theory and practice belong in the same room

Open Note Labs is a community of people who learn, research, and make together.

We hold that the disciplines are one territory with four doors. A physicist should argue with a painter. A philosopher should ship. Most of what is worth knowing sits between the fields, and most of what is worth building takes more than one kind of mind.

So we keep the notes open. Courses taught by practitioners, reading groups that go slowly, workshops that end with a working thing, and public programs that let the neighborhood in. Work made in company outlives work made alone.

four doors, one house

i

science

Seminars and reading groups in physics, biology, and the mathematics beneath both. Slow reading, real problems, no survey-course hand waving.

ii

technology

Software, hardware, and the craft of building. Workshops that end with a thing that runs, and the taste to know whether it should.

iii

philosophy

The questions underneath the work. Ethics, epistemology, and the long conversation, read closely and argued in good faith.

iv

arts

Studio practice, criticism, and performance. Making treated as a way of knowing, not a break from it.

an 18,000 square foot school, kept busy

Built as a school, and a school again. Photographs are coming; the rooms are already in use.

the hall
the workshop floor
the reading room
the classrooms
the studio

the notes are open

Programming is announced on Discord first. The rest of the record lives on Instagram.

join the discord

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29 nassau ave, greenpoint, brooklyn