Processing: Creative Coding and Computational Art

The problem with a Photoshop filter is its limited range of expressive possibility. Each filter
has a rational consistency, which is absolutely necessary for generating predictable results
and overall reliability. But the rationality built into the tool makes it hard to find new solutions.
Coding allows you much greater freedom to build in levels of control, and also levels
of randomization and even irrational processes that don’t always work but can lead to
exciting, unexpected results.
Using Processing, it doesn’t take too long playing with some code to generate truly evocative
images and visual experiences, gain some insight into how a program like Photoshop
works, and go way beyond any preprogrammed filters.
Aesthetics + Computation
Aesthetics + Computation is the name of the now famous research group at MIT’s Media
Lab, where Casey Reas and Ben Fry, the creators of the Processing language, worked as
grad students under John Maeda. However, interest in aesthetics and computation goes
back way before 1996, when Maeda began teaching at MIT.
If we’re a bit flexible in how we translate the term “computation,” we can go really way
back—as far back, in fact, to when people first learned to count and draw (ironically, skills
that some would argue are in sharp decline today because of computers). The term computation,
according to www.dictionary.com, means “the procedure of calculating; determining
something by mathematical or logical methods.” If you take the term mathematical
out of the definition (already I can feel some readers’ comfort levels increasing), the definition
could pretty much account for most human decisions. For example, I have a faculty
meeting coming up. Therefore, I need to remember to bring my sketchpad to the meeting
to be able to draw annoying caricatures of my colleagues so that I don’t fall asleep. See, a
perfect example of aesthetics + computation.
Serious interest in aesthetics + computation as an integrated activity is evident in all cultures
and is manifest in many of the objects, structures, and technologies of the times in
which they were created. Regardless of whether the technology is an engraving stick, a
loom, a plow, or a supercomputer, the impulse to work and play in an integrated left-/
right-brain way is universally evident, and the technical innovations of the day most often
coincide with parallel developments in aesthetics. Early astrological and calendar systems,
across many cultures, combined observed empirical data with richly expressive, mythological
narratives as a way of interpreting and ultimately preserving and disseminating the
data. Weavings, textiles, engravings, mandalas, and graphs from cultures around the world
employ complex algorithmic patterns based upon mathematical principles, yet most often
are not developed by mathematicians (see Figures 1-1 through 1-4). Rather, these developments
seem to reflect a universal human impulse to integrate right-brain and left-brain
activities, combining qualitative notions of aesthetic beauty with analytical systems for
structuring visual data.
CODE ART
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