Art, UX, Computer Science (happy campers)

Happy Indeed!

Feeling very pleased, and perhaps amazed, with their luck at finding easy parking in Little Italy, many of the San Diego UX Speakeasy crowd at first walked right past the entrance to Sosolimited, the host for this month's amazing blend of art, design and computer science. Snugly fit into a funky building that looked non descript on the outside but was full of interesting odds and ends on the inside, 70 or so of us gathered for our monthly meeting of food, beverage, and socializing. Oh, and for a really cool presentation.

I was stumbling around in a corner doing something or other when Justin Manor, our host, explained the origin of the company name, but I believe it had something to do with he and his friends originally being in a band. or DJs perhaps? Something musical anyway. Many years later, the expanded team has morphed into working with clients such as The Denver Public Library, the Museum of Science in Raleigh North Carolina, the Center For Strategic and International Studies (in DC) and oh, I almost forgot, the 2012 London Olympics.

The projects Justin showed us snippets of were eclectic and it's hard to succinctly say what they all had in common. Lots of data, interactivity, live processing, .... urg it's hard to describe (fortunately it is all on their web page in lovely visual form). There was genetic patterning and sequencing in there, patterns of natures that flowed and swooped, streaming bits that looked like something out of The Matrix, physical animations of various natural processes, linguistic analysis -

wait. When Justin showed us linguistic analysis of political speeches and pronouncements from the US and UK the crowd got a good laugh while being educated. We watched a clip from the US presidential debates, and various political speeches from both countries. Streamed live at the time, various word clouds formed and rearranged as the politicians spoke, zeroing in on buzzwards, or egotistical references to themselves and a variety of other interesting things. There was one politician who said almost nothing intelligible in a very long winded way and it was quite interesting to see the analytical structures forming around his blathering. So if you sometimes think that some of these guys aren't saying anything, now you could know for a fact when that was the case.

I would love to see some live analysis of the current morass going on in Washington DC over the government shutdown.

You see, it's pretty serious stuff as well as fun - if you think about all the ways that live data analysis, pattern identification and matching in nature, micro to macro, can help us learn new things and understand the world around us. It's research, it's user experience, it's art, it's science. It's dynamic and it's cooooooooooooool!

For those of you who want to get your hands a dirty you know what is equally cool? (Aside from the fact that Justin talked about code and algorithms on more than one occasion.) Sosolimited has put an open source project on GitHub that you can use to do some things with YouTube videos. Again I refer you to their web page for the full scoop.

I realize this has been a somewhat sedate post about a UX Speakeasy meetup compared to some of those in the past. Perhaps it was the contentment I felt with the presence of vegetarian spring rolls. Yummy and healthy. Or a general friendly blurring and purring of memories from the evening. I would be remiss however, if I did not mention one small oddity. The bathroom. I didn't manage to locate it myself, but I was told by several people that to get there one had to go outside (out of doors), take a left, go left again, then left again, up a ramp, perhaps another left I'm not sure, and then one would find the Facilities. These directions involve some interaction with a loading dock (?), and a parking lot (?).

I didn't think to ask the building owner, a very nice guy named Marc Hedges about the Facilities Location. I'm sure he would have had an interesting explanation.

UX Design, Classic Art and Grounded Theory

Lo and Behold: Art meets User Experience Design meets Grounded Theory. At a local brewery no less.

This month's meeting of the UX (User Experience) Speakeasy group featured Julie Morgan from Digitaria sharing a few design case studies using a tool called Optimal Workshop. Standing in front of a large tank, presumably full to the brim with fermenting beer, Julie enthusiastically popped up images of artwork ranging from Van Gogh to Gustav Klimt to Jasper Johns, with a Roman arch tossed in for good measure.

Each of these pieces of art was an analogy to something in the user design research process. A Klimt piece related to music, which related to patterns and the search for harmony in web design. An early version of Van Gogh's Potato Eaters was tied to UX sketching and a later version to the final online design. There was something about a Roman arch in there when discussing Information Architecture. I didn't catch everything she said about it, but now I'm thinking about how one little center stone at the top holds the whole thing up for centuries. Brilliant. It also connects two sides, as in the desire to bridge the gap between users and designers - one of Julie's main points last night.

