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CCAM: Center for Concrete and Abstract Machines

@ccam_chicago

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nomadic artist-run platform developing culture at the nexus of art, technics, and contemporary thought

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Mark your calendars: the @ccam_chicago reading group returns to form on September 13 at MANA Contemporary in Chicago, featuring a series of readings that inspired our futurhythmachines project.

In "More Brilliant Than the Sun," Kodwo Eshun identifies breakbeat producers, instrumental turntablists, and mixadelic engineers as already-operating sonic theorists, activating thought at the speed of sound. Taking his propositions seriously, @ccam_chicago & @bads_lab ’s futurhythmachines project approaches social forms and expressive technics through investigations and experiments in the making(s) of Black electronic dance musics. This reading group takes up some of the project’s fundamental source texts—works by Eshun, Goodman, Henriques, and Brar—alongside BADS_lab’s own theory and practice notes.

Follow the link in bio to read more and RSVP.

photo credit: @isaiahwrd
photo subject: @errrantry on the decks at the BADS_lab open session this past June.

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We are excited for another workshop in our CCAM School series! This workshop will be in person and online, please register at https://ccam.world/programs/26-09-16-zoe-butler-virtual-mas/ to reserve your spot and access the link. Cost is $20 which helps us pay the artists! Email us if you need a fee waiver.

Virtual Mas is a studio workshop grounded in the traditions of Caribbean performance and philosophy. The class invites participants to think together about masquerade as an emancipatory ethos, a technique of artful struggle, expression of identity as well as a resistance to visibility, through a shared process of digital mask making using P5.js and Blender.

Zoe Butler is a New Media Performance Artist who uses abstract moving images to engage and expand Guyanese folktales. Butler is a 2023-24 Fulbright Research Fellowship recipient, affiliated with The University of the West Indies, Saint Augustine Trinidad and Tobago. Her ongoing project titled Conversations and Constellations is a body of creative research exploring Caribbean oral traditions and the histories from which they emerge, to encourage the continued exchange of storytelling.

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This fall is full of workshops at PS1!

Our lineup includes synthesizers • linocuts • notebooks • screenprinting on fabric • mokulito • watercolors from plants • letterpress • etching • monoprint • and so much more!

Bring your curious minds, busy your hands, and create in community! Check out the complete fall schedule and register today: https://www.publicspaceone.com/workshops

Seeking ways to have fun and gather with friends and family? Join us for FREE, Second Saturdays with Kelly Moore at PS1 Close House (538 S Gilbert St)! Make felt friends • clay cottages • sgraffito • or tie dye tiles! Registration encouraged and all ages welcome!

PS1’s workshops are pay-what-you-can thanks to the generous support of @hillsbank, a Johnson County Quality of Life Grant, and individual donors.

#iowacity #downtowniowacity #iowaarts

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@ccam_chicago crit session from March
Invited the group to my home to share
a performance in progress

btw Color Songs: Musicians as Visual Artists opens tonight at @bridgeportartcenter , some of my work is featured
info in bio

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✨ Faculty Spotlight: Grace Grace Grace ✨

"I am an arts and design researcher, theorist, educator, programmer, and performance-installation artist. Currently part-time faculty at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and University of Illinois Chicago, I received PhD in Media Arts and Sciences in December 2022 from the School of Arts, Media, and Engineering at Arizona State University and a certificate in critical theory. I also work as a researcher and consultant on an NEA Lab project with Virginia Tech and Leonardo/ISAST. I am the founding lead of a 501c3 organization called CCAM, the Center for Concrete and Abstract Machines, which supports cultural development at the nexus of art, technology, and contemporary thought located Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood."

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Images slide 1 ,3, and 4 (bottom photo) from performance with the CLEAT 16-channel sound system as HYPERGRACE.

Images on slide 2 and 4 (top) from 2025 generative sound and video sculptural installation "POST TENEBRAS LUX".

Images on slide 5 top right image and bottom image are student works by Lithe and Sheldon. Circuit board photo (top left) is a photo of a "kludge (a wired fixed to a fabricated board) my friend Will Mitchell (@will_lcm_m) helped me with on a new Eurorack synthesizer audio mixer I am developing".

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Excited to teach this workshop, available to anyone of any skill level interested in learning how to work in @newart.city, an accessible online platform for building navigable virtual worlds. $20, DM for fee waiver.
6-8 pm July 27th MANA Contemporary 5th floor Cafe.
Register at https://ccam.world/programs/26-07-27-claire-fleming-staples-almanac/

Last slide is a world made by my student Joann Le Tran.

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Five Sundays in May at The Land School, again and again, gathering with people willing to think and talk and make.

To every one of you who showed up: thank you. I put the lab notebook together in your company, and it carries your fingerprints.

This Saturday, that notebook goes home with whoever comes through the door.

It holds the fragments of the process poetically juxtaposed: questions asked, hypotheses floated, methods tried, residues we couldn't help but leave behind, texts that entered the conversations, and exercises we ran.

And you won't only read about the exercises, you'll get to try them yourself alongside a few of us on Saturday.

Come think with us. Leave with the journal in your hands.

This Saturday. 2 - 5pm. The Land School (@rebuild_foundation). RSVP at the link in bio.

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Join us for the culminating session of the Chicago leg of BADS_lab 2026!

It's a convivial gathering to discuss the lab's themes, engage with the cohort as they reflect on their contributions and discoveries, and enable a broader public to participate in the experiments.

Please RSVP at the link in bio.

Gratitude to @rebuild_foundation for hosting us!

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@bads_lab returns for a third year with Maroon Infrastructures, featuring experiments with signals, soils, and the soul that animates them. The work moves from Chicago in May to São Paulo in August to Dar es Salaam in November, beginning at the Land School. A handful of spots remain in the Chicago cohort. Write to info@bads-lab.org.

Special thanks to @rebuild_foundation for hosting and support.

Stay tuned for information regarding public progamming in June.

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When your name is that cool, just put’er on a t-shirt 🤗 Fresh @ccam_chicago shirt Public Works collab, design by @someoddpilot.

Drops tonight at the annual “We Don’t Know Yet What a Cinema Can Do” put on by… you guessed it… the Center For Abstract & Concrete Machines, and @onioncityfilmfest

Tickets going fast. This show is always amazing. Let’s go!!!

Doors @ 7pm.
2141 w north ave
Wicker Park Chicago

#chicagofashion #filmfestival #chicagoartist #experimentalcinema

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TONIGHT! [WE DON’T KNOW YET] WHAT A CINEMA CAN DO. Thank you Newcity @newcitymag for the highlight!

Disintegrating Archives: a night of expanded cinema. Public Works Gallery @publicworksgallery (2141 W. North Ave) | April 10, 2026 - 8:00PM
Doors Open at 7:30PM & Show Starts at 8:00PM

CCAM @ccam_chicago and Onion City Film Festival present the third annual iteration of
[WE DON’T KNOW YET] WHAT A CINEMA CAN DO, a night of new media live performance with the theme of Disintegrating Archives.

This year WDKY features new works or reworkings by three artists developing distinct technical, aesthetic, and cultural niches: AJ McClenon’s text, repurposed materials, moving and still images, performance, and sound work is driven by familial and collective grief, water, Blackness, geomorphology, abolitionist thought, and the global future. The arts collective Alterotics’ moving-image art, archival research, and event hosting activates public life for trans/queer people. James Connolly’s real-time sound and media performance activates expressive potentials of technical systems sequestered behind consumer interfaces.

These three artists are also joined by special guest Aria Pedraza, who will introduce the Midwest Rave Culture Archive @midwestraveculturearchive

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