Reflect
On invisible infrastructures, algorithmic logics, and normalized aesthetics.
PCD2026 marks
“As [Aldous Huxley] saw it,
the sixth edition of an event
In 2026, we choose to preserve the acronym PCD,
that originated within the international Processing Community Day network —
strongly associated with the event’s identity and community, while redefining its meaning.
an open-source, community-driven initiative rooted in shared learning, experimentation,
PCD now stands for Poetics of Computational Design.
and creative coding practices. Over the years,
This shift does not represent a departure from our origins, but rather their natural development.
people will come to love their oppression
PCD@Porto has grown and expanded. What began as an event primarily centred on Processing and p5.js gradually expanded
We continue to share the foundational values of the Processing Community Day — openness, inclusivity, knowledge sharing, and a critical spirit — while broadening the scope to embrace
to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.”
diverse tools, methods, and computational practices.
— Neil Postman, in Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985)
The emphasis shifts from technical procedure to purpose,
into a broader space for artistic, design-oriented, and critical explorations of computation.
from execution to intention, opening space for reflection on what computation makes possible
In a time marked by technological acceleration, automation, and the increasing normalization of systems that shape behaviour, perception, and thought, PCD2026 proposes a moment of pause and reconsideration.
— and meaningful. – Computation is approached as a space of intention, questioning, and poetic possibility. Rather than privileging specific languages or platforms, PCD2026 highlights the poetic, cultural, and critical dimensions of computational art and design.
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Resist
Simplistic solutions, technological determinism, and the illusion of neutrality.
Reform
Alternative poetics, practices, and futures for computation in art and design.
A Space for Plural
Computational Practices
PCD2026 is conceived as a shared space for engaging with multiple ways of thinking and working through computation in art and design. The programme of invited keynotes and selected workshops emerges as a direct response to the 2026 theme, articulating moments of reflection, forms of resistance, and gestures of reform through situated computational practices.
The invited contributions create spaces to reflect on the conditions under which computational systems operate – making visible their infrastructures, assumptions, aesthetics, and embedded values. They also propose ways to resist the apparent inevitablity of technological acceleration, challenging instrumental thinking, algorithmic determinism, and claims of neutrality.
Keynotes offer conceptual frameworks and critical distance, opening room for collective reflection on the cultural, political, and ethical dimensions of computation. Workshops function as spaces of active resistance and reform, where participants engage hands-on with alternative methods, protocols, and imaginaries.
Together, these contributions form a plural and intentional landscape of computational practices, where reflection leads to resistance, and resistance becomes a ground for reform – affirming computation as a situated, consequential, and poetic practice.
Image: Tony Freeth, 2020.
Program
27 AprilWorkshops #1 and #2 will take place at the same time. Participants may attend one of the two sessions and must register in advance for their chosen workshop via the links below (coming soon).
- Workshop #1
- SARA ORSI
- Reflect · Resist · Reform – An Online Collaborative Manifesto
9:30-12:30 and 14:00-17:00 (6 hours long + lunch break)
In Portuguese / In-person at FBAUP, room PS13B
(Registration Available Soon)
Taking Olia Lialina’s Summer (2013), an iconic net art work in which the artist swings at the top of the browser with each frame hosted on a different server, as its starting point, the workshop will explore languages and technical layers of the web as artistic matters to reveal its distributed, unstable, political, and relational nature.
Building on this, participants will collectively create the Reflect · Resist · Reform – An online collaborative manifesto, which critically addresses the central axes of PCD2026. The workshop will focus on the web as an artistic, political, and relational space, understand historical strategies of net art, including distribution, failure, looping, and code visibility, and address collaborative online practices to create a living, changing, and distributed manifesto.
In Portuguese / In-person at FBAUP, room PS13B
(Registration Available Soon)
Taking Olia Lialina’s Summer (2013), an iconic net art work in which the artist swings at the top of the browser with each frame hosted on a different server, as its starting point, the workshop will explore languages and technical layers of the web as artistic matters to reveal its distributed, unstable, political, and relational nature.
Building on this, participants will collectively create the Reflect · Resist · Reform – An online collaborative manifesto, which critically addresses the central axes of PCD2026. The workshop will focus on the web as an artistic, political, and relational space, understand historical strategies of net art, including distribution, failure, looping, and code visibility, and address collaborative online practices to create a living, changing, and distributed manifesto.
