist-led workshops that activate the exhibition space as a site of knowledge sharing and collective technical learning. While the exhibition holds the speculative and emotional resonance of networked systems, the workshops propose a counter narrative: to build, host, break, and reimagine the very infrastructures that produced this condition.
Each workshop responds to a concrete need: using existing hardware and e-waste to build devices for storing your own data without surrendering it to a platform; building communal apps and independent web ecosystems; reclaiming your personal archive from proprietary cloud servers; and protecting sensitive files from surveillance and exposure.
Offering a practical and politically orientated approach, Applied Saturdays asks what it means to act inside systems and to make digital sovereignty feel possible on both an individual and collective level.
Workshops by: Alice Yuan Zhang, Whisper + Nat Decker (from Secret Server Club), T.A.P.E. Los Angeles, and Virginia Zangs + Maisa Imamović
Organized by: Maisa Imamović, who also designed + coded this website. Thank you Tiffany Ta for designing our flyers!
When: Saturdays, June 6, 13, 20 & 27
Where: Wilshire Online – 6135 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles
Sign up for each workshop individually or sign up for FULL PACKAGE DEAL ($100) HERE: https://luma.com/0nee2vlh!
Brought to you by joint forces between Rip Space and SUPERCOLLIDER. Centered on emergent paradigms and future-oriented artistic practice, Rip Space engages artists, designers, and theorists working across media and digital practices alongside design, sensory work, and interdisciplinary forms of inquiry.SUPERCOLLIDER creates immersive science+art experiences—including (inter)nationally curated satellites for pop-ups, festivals, and research institutes—that vividly reclaim our future and explode our present. SUPERCOLLIDER creates sci+art+tech exhibitions and programs in greater Los Angeles and beyond.