As so much of today’s technology becomes commoditized and standardized, Townsend Harris High School alumni Zack Temkin and Leo Mancini, along with their co-founder Dan Zaharia, are working to rewire a bit more creativity and fun back into the tech world through FCC Studio, a Long Island City based art collective. The members of FCC Studio hosted a gallery showcase on November 8 and 9 to share their creations with people within NYC.
“Our general ethos is just making technology more fun and interesting because so much of it has become kind of the same,” said Zack. “All phones and tablets are just black rectangles.”
The showcase featured various devices that playfully blend old and new technology. One example is the AI Art Box. According to Leo, it “allows you to use these retro TV knobs to prompt a large language model to generate images.”
“We’re using AI in a lot of the projects, both to vibe code the software and firmware for the projects,” he said. “But [it is] also inspiration for things like the AI art box.”
“‘Vibe coding’ is a tech slang term for pair programming with AI, so using AI to generate a lot of codes that you can experiment with really quickly,” said Dan. “It speeds up the process of building something out and prototyping [it]. You can dream up an idea within days rather than weeks or months to actually execute and create something.”
“We each came into this with a very different set of skills,” said Dan. “I have a little more engineering heavy skills in terms of mechanical and physical things, Leo has a really strong software background (a lot of it’s self-taught), and Zack has an amazing mix of all those things.”
Eric, a spectator at the showcase, said the “[artwork] was not functionality focused but also very playful.” They were “like a cross-playing of technology and [the] physicality of products.”
“It’s super cool to see older technology merge with newer technology and seeing how people can create art and entertainment from things instead of just smartphones,” said Sam, a spectator who attended the art and electronics gallery show. “I feel like we’ve lost a lot of the regular joys that technology used to bring when there [was] basic stuff like this. It’s so cool to see it go back.”
The Classic was in attendance at the gallery and asked some of the spectators about their favorite art pieces. In addition to the AI Art Box, there were items like the Handheld Computer Vision Rig and the Sound Machine.
Teresa, another attendee, said that “[The handheld computer] was pretty cool.” According to the gallery description, this piece allows attendees to “see the world through the eyes of another.” Teresa said it “kind of interprets the lens that you point it towards. So if you’re holding it and actually looking at something, it’s going to define what it is here. It kind of changes and gets more defined as it goes on.”
The Sound Machine allows attendees to choose different key fobs and tap them on the device in order to play different sounds and pieces of music from around the world.
“I like [the Sound Machine] for the interface where you choose the music,” said Paul. “It’s not exactly music, but you have a key fob, and it makes it more physical, and a bit more like when you have CDs and put your CDs,.”
THHS students who are interested in art also shared their takeaways from the combination of art and technology that FCC focuses on.
“[The gallery show] demonstrates the amazing creations that came out of the combination of both art and technology,” said freshman Sabrina Lin. “These machines and contraptions really show how modern technology can be entertaining and exciting.”
Sophomore Haley Shin said that she disagrees with the usage of generative AI when it’s the “main point of a piece”. She said, “I think these pieces have a greater intent and I think these works showed me examples of how AI can be used in art while putting the artists in the forefront.”
“[The gallery show] is a reminder that art can go beyond the usual traditional paper style, and there’s more than one way to be creative,” said sophomore Sammara Ray. “It can expand someone’s idea of what art can look like.”
“One of the things that really stuck with me was the saying [to] leave your city better than you found it” said Leo. “A lot of what we’re trying to do with showing our stuff [is]…to try to contribute to the art scene of New York City in our own small way.”