- Workshop #2
- FILIPE PAIS
- Super-Objects
9:30-12:30 and 14:00-17:00 (6 hours long + lunch break)
In Portuguese / In-person at FBAUP, room PS13A
(Registration Available Soon)
Inspired by José Saramago's novel Objeto Quase (1978), this workshop proposes the exploration of a techno-solutionist scenario that imagines a “dictatorship of objects.” Through the MisB Kit modular robotics platform, participants will work collectively on prototyping super-objects (artifacts designed with an ecological mandate, whose operational logic prioritizes environmental protection, including the ability to refuse or limit human commands when they conflict with ecological thresholds) capable of limiting, negotiating, or even disobeying human actions. The process articulates speculative design and more-than-human perspectives, exploring everyday technologies as agents of ecological care and forms of material resistance.
In Portuguese / In-person at FBAUP, room PS13A
(Registration Available Soon)
Inspired by José Saramago's novel Objeto Quase (1978), this workshop proposes the exploration of a techno-solutionist scenario that imagines a “dictatorship of objects.” Through the MisB Kit modular robotics platform, participants will work collectively on prototyping super-objects (artifacts designed with an ecological mandate, whose operational logic prioritizes environmental protection, including the ability to refuse or limit human commands when they conflict with ecological thresholds) capable of limiting, negotiating, or even disobeying human actions. The process articulates speculative design and more-than-human perspectives, exploring everyday technologies as agents of ecological care and forms of material resistance.
29 April
- 09:30
- WORKSHOP #3
- Applied Photogrammetry by Tiago Pinho & João Lima
2h30 hours long: 9:30-12:00
In Portuguese / In-person at FBAUP, room Estúdio de Fotografia (Torre de Conexão)
REGISTER HERE
In this workshop, participants will be introduced to photogrammetry techniques for the 3D digitization of physical objects. They will engage with the possibilities and limitations of the process, which includes photography, image processing and alignment, and computational reconstruction using the RealityScan 2 software. The session will provide an understanding of how lighting, focal distance, object positioning and image alignment influence the construction of the final 3D model. During the session, participants will be able to select one object from the FBAUP Technical Objects and Media Collection to be digitized, closely following the entire procedure. The demonstration challenges the idea of technological neutrality and invites participants to observe how computational mediation transforms material artefacts into digital surfaces with different potential uses. This activity is promoted in collaboration with the i2ADS seed project Philosophical Media.DOI10.54499/CEECINST/00103/ 2021/CP2785/CT0002
In Portuguese / In-person at FBAUP, room Estúdio de Fotografia (Torre de Conexão)
REGISTER HERE
In this workshop, participants will be introduced to photogrammetry techniques for the 3D digitization of physical objects. They will engage with the possibilities and limitations of the process, which includes photography, image processing and alignment, and computational reconstruction using the RealityScan 2 software. The session will provide an understanding of how lighting, focal distance, object positioning and image alignment influence the construction of the final 3D model. During the session, participants will be able to select one object from the FBAUP Technical Objects and Media Collection to be digitized, closely following the entire procedure. The demonstration challenges the idea of technological neutrality and invites participants to observe how computational mediation transforms material artefacts into digital surfaces with different potential uses. This activity is promoted in collaboration with the i2ADS seed project Philosophical Media.DOI10.54499/CEECINST/00103/ 2021/CP2785/CT0002
- 14:15
- CONFERENCE OPENING
- In-Person @ FBAUP Aula Magna
- 14:30
- KEYNOTE
- Resist and Compose with Friction by Filipe Pais
We live in exciting times: on the one hand, absorbed by the insatiable Trump Reality
Global Show,
on the other, suspicious and fascinated
by super-intelligent artificial assistants,
with their friendly and flattering nature.
Polarized, disoriented, and desensitized by an increasingly dense polycrisis, we surrender to the sweetness of smooth design, which lulls us to sleep. Everything works,everything flows, nothing weighs us down.
We keep going like this, at cruising speed and on autopilot, occasionally looking up just to check that the horizon hasn't turned into a cliff. Having confirmed that disaster has been averted, we return, almost magnetically, to the small screen that calls us back.
This presentation addresses three ways of resisting and composing with the current digital paradigm, structured by an attention economy obsessed with fluidity and immersion. These forms, understood here as “frictions,” are linked to three axes of my research: behavioral objects, non-anthropocentric games, and digital rematerializations.
