#SupportP5 Artist: Cy X
#SupportP5 campaign was launched on #GivingTuesday 2019 as an effort to raise funding for software development, accessibility initiatives, educational programming, and the annual fellowship program. This campaign is the most ambitious campaign to date. The artists featured in the #SupportP5 campaign series have generously donated their artwork. We hope you take time to learn more about them, their practice, and consider contributing to keep our work going into 2020 and beyond! To support Cy’s work and contribute to the #SupportP5 campaign, click here.
In their most recent work, Black Projection Project (2019), they use the concept of projection as a “portal mapping device,” with nodes that enable a user to explore different paths that include: Future, Now, Past, Surveillance, Master, Field, Spirituals, Nature, Science, Magic, Invasion, Climate Change, and Sun. The work is tactile, sculptural, and interactive. A black table with a geometric pattern allows a user to hover a magnetic orb above the various nodes, producing images and text related to that particular node. The magic lies within the user and their ability to connect the array of sensations, perhaps projecting their own hopes and fears to produce a dialogue or correspondence. Cy’s piece is also accompanied by a zine — you can click here to view — which provides text related to each node. For instance, in “Node 7: Spirituals,” Cy includes an excerpt from scholar Jackie Wang’s 2018 book Carceral Capitalism, “Our bodies are not closed loops. We hold each other and keep each other in time by marching, singing, embracing, breathing.” Each node within the zine is not only a provocation, but a way into the node itself.
Creative coding is a type of portal that has enabled Cy to expand, create, and converge analog and digital practices in order to create magic. The physical sensations are an important consideration in their work. Creative code enables an array of possibilities to communicate complex ideas and rituals related to spirituality and magic.
Inspired by tech zines such as BubbleSort Zines and the many shown at Tiny Tech Zines fair, they channeled the power of print into creative coding. They often use images in their design work that resemble portals or an entryway as well as an invitation. For the #SupportP5 campaign, Cy created the Coding Train zine as a way to reflect on some of the most popular coding challenges from The Coding Train such as the Maurer Rose.
In the midst of completing their Master’s at New York University in the Interactive Telecommunications Program, they found time to design a wonderful zine for the #SupportP5 campaign. When asked to express what the Processing and p5.js community has meant to them, they said:
As an artist who is new to coding, open-source software like p5.js has given me the opportunity to push my creative practice in ways that were previously unimaginable. When I first became interested in technology and coding, I struggled in translating the creative ideas in my head to something that can live on the screen. But now that has changed. I’ve always been interested in working with a plethora of mediums and modes of creating, but learning software has only expanded the stories I want to tell, the things I want to create, and the ways I can go about creating.
As Casey Reas and Ben Fry have stated, the core aspects of Processing are environment, language, and community; within this trifecta, the creation of a language specifically for artists is as necessary now as it was at Processing’s inception almost 19 years ago. Cy is an extraordinary contributor to the community, having taken on creative coding as a way to make magic. The Processing Foundation is fortunate to have their work as a part of this campaign, and we are grateful for their continued work within the community as well as with The Coding Train.
