The Art of Python

*The Art of Python* is a miniature arts festival on Friday, May 3rd, at [PyCon North America 2019](https://us.pycon.org/), focusing on narrative, performance, and visual art. Time & place: **8pm-10pm, Room 26A/B/C** at the convention center. The Art of Python _will not be videorecorded_. Scheduled performances -------------------------------- **8-9:30 pm:** - "A Postmortem on the Ingen Incident", a play by Hayley Denbraver - "The Interface", a play by Shauna Gordon-McKeon - ["The Programming Saga: A narrative music video" by E Waldo Dow][1] - _a 5-10 minute intermission_ - Music by Russell Keith-Magee and possibly other guests - Performance by MNF Chang - "Hello!!! ... World?", a play by Kyle R. Conway **9:30-10pm:** Inspired? After the performances, we'll hold a short unconference/BoF session where you can meet other people interested in making art about the experience of programming. Share your ideas for plays, video remixes, songs, dance, and stand-up comedy, find a team, and decide to propose your idea for a future conference! Description --------------- We intend to encourage and showcase novel art that helps us share our emotionally charged experiences of programming (particularly 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. In short, we are interested in how fictional narrative, visual and performance art, and different presentation formats can make different kinds of teaching and representation possible. We sought many types of creative work, such as music/dance performances and visual art such as paintings, and expect the main body of the event to consist of short one-act plays about the experience of programming, running from five to twenty minutes in length. Please see our [tips for creators](https://gitlab.com/playhatching/tips-for-creators) regarding narrative, performance, and visual art. (Consider [also attending](https://organicdonut.com/2019/01/expanding-the-con-aesthetic) the [!!Con conference (New York City, 11-12 May 2019)](http://bangbangcon.com/), which this year also features several performances!) Purpose ------------ Right now, we persuade and teach each other in a certain range of session types at PyCon. We have lots of lectures, panel discussions, live tool demonstrations, hands-on workshops and trainings, and birds-of-a-feather discussion sessions. This proposal would help us explore how theater can do things those formats can't do. Like songs and cartoons, narrative art can encapsulate wisdom in stories and characters, and use entertainment value to help audiences retain that wisdom. Especially when it comes to the emotionally fraught experiences in programming (code review, hiring, debugging, architectural negotiation, etc.), the medium of theater is a promising way to encourage empathy in the viewer. Theater is a way to model healthy vulnerability, courage and conflict. And visual and performing arts such as dance and music are ways to share experiences that go beyond words. We only know ways to be if we can imagine them. We hope this festival will illustrate a few ways we can be. Organizing Team --------------- [Sumana Harihareswara](https://harihareswara.net) has coordinated a readings and music festival (Fire and Water, 1998), stage managed a long-running play (*I Look Like an Egg but I Identify as a Cookie*, 2003-2004), and led event and curriculum/session planning for several hackathon/mini-conferences and sprints. She is also the co-creator of [Python Grab Bag: A Set of Short Plays](https://2018.pygotham.org/talks/python-grab-bag-a-set-of-short-plays/). [Erty Seidohl](https://erty.me) is a veteran conference organizer, with several years of experience as an organizer for [!!Con](https://bangbangcon.com). Brendan Adkins is a software developer with a theater degree, and is an experienced pop-culture convention volunteer and panel moderator. Timeline -------- * *[Call for submissions](https://www.papercall.io/art-of-python) open*: closed on 28 February * *Acceptance and rejection notifications*: 10 March * *Rehearsal video calls* with Art of Python organizers: TBD, approximately week of 25 April * *Schedule announcement*: TBD, approximately 28 April * *Art of Python committee working with submitters* (providing editing, feedback, logistics guidance): through 3 May * *Art of Python festival*: evening of Friday, 3 May, 8-10pm [1]: https://echan.dreamwidth.org/73641.html