Leave No Trace

My post the other day concerned Daniel Shiffman. By coincidence, Rhizome has just published an interview by Dan with Casey Reas and Ben Fry, the two people who developed the Processing language. It’s interesting, but it doesn’t reveal anything startling. Personally, I’d say you’re better off reading some of the interviews with artists in Reas and Fry’s book Processing: A Programming Handbook for Visual Designers and Artists. These artists don’t exclusively use Processing, though – it’s more a revelation of how different artists approach the use of code when creating work, and as such I find it fascinating:

With software, anything that can be imagined can be built. Software has a mysterious, undefined border. Programming is truly a process of creating something from nothing. Jared Tarbell, p158

…when I create art, I feel like I am in conversation with the artwork. If I sketch or write, it’s like talking to a caustic debater, exposing all the flaws in my thinking. Valuable, perhaps, but also discouraging! When I write programs, I have the opposite feeling: that I am talking with a sympathetic and brilliant partner who helps me organize my thoughts and points out connections I hadn’t seen myself. Martin Wattenberg, p162

 …software is the only medium, as far as we know, that can respond in real time to input signals in ways that are continuous, linear or nonlinear as necessary, and – most importantly – conditional. The medium that we’re interested in… is response itself, and only software is able to respond in such a rich manner and with such a flexible repertoire. Golan Levin & Zachary Lieberman, p512

I’ve picked these quotes for a purpose, so perhaps it isn’t fair to do this, but contrast these comments with this organic animation. Yes, it’s beautiful and yes, it matches the music, and yes, it’s clever and subtle, but why I am left with the blase feeling of “So what?”
Reas and Fry’s book ends with a hefty section on extending the use of Processing into different fields: 3D, vision, networking, sound, print, mobile devices and electronics. It offers so much potential to do whatever you want with it. Yes, you can create pretty pictures with it, but you can also do so much more.