You see, that is what made the classical art analogies so interesting - they got you thinking in new ways. Looking for connections and inspiration from old to new.

Such as when Grounded Theory popped into my head. As Julie was explaining the different ways a technique called Card Sorting works, and how it can be done with Open or Closed categories, I knew I had heard this before. In Grounded Theory (a well established form of Qualitative Research methodology dating from the 1960s) you can observe people in their natural setting and see what patterns emerge, what categories or activities appear, and eventually develop a behavioral hypothesis from it. This would be a purist form of Grounded Theory. Very much like a UX Designer providing users a stack of cards with labels on them about something they care about, and watching what happens as they discuss them and sort them into categories of their choosing.

Alternatively,with Closed category Card Sorting you can test a user experience hypothesis about something (e.g. "they think this way about web design XYZ...and will behave this way...") using predetermined categories. Use the same cards as in the Open approach, and watch what happens as the users try to put the cards in your categories. Maybe all will go as predicted. Maybe it won't and they push back in some way. Oops, hypothesis not true, users hate this design. Very much like going into a Grounded Theory study with a hypothesis about user behavior, seeing what happens and adjusting codes, taxonomies and theories accordingly.

Inspiration takes place in all phases of these monthly meetings. Somehow, after the formal presentation, while discussing the relationship between art, design and how the commercial world works, I found myself in a deep and meaningful conversation about how to outwit Wireless providers (yes, those organizations that provide service for your mobile phone). There is art and skill to legally outsmarting those guys. Perhaps this reflects the desire to move from Edvard Munch's "The Scream" towards Monet's "The Magpie".

Sketch ... Everything.

Why would you want to sketch? Why professionally would you want to sketch? Continuing the conversation started in my last post about the goings on at the San Diego Sketchcamp, the next thing on the docket after "yes I am perfectly capable of sketching" is of course: WHY?

There are so many reasons to sketch. One of the most fascinating experiences of the day-long workshop was listening to one speaker after another illustrate how they use sketching in their work - and why you should too. Especially if you are a User Experience (UX) professional, which most of the audience was.

Sketching is a great way to capture ideas on the fly and problem-solve together in a meeting with peers or a client. You can capture much more information via pictures than with text. Sure it takes practice, but so does note taking or any other skill. But the end result is a memorable visual description of the conversation as it evolved. Not to mention the fact that the faster you write the worse your handwriting gets, and if you are like many people in this digital age (self included) your handwriting is fairly illegible to start with. Even being familiar with your own handwriting, you may find yourself scratching your head later trying to figure out what on earth those words are. I know I do. Whereas with a zippy picture the meaning doesn't disappear just because some of your lines get sloppy. Remember - we aren't talking about creating "art", we are talking about capturing ideas, impressions, observations.

One speaker in particular blew many workshop attendees out of the water by literally walking and drawing the talk. Amber Lundy spent 45  minutes discussing why she sketches, how she came to sketching from a start in computing (she is a self-described nerd) and and how one can benefit from sketching on the job. She calls it resocializing the interface.

But here's the kicker. As she spoke, the colorful highlighters never left Amber's rapidly moving hand. As she spoke, Amber moved back and forth, along a room-length sheet of paper pinned to the wall, drawing what she was saying. So not only did you hear her talk via your ears, you watched her her talk with your eyes. Talk about an impressive display of multi-tasking.

"Anything you can say you can sketch" according to Amber. Hard to argue with that when you are watching it unfold before you. At the end of her talk she went back and added boxes and additional arrows to show the flow of her talk even more clearly. Imagine sitting in a room with peers or clients and at the end of an intense and productive meeting you find yourself in front of a detailed visual representation of everywhere the conversation went, the points covered and the conclusions you mutually reached. In living color. Wow.

