Processing: Creative Coding and Computational Art

PROCESSING: CREATIVE CODING AND COMPUTATIONAL ART
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experience, which I know might sound odd to some of you. I did enjoy the class, and the
professor tried to find some relevant connections, but that old dread came back in spite
of the fact that I wasn’t even enrolled in the class, not to mention that I already had my
degrees and a job. I especially found the tests disagreeable, where rigid constraints of time
and a very limited solution set took most of the joy away. Ironically, I love trying to solve
complex technical and analytical problems, as one finds continuously in programming.
However, in programming, as opposed to a math class, technical problems are directly
linked to the process of creating. Rather than having to plot some nondescript curve I
could care less about (with little or no aesthetic payoff), I’d prefer to create an aesthetically
based organic form, generated through a series of curve expressions. In addition,
coding allows you to chart your own procedural course when solving a problem. For
example, five different coders can each solve the same problem five different ways. I
believe this type of flexibility is essential to the creative process—whether you’re painting
a tree or creating a series of mathematical expressions to plot a tree.
For your purposes, you only need a small part of math, and mostly pretty basic stuff.
However, programming is really a form of applied math—a very creative form! If you want
to move something on the screen, change the color of a pixel, or have the user interact
with one of your Processing sketches, you need to deal with coordinates and usually simple
addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division. For example, if you create a virtual ant
and want it to wander around the sketch window, avoiding some obstacles and searching
for food, you need to continuously add values to the mouse’s x and y coordinates and
keep checking if the ant’s coordinates are interfering with either the obstacle or food
coordinates. If you want the food to slowly disappear as the ant eats it, you can slowly shift
the value of the pixels making up the food to the background color of the screen. This section
is going to take a quick look at basic math utilized in graphics programming. The
material should be viewed more as a math primer than a proper elucidation of this material.
If you don’t fully get it here, don’t panic—it will be revisited later on. Some of these
concepts are also expanded upon in Appendix B.
Elementary algebra
Algebra is old. It has been used continuously and developed for over 3,000 years, with early
contributions made by cultures worldwide including the ancient Egyptians, Babylonians,
Greeks, and Chinese. Algebra was first introduced into Europe in the beginning of the 13th
century by Leonardo Fibonacci of Pisa. Fibonacci got famous for trying to figure out the
breeding capacity of rabbits. What he realized was that there is a predictable sequence of
numbers, based on a simple rule, connected to the rabbits’ breeding rates. In fact, this
numeric progression is not only tied to rabbit breeding, but tree growth, numbers of
petals on a flower, the spiral in the golden section, and many other natural phenomena. To
learn more about Fibonacci and his rabbits, check out www.mcs.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/
R.Knott/Fibonacci/fibnat.html#rabeecow.
The actual word algebra comes from a ninth century Persian treatise, written by
al-Khwarizmi (mentioned in Chapter 2 in the discussion about algorithms). Al-Khwarizmi is
widely hailed as the father of algebra (as well as one of the greatest math geniuses of all
time). Al-Khwarizmi, or algoritmi, as his name translates into Latin, is where the word algorithm
comes from. Elementary algebra is absolutely fundamental to programming. In many
ways, programming is algebra. However, programming is the kind of algebra you do but