‘Processing is a means, not an end’
Recap of Processing Community Day NL Utrecht
The quote “Processing is a means, not an end”, by Processing co-founder Ben Fry, nicely summarises the intentions of the PCD 2019 NL initiative. Rather than focussing on Processing as software, the event sheds light on the people and ideas connecting the creative coding community.
On January 26, CCU (Creative Coding Utrecht) began the new year celebrating creative coding representing the community and its diversity of practices. Part of the international Processing Community Day (PCD) initiative, CCU brings together the local Utrecht community with a full programme of workshops and participatory activities. With Sensor Lab transformed into an interdisciplinary playground, PCD has become an opportunity to meet and share ideas and to learn from the diversity of this vibrant community of makers.
Between talks and workshops, performance and code jams, CCU presents and celebrates creative coding as a space for exchange and dialogue between digital and non-digital practices, disciplines and perspectives. Proposing a definition of creative coding in terms of non-definition, the focus on PCD has become a starting point for engagement in conversation addressing both technology and society. Bringing together the Utrecht coding community, CCU establishes a fundament for the public to become inspired by diverse approaches to digital tools.
CCU co-founders Carolien Teunisse & Fabian van Sluijs opened the day by presenting the plans for 2019. Artist Saskia Freeke spoke about her experience as a speaker at the 2019 Processing Community Day Los Angeles. Starting from her personal experience as an artist, Saskia offers an overview of possible interventions in issues surrounding society by means of the application of Processing and open source development in general. The project by Claire Kearney-Volpe and Luis Morales-Navarro, for example, aims to make available hard- and software to blind people who are interested in learning how to code. Or consider George Boateng, who investigates how to develop coding practices for continents like Africa, where people mainly use smartphones instead of laptops. Or DIY Girls, who are seeking to involve girls in coding through educational tools and mentoring strategies.
Illustrating how Processing Foundation Fellowships, the artist shows how to explore an open source software tool such as Processing in terms of inclusion and dialogue. In this sense, Saskia also emphasises how making mistakes and sharing experiences is at the core of this growing community. This attitude suggests an open and respectful approach to learn from others and to play with diversity in order to understand our changing society. Following this international overview of the practical and various explorations of Processing, Netherlands-based makers presented the creative elements of their digital practices.
The engineer Luis Ferreira opened the panel illustrating how to capture lights to paint on a digital canvas. The artist Veerle Pennock, from the Acid Solder Club Utrecht, described through her artistic experiments the potential of pushing the boundaries of different fields with an explorative approach to soldering and DIY electronics. From a different perspective, Jakub Valtar plays with the rules of digital programmes, diving into internal code and sharing practical tips on the way. He revealed to us how to hunt visual glitches into the deep root of the P3D renderer. Aaron Oostdijk, teacher at University of the Arts Utrecht Games & Interaction, showcased diverse students’ works, thereby illustrating the diverse response to creative coding practice. Between playfulness and efficiency, the personal response of students to digital tools is both a challenge and a stimulation to those who are exploring the potential of coding practices in arts and education.
Closing the morning talks session with F#READY gave an overview of “Bare Metal Size Coding” and how to be creative with its interesting inherent limitations. Martin Kloos illustrated the combination of Processing and knitting. Martin plays with the mistakes of his experiments to illustrate the surprising outcomes of making a code visible through knitting as well as the limits and potential of this material difference.
After a networking lunch to share together thoughts and first impressions, the afternoon starts with two participatory and interactive workshops. Inventor and coder Rick Companje teaches how to write your own code to materialise your unique shape with the Ultimaker 3D printer, while Edwin Jakobs and Gabor Kerekes give an introduction to the new set of tools of the OPENRNDR framework. Written in the Kotlin programming language, this practical introduction plays around lingual features to create generative posters on the fly.
Celebrating this interdisciplinary encounter of styles and practices, the day closes with a live performance and music. The choreographer Joana Chicau proposes an assemblage of visual and graphic experiments on the screen using hybrid code. Combining scripts of code and physical movements, ‘A WebPage in Three Acts’ deconstructs web pages to suggest a new interaction between bodies and interfaces, choreography and programming.
At the end, Timo Hoogland invited coders, visual artists and musicians to close the day with a live coding session playing electronic sounds and surprising visual effects on the fly. Closing the first event of the year with live and unexpected combinations of electronic music and visual tricks, CCU makes suggestions on how to consider the potential of encountering diverse disciplines via the use of creative coding tools.
From visual art to music, from design to social experiments, CCU stimulates a conversation on technology in terms of playful exploration rather than mere functionality. Creating a sharing ground for experts and non-experts alike, CCU celebrates the diversity at the core of this participative community. Celebrates it as an occasion and opportunity to learn something new, together. As photographer Benjamin Hull said: ‘I really don’t know what I’m experiencing here. I mean, I could have gone home hours ago, enough work to do — but this is so cool so I just stayed!’. Playing with the differences of disciplines and perspectives, CCU suggests a more curious and pro-active dialogue to experiment with technology at the occasion of encountering others, and discovering with the diversity of our changing society.
LINKS
- https://creativecoding.community
- CCU: https://www.creativecodingutrecht.nl
- Carolien Teunisse (DEFRAME Collective): https://www.deframe.nl/about/carolien-teunisse/
- Sabrina Verhage: http://sabrinaverhage.com
- Los Angeles Processing Community Day 2019: https://day.processing.org
- Processing Foundation Fellowships: https://processingfoundation.org/fellowships
- Saskia Freeke: http://sasj.nl
- Luis Ferreira: https://www.instagram.com/schuur.creations/
- Veerle Pennock: https://www.veerlepennock.nl
- Acid Solder Club: https://www.facebook.com/acidsolderclub
- Jakub Valtar: https://www.jakubvaltar.com
- Aaron Oostdijk: https://www.hku.nl/Home.htm
- F#READY: https://demozoo.org/sceners/35273/
- Martin Kloos: https://www.instagram.com/hamsterwoede/
- Rick Companje: http://www.companje.nl
- OPENRNDR: https://openrndr.org
- Joana Chicau: https://jobcb.github.io
- Timo Hoogland: https://www.timohoogland.com
- Benjamin Hull: https://www.benjaminhullphotography.com