Perhaps anticipating the response ("I can't do THAT!"), Amber made a point of saying that she didn't take a bunch of classes to learn how to sketch so fluidly in front of a group. She said she practiced. And practiced. And practiced. She forced herself to sketch all sorts of things. For example, Amber advocates sketching meetings, not only as good practice, but because you will pay better attention. Remember some deadly dull meeting you have been in when all you could think of was how much you desperately wanted a roving espresso cart to appear in front of you. Then think about how entertaining and productive it could have been to instead have sketched the players in the room and what they were saying. Fun, no? Lasts longer than a latte too.

Sketch things you might not think of scheduling just to stretch yourself - rise to the challenge and think about things when you have time to build the habit. Why? These are the people and objects you interact with on a daily basis, which can come in handy later when you are in a fast paced situation and don't have time to ponder what something should look like. Like what? Sketch your schedule. Instead of a linear To-Do list, how would you lay out your day visually? As a die-hard list maker and organizer, I'm having serious fun pondering that one.

Here is the best (bizarre?) suggestion Amber had -sketch your grocery list.

Be careful however. Perhaps the first few times you should go to the store with both a sketched list and a traditional list. Until you learn what your own sketches mean.

Otherwise you might come home with ... things. Really odd things.

What Do You Mean "I Can't Draw"?

You don't have to "be able to draw", that's the joy of it. It's about sketching. Whether or not you think sketching == drawing doesn't matter. Don't get hung up on the words. Hey, what happened to the joy that almost all of us had as kids when someone tossed a pen, pencil, marker, crayon, chalk, white board marker our way? When did it go from "YES!!!" to "I can't do that".

Close to 100 people attended the first San Diego Sketchcamp this past Saturday to learn more and put pen or pencil to paper. Some attendees were devoted doodlers, scribblers, designers, artists. Other attendees were initially rather timid. By the end of the day I'd dare say everyone was trying it out. That is the joy of a workshop: interactivity.

Eight different speakers, some running in parallel session, walked the talk by not only showing the audience how they approach sketching but challenging the audience to try it - right now! As one speaker pointed out:

 "no one is going to die if you make a bad sketch". 

The day's keynote speaker, Jeannel King, was the first of several speakers to point out the mysterious change that typically takes place as we grow up. We lose the exuberance and lack of fear, and won't even try because "I can't draw the way I think I should" or "I can't draw the way I would want to". As King pointed out however, nothing has changed from when we were kids in terms of ability. We just get all self-conscious.

Another theme of the day, initiated by King, was to shift your mindset to:  

"What I draw is Good Enough". 

Send your inner critic out for coffee.

I appreciated King's reference to Buddhism to illustrate this point.

There isn't just one Buddha, there are many Buddhas. Everyone has a Buddha inside. Just as everyone is a Buddha so is everyone a stick figure strategist. We are just at different places along the path.

Photography Unites the Inner Artiste and Logician

I have the feeling that I am mentally rehashing a conversation that has been had for millenia in one form or another and for around 100 years in photography circles.

It concerns the latest step forward in technological capability. I read an article* recently about advances that permit such things as taking a picture and only deciding later where to place the focus or range of exposure. Simply put, the idea is that enormous amounts of digital data are captured and stored, including data about variables not previously captured such as angle and direction of light falling on an object all across the visual field. Later, you process the picture, picking and choosing which data to emphasize or remove entirely.

The implication is that, like cropping before it, this post-processing allows you to make an aesthetically pleasing picture out of a poorly composed snapshot. My inner artiste goes "HARUMPH".

Distracting the artiste momentarily with a new set of wallpaper choices, my inner logician takes the opportunity to jump in: "Hold on there...There are uses for this sort of approach, because not all photography is planned and carefully executed art."

For example, if, as the article states, you are a journalist and don't have time to sit around positioning everything, or the action is going by in a split second and you want to capture it live, great. Get those shots of the street war and get the heck out of the line of fire as fast as possible. Don't worry about getting back to relative safety only to discover all your shots are blurred or overexposed beyond recognition.

