Making “computer” mean computer-feelings and not computer-devices shifts the boundaries of what is captured by the word. It removes a great many things – smartphones, language models, “social” “media” – from the domain of the computational. It also welcomes a great many things – notebooks, papercraft, diary, kitchen – back into the domain of the computational.
(Hwang and Rizwan, 2023)
My name is Agnes Cameron, I’m a specialist technician at UAL’s Creative Computing Institute. A lot of my role involves working with students from non-technical backgrounds to develop a practice with computers and electronics — both in terms of developing technical skills, but also critical thinking about technology to go with it.
My role is between the electronics and e-textiles workshops, and in organising the “Technical Skills Workshops“, an extracurricular program in our department where technicians teach technical skills to students. I set this up in 2023, and now co-run it with my colleague Mayra Berrones. The broad philosophy of these workshops is that developing a fluency and agency with technical ideas in one context will aid students’ learning in another. This year, I also developed a new program of workshops for incoming students aimed at addressing an increasing ‘digital skills gap’ observed among incoming students.
I’m particularly interested in skills or ways of relating to technology that allow students to feel in command of technical objects they encounter in their lives, including other aspects of their artistic practices. I particularly enjoy teaching ‘meta-skills’ — tools that aid the use of the computer, that show you more how it works. An example of this would be the command line imagemagick tools, which allow you to use code to programmatically manipulate image files and can be extremely practically useful for students who use large numbers of digital images in their practice, as well as informing an understanding of what a digital image is.
I’ve been working in the past year with researchers at Chelsea College of Arts, on a project to index and develop open-source knitting software. I’m interested to work with my students coming from textile backgrounds to understand how that can provide a way in for the development of programming skills.
Over the course of the PGCert, I’m really interested in investigating the following questions:
- The role of malleable software (Litt et. al, 2025) in interdisciplinary technical education
- How to teach skills considered ‘too hard’ (command line programming, reading circuit diagrams, using an oscilloscope) to students coming without a technical background
- How to take technical abilities students have developed in other areas (e.g. knit) and use these as the foundation to develop skills in programming and electronics
References
Hwang, T., Rizwan O., (2023) The Computer is a Feeling. (online) GitHub, New York Review of Computation, Available at: https://github.com/timhwang/nyrc/blob/main/NYRC%201%20-%20The%20Computer%20is%20a%20Feeling.md (Accessed 11 Feb. 2026)
Litt, G., Horowitz, J., van Hardenberg, P. & Matthews, T., 2025. Malleable Software: Restoring user agency in a world of locked-down apps. Ink & Switch, https://www.inkandswitch.com/essay/malleable-software (Accessed 21/01/26)