The Art of Creative Coding and Resources to Get Started

Creative coding? Never heard of it!

Written By Helena Xu

Through art, we are able to express ourselves in our utmost forms, where our ideas and emotions mingle to produce a final product in which others are able to interpret for themselves. Now what happens when our art pieces are created through a new form of medium? A medium that combines both technology and programming in our masterpieces. This is where creative coding comes in, with its unfamiliar yet increasingly versatile applications in our art today.

As for the specifics of creative coding, the name encompasses exactly its purpose and use. Instead of coding for practicality such as creating a functional software, the technology of coding is rather manipulated in order to create pieces that are visually or audibly stimulatory to viewers and serve to express the creator. Creative coding varies greatly and can include aspects such as design, entertainment, interactive installations, mapping projections, and sound art. Although many have used programming and different forms of technology in creations of art and design, the term creative coding was only formally established around the 1950s in which different groups and organizations started using creative coding in their artistic pieces and creation of demos. To this day, the definition of creative coding and its implemented fields continue to expand as the years go by and new technologies are introduced.

I want to learn more! How do I get started?

If you are a beginner in the fields of creative coding and wish to kickstart your career, don’t panic at the broad world that you will surely discover. The World Of Devs can certainly help you with this new chapter in your education and provide you with opportunities and advice! To start, a few common learning tools, courses, and softwares that will prove to be useful include:

Quartz Composer- a node-based programming language that is only compatible with macOS, for producing, processing, and rendering graphical data. Quartz Composer works through technologies such as JavaScript to form an API, as well as by connecting 3 different types of patches (consumers, processors, and external input) that work towards executing and producing results.

Cinder- an open sourced programming library that focuses on visual and aesthetic aspects that includes different domains such as graphics and computational geometry. Cinder uses C ++ programming language and is a cross-platform that is generally used in a non-browser environment which is suitable for heavier projects such as animations. There are also many useful books and guides that students can purchase or find online in order to help their transition into learning and experimenting with Cinder.

Vvvv- first released in 1998, Vvvv is a hybrid visual and textual programming environment that is specialized in handling larger media environments and projects that include aspects such as physical interfaces and real-time motion graphics. Vvvv operates on a Windows system and also requires DirectX in order to rapidly execute prototypes and live code.

TouchDesigner- developed by Derivative, TouchDesigner is a procedural node based visual programming language that develops real time and interactive multimedia content to cover major areas such as 2D and 3D production. Features of TouchDesigner include workflow and scalable architecture, video mapping, multi-display support, and TouchDesigner also uses both Windows and macOS operating systems.

EdX Creative Coding- The EdX NYUx institution offers a course of creative coding in which students learn to design and create different types of media through programming and interactive user experiences. In this course, students can apply their concepts in a variety of ways such as animation and UI designing. Ideal students should have a fair amount of previous experience as this course requires a high degree of computer literacy and needs skills in programs such as Javascript and Python.

Apart from the different resources and tools mentioned above, you may also be able to find creative coding or design programming courses at your local university and college! Although the program may not be a perfect fit, starting off with the basics is always a good path to take before you start specializing in a specific area within creative coding. We at The World Of Devs hope that you have found this article to be informative and helpful within your journey towards becoming a creative coder!