Or, lets' say you are a scientist looking for something and you aren't quite sure what or where it is, but it is in there somewhere... What a wonderful opportunity to dig around with the image to see what is hiding in there. My inner artiste and inner logician agree on the wonderfulness of the opportunity.

A wonderful combination of hardware and software makes it all possible. Algorithms that enable manipulation of incredibly dense numbers of pixels, working in tandem with some pretty sophisticated hardware in the "smart" lenses. Lenses that don't weigh a ton and require giant tripods or manual stabilizers that might as well be tripods. Speaking of which, "lens" singular may soon be the case - no more swapping out of lenses all the time. I'd really like to see that change in my camera pack. It would leave far more room for other things in my backpack as I trudge up the side of that mountain. Things like the rocks I like to collect.

The tradeoff is that by necessity, there will be even more people out there who miss the opportunity to really look at what is in front of them before they take a shot. The opportunity to be in the moment with your camera by virtue of having to observe, contemplate, study, see what comes to your inner self before you take that shot. The less technology there is in the camera, the more you have to pay attention to what you are looking at if you want something that is more than just not chopping off your friend's head (although we now have technology to user-proof against head chopping. It's called facial tracking software). One of the nice things about photography technology that doesn't attempt to do it all for you is that you are more likely to engage with your subject. Hopefully. Accidental decapitation existed 50 years ago, so maybe my position doesn't hold water.

I lug my camera everywhere and I suppose I will always plot plan and study what I'm shooting no matter what nifty geeky technology they come up with. And I'm no Luddite - I carry a nice (somewhat heavy) digital camera and lenses around with me. And I sometimes play with Photoshop just to see what comes of it. Just as I used to play in the darkroom. I love a good abstraction as much as a "realistic" (as much as there can be said to be realism) portrait or landscape.

When I started writing this post, I was kind of unhappy with the idea that soon cameras will allow me to blur, blunder and mess up my photographs and escape the consequences of not paying proper attention.

However, now I have come to the conclusion that the more the better because I can set everything on Manual mode if I want, I can enlist my camera ever more to the cause of investigative science and I can take that shot of the interesting passersby as well.

*"Smarter Photography" by Gary Anthes, Communications of the ACM June 2012 Vol 55, No. 6 pp 16-18

Sculpting Code to Create and Retain the Art

I read in passing the comment "what if software maintenance was taught the way sculpture is taught". To my dismay nothing more was said in the article about how this might occur. I turned to my friends and colleagues and asked for memories on the pedagogy of teaching sculpture. One person responded "pedagogically? WTH?" which reminded me that not *all* of my acquaintances understand educator-speak. After rephrasing the question to let the confused know that what I wanted was recollections of teaching strategies in a sculpture class, the responses came pouring in. Unfortunately, most of them did not take this deep and meaningful question in the serious light I had in mind.

However, one person said something to this effect: 

"take a chunk of something and remove everything that doesn't look like a horse and you will have a horse".

That was enough to get me thinking about software development and maintenance in a new light. Perhaps a bit less deeply and meaningfully than originally intended. But one must work with what one has. Kind of like creating a sculpture.

Software maintenance a la sculpture would necessitate a top down approach. You have a body of code, thousands and thousands of lines of code (let's say we are working on the scale of Michelangelo's David as opposed to a Chinese tea cup). But in this case, years of helpful modifications have led to a few too many modules and unused and obscure Objects (reflecting my basic dislike of Java). Imagine David with an extra arm or long hair in a pony tail. Perhaps a pair of socks artfully turned down at the ankle. (I'm not going to photoshop this into reality but I invite you to do so and send it my way)

Removing the extra limb (unused modules) shouldn't be too hard - Delete Delete Delete. The primary tricky spot would be making sure that any dead end invocations were eliminated. We wouldn't want David to be left with an extra shoulder beckoning for that third arm to be added back on. The pony tail would be a bit trickier because we don't want to leave anyone with the aftereffects of a bad hair day, but the overall process would be the same.

Removing the socks (obscure Objects) is perhaps the biggest challenge. We don't want to render the feet unable to support the body, nor do we want to damage the elegance of David's stance. Hence, a careful examination of all the connections (direct, indirect) between Objects and identification of inheritance structures is just the beginning. Expert designers and coders with an eye for fine detail will need to be called in.

