LabSynthE

Fall 2025

What if your computer had a second life while you were not working on it? What if it has a dating profile and entertains easing its loneliness by meeting other off-the-clock computers?

During four weeks in September, LabsynthE will host a short-term working group (SWG) to create such a fantastical operation. Students will develop a creative project, currently in its first stage of iteration, prompting visitors to “Build Your Computer’s Dating Profile.”

Students will iterate on the web page design (front-end, HTML/CSS), on-page interactions (Javascript), and writing segments of profiles for the project’s data set. Students can participate in design and programming, or in focus group studies for usability testing and to develop visual media used to share the work with the public.

The Short-term Working Group (SWG) program is designed to provide UTD students an opportunity to work closely with a faculty member on a targeted project. 

Eight students will work in LabSynthE on September 8, 15, 22, and 29 from 1-2:30. Check back in October to see what we’ve come up with!

LabSynthE is showing on the walls alongside Rachel Finkelstein’s show in the front gallery space of UTD’s SP/N Gallery. You can see selections from Comets Love You to the Moon and Back * 10⁶ and our video projections inside Lazaret Cave inspired by Kevin Craft’s poem, “Approaching Lazaret” for the 2025 Spring of Poets in Nice, France.

This year for Halloween, the lab has opened its doors to celebrate Halloween! Stop by to play a sweet game of Guess the Logo for some sweet treats! This year the game was based on the idea of extracting a small crop on a candy bar logo and asking the kids to guess the logo. Hershey’s is most easily identified. Nestle’s Crunch is often mistaken for M&Ms, and Twix could be the most difficult.

xtine burrough playing the game in 2011 with neighborhood kids.

Join us this fall as we embark on a mixed media project that combines cyanotype printing, fabric, and interactivity. We’ve been running tests on Thursdays 1-2:30pm in the lab, ATC 1.106.

Comets Love You to the Moon and Back * 10⁶

In this workshop, participants from all over campus helped LabsynthE to create the longest Valentine’s day card. The love letter itself is an accordion-style paper card 0.4 miles long, which stretched from the visitor’s center to the admin building at UT Dallas on February 14th, 2025. The card features NASA images of the day from the last 25 Valentine’s Days, photos we took of the moon, and lyrics from the @kxtradio anti-love song bracket. Comets have written love letters, break up letters, and notes to their future partners on our extraordinary card. We love you to the moon and back, until 12:15 in the afternoon when the whole thing got shredded. It’s a love letter and a break up note, all in one day.

Hug Me! All of Me! At last a bad romance…

In this workshop, participants will create two datasets for playful computation: phrases that appear on conversation heart candies and titles of anti-love songs. During Love Data Week (February 12-16, 2024) we will make computational poetry at the intersection of these two datasets. Charm your valentine with a candy-infused poem, or send your ex poetic spam. 

LabSynthE is a laboratory for synthetic and electronic poetry. This workshop will be presented in hybrid form. Join us in the lab, ATC 1.601 or on Teams on one or both days. Email xtine(at)utdallas(dot)edu for a link to the Teams meeting:

Tuesday 2/13 12-1pm Create datasets

Wednesday 2/14 2-3:30pm Write the code and enjoy some candy

We are installing our exhibition at the East Flushing Gallery in The Ulrich Museum of Art on the campus of Wichita State University today. Please join us at the opening tomorrow, January 25th, 5:30-8:30pm.

Opening Friday November 18, 2022
JOIN US ON TEAMS, 12-1pm

Join us on Teams this Friday at noon for an exhibition walk-through of MOTHER’S ROOM with curator Liz Trosper, and an introduction to the New Art City platform by founder Don Hanson.

“We have all inhabited the matrix, the first place, for nine months.” – Michel Serres

“We all share the same origin, our mothers; all of us come in at the same door.” – Herman Hesse

How has it come to be that the architecture of the womb is so ignored in aesthetic discourse? The first place. The first door. The first portal. In 1966, Niki de Saint Phaille constructed the temporary architectural installation, Hon, and in the intervening 56 years, no sustained discourse has taken place.

“It was a sensation, but the day after the opening we had no press. We had a press showing, but nothing was published in the newspapers. Because nobody knew what to think or say …” – Pontus Hulten, Director of the Moderna Museet of Stockholm

MOTHER’S ROOM picks up this conversational thread, bringing you a hybrid exhibition featuring the work of Maedeh Asgharpour, Tra Bouscaren, xtine burrough, Rachel Finkelstein, LabSynthE, Roxanne Minnish, Andrew Scott and the LightSquad, Cythia O’Neill, Susan Sanders-Rosenberg and Judy Walgren.

Philosopher Michel Serres calls the womb the matrix, the cave and the first place. MOTHER’S ROOM is a virtual and physical exhibition examining the intersection of space, particularly institutional space, women’s bodies and reproduction. The project is centered on the idea of space in art as a fielding ground for theoretical discourse and the ways that space can reflect and reinforce systemic control of women’s bodies, reproduction and caregiving.

Hosted on the New Art City platform virtually and by LabSynthE and the Office Hours project space (Trosper’s office, ATC1.909), the project engages artists to manifest a body of creative research, internet art objects and installations.

We’re kicking off the fall with an Open House during the AHT ONE Celebration on Friday, October 7 at 5pm. Stop by to say hello and see what we have been working on. Then join us on October 11^th for our Mother’s Room REMIX sound editing event in room 1.601 from 12:30-2pm. All editing experiences welcome (including none at all!).

Mixed/Mask Paper Making Workshop During Comets Giving Days


Monday, Tuesday, Friday 4/4, 4/5, 4/8 Paper Making Workshop
Monday, Tuesday, Friday 4/11, 4/12, 4/15 Paper Making Workshop
12-1pm
No RSVP required

Drop in for 20 minutes during two separate days so your wet materials can dry between visits! Transform your mask to printable paper one day and print on it the next!

Friday 3/11 Ideas + Materials Workshop for the Pop-up Locker Exhibit
12-2pm
No RSVP required. Join us for help with your locker installation.

Spring 2022, “A Simple History” for Printemps des Poetes at Grotte du Lazaret
Documentation of LabSynthE’s emerging media exhibition in Lazaret Cave in Nice, France for the Spring of Poets. “A Simple History” ruminates on the 2022 theme, ephemeral, featuring a site-specific poem by Adrian Matejka and the voice of Trupa Trupa frontman Grzegorz Kwiatkowski.

Fall 2021-Spring 2022, NYU Mamdouha Bobst Gallery
This fall LabSynthE members will be exhibiting works as part of burrough & Starnaman’s Ceremonial Techne at Mamdouha S. Bobst Gallery at NYU.  The lab’s collaborative projects Syntonic Refuge and One Breath Poem: Message for a Revolution, as well as An Imagined Genealogy of Michel Foucault, led by Ferreira and Yates, will be on display and available for interaction during  fall 2021 and spring 2022.