CODEWORDS
Midsem Break
I took some time to go through the entire reading to grasp the wider concepts that Lanham presented, and what he generally thought was next for text. Here are some notes I took, including some quotes (highlighted are concepts that I felt I could draw ideas from):
More Prototypes
PSEUDOCODE
START
SET spiralSize = 0
INPUT spiral sentence
IF user presses "in" THEN
INCREMENT spiralSize
IF spiralSize > 800 THEN
stop INCREMENT
PRINT "Press "out" to exhale"
IF user presses "out" THEN
DECREMENT spiralSize
IF spiralSize < 500 THEN
shatter spiral
IF spiralSize = 0 THEN
INPUT new spiral sentence
ENDIF
LOOP
PSEUDOCODE
START
INPUT textScreen
SET screenSize
FOR every second
INCREMENT screenSize
IF screenSize/2 > window Width
slide down off screen
ENDIF
INPUT new textScreen
LOOP
PSEUDOCODE
START
INPUT Word String
SET WordSize
WHILE mouseIsMoving
BUMP WordSize of random Word
ENDWHILE
PSEUDOCODE
START
IF mouseX > windowWidth/2 THEN
right half slides left
ELSE IF mouseX < windowWidth/2 THEN
left half slides right
ENDIF
IF mouseIsPressed THEN
INPUT new sentences
ENDIF
Zach Lieberman
I found Zach Lieberman through WeTransfer, funnily enough. His Colorpush collaboration with them was an incredible example of interactive code, and really gorgeous to watch. I loved the concept of pushing and mixing colours with your face and body, getting physically involved in digital creation.
Zach Lieberman is an American new media artist, programmer, designer and educator. He helped to create the School for Poetic Computation, and continues to label his practice as poetic computation. This is a wonderfully resonant way to describe what I feel I’m learning in this studio. Watching his AIGA talk about Poetic Computation introduced me to significant people in the early days of this field, such as Vera Molnar and Muriel Cooper. Zach’s motto of ‘always be iterating’ particularly stuck with me. It’s interesting the pressure we feel to finish things, complete projects. Everything we’re making often feels like they must have a final state. The idea of continuing to iterate and let something grow, change and adapt as if it were an organism is quite foreign to me, and in such a way that it’s liberating.
The more I learn about creative code, the more I want to deep-dive into it. It’s an attractively refreshing field that almost detaches itself from the pomp and circumstance that the graphic design field often exudes, and there’s something about this community that’s just so… warm? I don’t know, am I romanticising it? Sorry, I’m a bit off topic now. TLDR; I really want to keep coding.
The works I found from his projects with Golan Levin as Tmema were really inspiring. They created installations/performance works that are responsive to movement and sound. In the work “Messa di Voce” they use this to tell a narrative:
I find ‘Pitch Paint’ an especially captivating scene, as the performers use their voices to control the direction, speed and size of a painting blob. Both of them have their own blob, and it feels as if they’re dancing together with their voices.