In the end: Voila! Beautiful, aesthetically pleasing code art of the highest quality. We may be on to something here.

Pondering Norman's Question About Programs As Art

In the most recent edition of ACM Inroads magazine, Victor Norman penned a column arguing that the creation of a computer program can be an artistic activity, and that a computer program can contain beauty*. The article ended with the open question, unaddressed:  

“Can a computer program itself be considered a piece of art?”

Curious, I did some research on definitions of “art” as a noun, across a variety of sources ranging from the mundane (dictionary.com and Wikipedia) to the erudite (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Wherever I looked, I found general agreement that art (the noun) is typically understood to apply to visual media. There was also general agreement that to be considered a work of art, an object should have unusual or highly significant aesthetic qualities. Beyond these points, there is (according to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) some disagreement based on era, culture and other factors.

How does a computer program fit in to these definitions if we stick to the two points of commonality: visual media and significant aesthetic qualities? Let's see. A computer program can be considered an object, albeit not one you can touch. Norman and others before him have explored the aesthetic qualities of code. A computer program does not fall into the category of traditional media, although in some cases it produces visual media when executed.

Execution and its attributes brings up an interesting point.  

When assessing the candidacy of a computer program for admission into the fold of “art”, does one evaluate the code itself, or the product of running the code? 

Most recent discussions of programming and beauty, including Norman’s article, study the code itself: how it was constructed. Why is the product of execution not considered as well? After all, 

the purpose of code is to be executed. Code has no reason for existence if it is not executed. 

Unless…one wants to claim that the lines of text are in and of themselves art. Art as a Noun.

All of which brings us back to those unusual or highly significant aesthetic qualities. Norman makes the parenthetical observation that “…we could find beauty in a computer program (a beauty perhaps only appreciable by skilled artisans of programming).” I’m not sure whether that caveat shoots his argument in the foot. In commonly accepted definitions of art, to what extent are the greater aesthetic qualities intended to be appreciable by a wide public audience?

Wikepedia notes that until the 17^th Century, the widely accepted definition of art was broader than today, encompassing not just what we now refer to as “fine art” but also including crafts and the sciences. If we revert to this expanded definition of art, a computer program (and the result of its execution) will qualify. I think.

            What do you think? Under what circumstances (if any) does a computer program qualify as a piece of art?

*ACM Inroads 2012 March Vol 3 No. 1 pp. 46-48

Computer Aided Composition & Hallucinations

The term "algorithmic composition" is loaded with baggage. Although the phrase pops up in our conversation fairly often, because of the loaded nature of the words, Alexis Kirke prefers "Computer Aided Composition" to describe the process he uses to compose music.

Although perfectly capable of coding, and having done so in the past, Alexis now prefers to work collaboratively with a professional programmer so that he can focus on the overall composition. "Programming is a creative act in itself" and it is all too easy to get sucked into it, he explains. Listening to Alexis describe how he is developing Insight, I couldn't help but think of a Vulcan Mind Meld. Alexis desires to "share the unsharable" - his consciousness, internal feelings, his Palinopsia hallucinations. (See the previous post for more on Alexis  and how Palinopsia inspired this particular body of work)

According to the current plan, if you are in the audience at the February 10th  performance you will see Alexis standing on stage behind a music stand holding an iPad. Perhaps he will be holding a pen.  A Macintosh laptop is within arm's reach. The programmer sits in the front row of seats, and there is a flute player somewhere on stage with his own computer monitor. Alexis sees you; he also sees lighting designed to trigger his hallucinations.

