i was wrong about code.
how creating art with code has been a lesson in overcoming resistance.
hello! happy wednesday + welcome back to imprints. have you subscribed yet? yes? epic, thank you. 🖤
“i’d rather draw a circle than write a circle.”
these are my own infamous words, uttered countless times during my first ~13 years as an artist and designer. this was often said as a way to defend my choice not to learn to code for my day-to-day design work. seeded deep in my subconscious i knew this was just a sad excuse to avoid delving into something that ultimately intimidated (and still does intimidate) me.
code. i was resisting code. 🤦
how’d i end up bridging that unseen and seemingly insurmountable gap?
i found generative art.
Generative art refers to any art practice where the artist creates a process, such as a set of natural language rules, a computer program, a machine, or other procedural invention, which is then set into motion with some degree of autonomy contributing to or resulting in a completed work of art. — Philip Galanter
what had been an artistic blind spot for me has become a gateway where previously no code learning could hold my attention.
any formal design education i’ve completed has included basic html + css courses, each with enough theory to get me over the hump of conceptual understanding with regard to how the internet is made manifest. any deeper learning i’ve been introduced to was self sought though, in order to create a better relationship with my developer and engineer counterparts. after all, knowing 1) how communicate with the people coding your visual designs and 2) understanding the constraints they may be up against in building them, are key to product design success.
nowhere in my previous art history lessons or graphic design education was generative art noted. at least not in a way that i recognized as relevant to me. okay actually, a text book most assuredly talked about it and i was too stressed out about midterms, my then girlfriend and/or my next critique session to take notice. 🫠
from time to time i’d find myself working with someone who identified as a ‘creative coder’ or a ‘creative technologist’ and would have my interest piqued when looking through their portfolios to find code based, motion design outputs or prototypes of data model visualizations. perhaps it was then that i started to have a notion of where i would be personally headed creatively? i often shrugged off any curiousity by stating that path was too hard, too cumbersome, too much of a divergence from my design focus.
it wasn’t until i dug into nfts that i was fully introduced to generative art and its algorithmic counterpart. when i say introduced, let me be clear that it was more of a face-on-fire-brain-melting-with-excitement type of introduction as i started to grok the possibilities i was seeing pour out of artists via artblocks and fxhash. it was like my favorite mid-century, minimalist, modern artists were making sweet, sweet love to modern technology. i wanted in on it.
i wanted to code a circle, damnit.
so i did. eventually. it took me about a year to get over myself, my resistance, my fear and finally try, but i did it. and then i did it again. how?
with these resources…
the coding train p5js (+more!) tutorials
p5js.org + the p5js web editor
learning processing by daniel shiffman
getting started with p5js by lauren mccarthy, casey reas, and ben fry
genuary.art for ongoing, annual prompt inspiration
bit by bit i’ve been stretching my brain to learn how to code my art on and off for about 6 months now. i’ve yet to fully complete the genuary prompts for this year, but am well on my way. once i do i’ll make an imprints post with all of them in one place, it only seems fitting considering the imprints visual was born of these early works.
my ultimate goal would be to create a long form algorithm based project that i could host on my own site, complete with levers for potential collectors to co-create their own output (think qql by tyler hobbs x dandelion wist mané). in the nearer term i’m excited to create my first long form project and release it on fxhash, i’d say that’s my biggest goal artistically of the year. if i can do it more than once, say with a curated set of outputs on the next one, that’d be a huge personal success.
as i work up to those goals, i’ve started releasing some of my favorite one off outputs thus far as nfts on the tezos blockchain. you can find the piece featured in the opening of this article as an edition on objkt.com — what goes up. is based on the genuary prompt from day 16, reflection of a reflection. in creating it i learned the arc function and narrowed in on the color palette i’ve been exploring throughout this genuary set.
i can feel the inklings of my first long form project percolating, but nothing concrete has emerged yet. i’ll be sure to keep you posted as i work through it. in the meantime, check out those resources above and make a circle of your own. you never know what code may unlock for you. resistance is futile after all.
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as always, thank you for being here. if you haven’t subscribed, please do, especially ahead of next week where i’ll be announcing a giveaway for a very special piece of literary work by a talented friend. 👀
see you wednesday!
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🎹 btw, my guilty pleasure on repeat song of the week has been lovestruck by geowulf.
love it 😍