Polarized, disoriented, and desensitized by an increasingly dense polycrisis, we surrender to the sweetness of smooth design, which lulls us to sleep. Everything works,everything flows, nothing weighs us down.
We keep going like this, at cruising speed and on autopilot, occasionally looking up just to check that the horizon hasn't turned into a cliff. Having confirmed that disaster has been averted, we return, almost magnetically, to the small screen that calls us back.
This presentation addresses three ways of resisting and composing with the current digital paradigm, structured by an attention economy obsessed with fluidity and immersion. These forms, understood here as “frictions,” are linked to three axes of my research: behavioral objects, non-anthropocentric games, and digital rematerializations.
- 15:30
- BREAK
- 15:45
- KEYNOTE
- Dialogues on Techno-Culture: Power, Visibility and Temporality by Sara Orsi
Drawing on ongoing theoretical and artistic research at the intersection of digital technology
and contemporary culture, the lecture examines how relations of power, visibility, and
temporality are being reshaped by techno-culture, and how artistic practices respond to these
reconfigurations. To address such questions, it develops along three main, yet
complementary, axes: power relations under algorithmic governance, regimes of visibility
within digital infrastructures, and the paradoxical temporality of computing.
Presented through open dialogues between theoretical approaches a curated selection of artistic practices, the lecture brings voices and gestures to reflect the complexities and ambivalences of techno-culture, examine emerging forms of resistance, and explore practices that reimagine alternative techno-cultural futures.
Presented through open dialogues between theoretical approaches a curated selection of artistic practices, the lecture brings voices and gestures to reflect the complexities and ambivalences of techno-culture, examine emerging forms of resistance, and explore practices that reimagine alternative techno-cultural futures.
- 16:45
- ROUND-TABLE
- Filipe Pais, Sara Orsi and Miguel Carvalhais
- 17:30
- CLOSING REMARKS
Exhibition
Reflect · Resist · Reform
This exhibition brings together projects that engage computation as a poetics of emergence. Web-based performances, non-anthropocentric systems, pedagogical experiments, and workshop-based productions examine how repetition, interaction, and technical constraint generate difference, provoking agency across human, more-than-human, and infrastructural systems.
The works present reflection, resistance, and reform as modes of engagement with computational causality. They make computational conditions legible, interrogate claims of neutrality and determinism, and articulate how computation operates across artistic and design ecologies as well as research contexts.
Center for Non-Anthropocentric Play (CNAP)
A constellation of projects developed within the Center for Non-Anthropocentric Play (CNAP), a research-led artistic initiative based in the Interactive Media Department at Noroff University College in Kristiansand, Norway. Co-founded in 2021 by Dr. Erik Geslin and Dr. Filipe Pais, CNAP explores play as a method for reconfiguring agency across computational and ecological systems. As an evolving research platform, it brings together works, prototypes, and situated experiments spanning mixed reality, game engines, audiovisual archives, and field documentation. Across these environments, perception and interaction emerge through distributed relations among human and more-than-human actors, technical systems, and living ecologies.
Clock++
Clock++ examines time as a computational construct generated through code. Within this pedagogical framework, students develop experimental systems using Processing that displace normative clock-based representations and expose time as an operative condition shaped by algorithmic processes. The resulting works articulate temporalities as emergent properties of computational interaction, where rhythm and transformation replace linear measurement.Team
Ana Coelho
LDC / FBAUP
Design and organisation support.
André Rangel
i2ADS / FBAUP
Organisation.
Bruno Giesteira
ID+ / FBAUP
Organisation.
Camila Mangueira
i2ADS / FBAUP
Organisation. Exhibition curator, digital communication support.
Catarina Rocha
LDC / FBAUP
Design and organisation support.
Eduardo Morais
i2ADS / FBAUP
Organisation.
Eliana Penedos-Santiago
ID+ / FBAUP
Event Coordination & Organisation.
Fabrício Fava
i2ADS / FBAUP
Organisation. Digital communication & exhibition support.
Henrique Miguel
MDI / FBAUP
Design and organisation support.
Lara Portelinha
LDC / FBAUP
Design and organisation support.
Mariana Ferreira
LDC / FBAUP
Design and organisation support.
Miguel Carvalhais
i2ADS / FBAUP
Organisation.
Pedro Cardoso
i2ADS / FBAUP
Event Coordination & Organisation.
Rodrigo Carvalho
ID+ / FBAUP
Organisation. Workshops and Keynote coordination.