It is difficult to formulate words to describe what this application program will probably look like, but I'm going to give it a whirl. The iPad will show Alexis a camera image of what he is seeing at any moment, an "augmented reality". The software on the iPad will incorporate parameters that correspond to common elements of Alexis' hallucinations. As Alexis experiences hallucinations, he will activate afterimage functionality and trigger an afterimage on the iPad. (At this point, a poor video connection on our Skype call produced a well timed "trail" as Alexis moved his hand across my line of sight). When this happens he is presented with visual options, filters and parameters. These are produced in partial response to an iterative feedback loop between himself and the programmer: he selects, via multi-touch, tapping, double tapping, 3 fingered presses, which parameters are appropriate and what filters to apply. For example, he can adjust the iPad screen brightness to correspond to his perception of brightness. He can likewise adjust screen size, the specific pattern of an afterimage, the rate of visual decay, single or multiple images, random patterns, and many other aspects of the visual echo. Alexis is simultaneously saying "yes, that" "no, not that" to presented options, and creating from scratch on the fly what he sees. He has to make the iPad "see" what he sees.

All this is happening extremely rapidly as his hallucinations develop, exist, and are replaced (sometimes in milliseconds) with the next hallucination. And we must not forget that this is not a completely free form activity - there will be at least 3 sections to the composition. Each section of the piece has different parameters. Alexis will reach over to the laptop to change sections. All of the visuals are handled by the iPad. When a hallucination is accurate, it is packaged up and sent wirelessly to the laptop, where the music resides. One reason for this division of labor is that the visual software is processor intensive. Memory optimization has been critical, and Alexis brought in someone who focused exclusively on iPad memory optimization.

Somehow, it all gets put together and coordinated: visual hallucinations from the iPad, musical scores from the laptop, contribution from a live flute player watching the iPad output.

You, sitting in the audience would see Alexis' hallucinations projected on a large screen, and hear his musical score to go along with it. All in 12 minutes.

The performance of Insight, at the Peninsula Arts Contemporary Music Festival, is going to be filmed. Let's hope it becomes available online!

Computing...Music...Palinopsia

What would you do if, under the right circumstances, you saw hallucinations (no drugs involved)? If your name was Alexis Kirke you would take your two PhDs (one in arts, one in technology) and create a professional demonstration to share with the public.

I had no idea what to expect when, prior to our conversation, I read about Alexis and learned we were going to talk about his upcoming performance that would share live visual hallucinations. Who is this guy, I wondered?

Alexis Kirke is a member of Plymouth University's (UK) Interdisciplinary Centre for Computer Music Research, and Composer in Residence at the Plymouth Marine Institute. As part of his latter role, he has composed a score for a performance of "artificially intelligent whales" interacting with a saxophone. Impossible to describe; you just have to go here and expose yourself to it. Then there are other performances with titles such as: "Phrased and Confused" and "Drum Abuse". What next?

Afterimages. Ever look straight at a lightbulb and then been half blinded with the image of the bulb well after you stop looking at it? That is an afterimage. Afterimages come in two types, positive and negative. Positive afterimages are the same color as the original image and thought (according to my brief research) to have a neurological origin. An often cited example of positive afterimages are the "trails" associated with use of LSD. Conversely, negative afterimages invert the colors and are thought  to have an optical/retinal origin.

Alexis has Palinopsia, a neurological condition that produces (most often positive) afterimages. What this means to Alexis is that when he is extremely tired, stressed, or in just the right lighting conditions, he will start to see afterimages. No drugs involved. He describes it as unnerving sometimes, but, he stresses, unlike schizophrenia there is never any question about what is real and what is a hallucination.

Most people with Palinopsia presumably find ways to work with and around the condition and there are resources out there to help such as The Palinopsia Foundation. Alexis, on the other hand, is going beyond co-existence. His first PhD was in the area of theoretical multi-robot systems and he spent time interacting with neuroscience research groups. After earning his degree, he worked in the fields of finance, and speech and sound recognition. Following a calling to move deeper into music, he then completed a second PhD in Computing Music and became a composer.

Composers work is performed; artists often take their inspiration from their own experiences. As I spoke to Alexis about the lead up to the creation of Insight, which will premier February 10 of this year, it no longer seemed bizarre to create a composition that uses computers to enable the sharing of visual hallucinations.

In the next post, I'll explain more about how it all works. Don't stray too far...

