When I first started learning how to code, I was not sure how I could create art with just code. I knew how to utilize CSS to decorate websites. As a result, I would create early internet websites that had a lot of passion but may not have been visually appealing. Still, I wanted to learn more about this fusion between code and art but didn’t know how languages like Python or Java would fit into this.
This changed once I learned how to use Processing, an open-source integrated development environment for electronic arts that uses a custom language built on top of the Java programming language. It started simply with me creating a little alien constructed of simple shapes or a circle separated into 4 arcs. However as I continue to learn more about how to add interactivity to my projects, I remade old processing projects. For example, the 4-arc circle project was remade to be like a drawing tool where users can draw circles and rotate them to create circle patterns.
Drawing Machine
My most recent Processing project was a drawing machine made to mimic the drawing minigame from Super Mario 64 DS. This project has simple drawing capabilities, such as different colors and line widths. It also has a wiggle mode that adds some motion to drawing.
The most impressive part of this project was the simulation tab, which adds physics to the drawing. You can play around with the project and see it move around in weird ways. Below is a video demonstration of the entire project.
First Big Project
My first project is a simple hypnotic spiral in the Bauhaus style. As simple as it sounds, it was the first art project where I incorporated tons of math utilizing angles and sine, cosine, and interpolation to give the shape of a hypnotic spiral in every frame the program runs. However, I had some issues with creating this art project and a major one was how fast the program was drawing the spiral. To create a hypnotic spiral, an important aspect is how smoothly the spiral descends / changes size. If the spiral animation is clunky and slow, you would not be as enthralled.
My first attempt at this project reached a staggering 3 frames per second, which was not ideal. Since the enjoyment of this art would be how it is perceived in motion, I understood that optimizing my code had to be a priority. This includes changing how I do my calculations per frame, as this would be the biggest concern in runtime. After a few hours of slamming my head into my laptop, I figured that switching how I store the angle information allowed me to do fewer calculations for each frame by storing values I had already made. By applying the principles of code I know and my design philosophy, I was able to improve my project’s runtime to a smoother 30 frames per second, and the result is now a hypnotizing spiral for anyone’s viewing.