Processing: Data Visualization and More

Today's meeting of the Processing workshop was as stimulating as yesterday's (see the post from yesterday). As before, the day was a blend of interactive instruction about Processing and hand's on time to code with the system. However, we went deeper - one of today's topics was data visualization using Processing. Check out these examples of linguistic poetry visualization by Ira Greenberg.

Here is an absolutely fascinating data visualization of Eurozone debt. Although I don't know if this is written in Processing or not,  I have learned enough these past two days to tell you it would be fairly straightforward to do so.

Data visualization brings together the computer science and the generative art solidly. It isn't just about making pretty pictures. In order to create meaning and relevance in your visualization you need to manipulate, perhaps transform, your data. Depending upon the application, this could mean pulling in calculus, trigonometry, geometry, physics, and chemistry. It could mean creating well thought out OOP code, efficient threading and algorithmic selections, array manipulation, random number generation. Another one of the workshop leaders, Deepak Kumar, showed us a class assignment where students must use an array of Objects to create a row of streetlamps (any design they want) that randomly turn on and off.

We experimented with creating code that behaves like those art boards where you paint with water: as you draw lines/shapes with your mouse they fade behind you at whatever rate you dictate.

Web interfaces, network communication, digital audio generation. One of our workshop participants expressed an interest yesterday in working with sound in Processing - today we were listening to her computer broadcasting music from across the conference room.

If you are interested in using Processing in your classroom, the workshop leaders (Deepak Kumar, Dianna Xu, Ira Greenberg) would be happy to talk with you.

This little guy is expressing his excitement: 

     

(click on him and then be patient for a moment or two)

Computer Science via Generative Art and Vice Versa

Reporting this evening from Dallas (Texas) where I am attending a workshop about the Processing system, a unique way to learn programming concepts using generative art. Within 10 minutes of starting to use Processing, I was sucked completely into coding, and was producing animated abstractions. This was my first program  (a lot more interesting than any Hello World):

About 12 of us were sitting around the conference table and we were all heads down, heads up (to look at the overhead display where one of the presenters was explaining various features), heads down, heads up, type type type. College and University faculty, high school teachers, computer scientists, digital designers. Type, type type.

Before I knew it we were not only coding in Java (a language I generally dislike with a passion) but trying to figure out how to make loops, swoops, and geometric patterns bounce around the screen. And bounce they did - or grow, shrink, grow-shrink-grow-shrink. Change colors, size, shapes, speed up, slow down, fade in, out, turn corners, move around smooth rollercoaster-like curves...the only boundary was our imagination. When was the last time your first day of class was that productive and absorbing?

And this is no toy system.  Processing has some unique attributes. Not only does the system use a real language (Java), it is accessible (such an easy interface), it is powerful and it is fun. It is also open source, contains excellent online help, and there is an exhibition space for uploading your creations along with their code. As open source, you can download other people's creations and code as well.

Designed originally by people affiliated with the MIT Media Lab as a language for artists to explore coding as a medium, it is now becoming well known in the computer science education community. One of our workshop leaders, Ira Greenberg, is a painter by training; he downloaded an early version of Processing around 2001 and not long after wrote a book (the first ever I believe) "Processing - Creative Coding and Computational Art". Fast forward: Now Ira has a dual appointment in Computer Science and Engineering and in the Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University.

What you can't see from these pictures I created (before lunch) is that they are dynamic. Both pictures, especially the one on the right, were moving under the direction of my code. Now yes, I have a background in programming and teaching Java, but I have no particular expertise in graphics. And I really do despise Java. Such a pain ...Usually. Not today.

More to the point, the two creations of mine included here are far less sophisticated than what others in our group were creating; one participant, a public high school teacher, created a brilliant beautiful demo on recursion this afternoon. Someone else created what looked like an ever expanding universe of pulsating multi-shaped colored particles.

There were a lot of fried brains by the end of the day because people barely looked up - most were glued to their laptops straight through lunch. By the end of the day it clear that we were well on our way into sophisticated concepts  in science, math and computing. It just seemed to ... happen. I can't wait for tomorrow.