An introduction to the ideas of computer programming within the context of the visual arts that also serves as a reference and text for Processing, an open-source programming language designed for creating images, animation, and interactivity.
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An introduction to the ideas of computer programming within the context of the visual arts that also serves as a reference and text for Processing, an open-source programming language designed for creating images, animation, and interactivity.
It has been more than twenty years since desktop publishing reinvented design, and it's clear that there is a growing need for designers and artists to learn programming skills to fill the widening gap between their ideas and the capability of their purchased software. This book is an introduction to the concepts of computer programming within the context of the visual arts. It offers a comprehensive reference and text for Processing (www.processing.org), an open-source programming language that can be used by students, artists, designers, architects, researchers, and anyone who wants to program images, animation, and interactivity. The ideas in Processing have been tested in classrooms, workshops, and arts institutions, including UCLA, Carnegie Mellon, New York University, and Harvard University. Tutorial units make up the bulk of the book and introduce the syntax and concepts of software (including variables, functions, and object-oriented programming), cover such topics as photography and drawing in relation to software, and feature many short, prototypical example programs with related images and explanations. More advanced professional projects from such domains as animation, performance, and typography are discussed in interviews with their creators. "Extensions" present concise introductions to further areas of investigation, including computer vision, sound, and electronics. Appendixes, references to additional material, and a glossary contain additional technical details. Processing can be used by reading each unit in order, or by following each category from the beginning of the book to the end. The Processing software and all of the code presented can be downloaded and run for future exploration.Includes essays by Alexander R. Galloway, Golan Levin, R. Luke DuBois, Simon Greenwold, Francis Li, and Hernando Barragán and interviews with Jared Tarbell, Martin Wattenberg, James Paterson, Erik van Blockland, Ed Burton, Josh On, Jürg Lehni, Auriea Harvey and Michaël Samyn, Mathew Cullen and Grady Hall, Bob Sabiston, Jennifer Steinkamp, Ruth Jarman and Joseph Gerhardt, Sue Costabile, Chris Csikszentmihályi, Golan Levin and Zachary Lieberman, and Mark Hansen.Casey Reas is Associate Professor in the Design Media Arts Department at the University of California, Los Angeles. Ben Fry is Nierenburg Chair of Design in the School of Design at Carnegie Mellon University, 2006-2007.
"A whole generation of designers, artists, students, and professors have been influenced by Processing. Now, a handbook is published that goes far beyond explaining how to handle the technology and boldly reveals the potential future for the electronic sketchbook."Joachim Sauter , University of the Arts, Berlin, Founder, Art+Com
" Processing, the handbook and tutorial, is an indispensable companion to Processing, the integrated programming language and environment that has developed from phenomenon to revolution. Bridging the gap between programming and visual arts, the Processing handbook, in a concise way, connects software elements to principles of visual form, motion, and interaction. The book"s modular structure allows for different combinations of its units and self-directed reading. Interviews with artists who create software-based works and extension chapters that expand software practice into computer vision, sound, and electronics successfully connect the realms of art and technology. Now used by artists, visual designers, and in educational institutions around the world, Processing has been groundbreaking not only as an alternative language for expanding programming space, but as an attempt to nurture programming literacy in the broader context of art and cultural production."Christiane Paul , Adjunct Curator of New Media Arts, Whitney Museum of American Art
"Processing is a milestone not only in the history of computer software, of information design, and of the visual arts, but also in social history. Many have commented on the pragmatic impact of the open source movement, but it is time to also consider Processing"s sociological and psychological consequences. Processing invites people to tinker, and tinkering is the first step for any scientific and artistic creation. After the tinkering, it leads designers to their idea of perfection. It enables complexity, yet it is approachable; it is rigorous, yet malleable. Its home page exudes the enthusiasm of so many designers and artists from all over the world, overflowing with ideas and proud to be able to share. Processing is a great gift to the world."Paola Antonelli , Curator, Architecture and Design, MOMA
"This is an elegant and practical introduction to programming for artists and designers. It is rigorously grounded, informed by a vast amount of practical experience, and visually compelling. The worked examples are terrific. There's no better starting point for visual artists who want to learn how to think computationally, or for programmers who want to give visual and spatial expression to their ideas." William J. Mitchell , Program in Media Arts and Sciences, MIT
"This long-awaited book is more than just a software guide; it is a tool for unlocking a powerful new way of thinking, making, and acting. Not since the Bauhaus have visual artists revisited technology in such a world-changing way. Ben Fry and Casey Reas have helped a growing community of visual producers open up fresh veins of expression. Their work proves that code is open to designers, architects, musicians, and animators, not just to engineers. Providing a powerful alternative to proprietary software, Processing is part of a new social phenomenon in the arts that speaks to self-education and networked engagement."Ellen Lupton , Director of the graphic design MFA program at Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, and author of D.I.Y: Design It Yourself
"With Processing, Casey Reas and Ben Fry have opened up the world of programming to artists and designers in a manner that inspires playfulness and creativity with code." Red Burns , Chair and Arts Professor, Interactive Telecommunications Program, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University
Casey Reas is an associate professor in the Design Media ArtsDepartment at the University of California, Los Angeles.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
42 of 47 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Exemplary,
By Adam Greenfield "Clean living under difficult... (Helsinki, Finland) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)
This review is from: Processing: A Programming Handbook for Visual Designers and Artists (Hardcover)
In their Processing (the computer language and development environment), Casey Reas and Ben Fry set out to do something most people would have regarded as highly challenging, if not outright impossible: provide a platform on which technically-minded programmers and aesthetically-minded visual artists might find common ground and learn from one another's strengths. "Processing" (the book) makes good on these ambitions, with exemplary clarity and generosity.
"Processing" starts by quoting, and endorsing, legendary developer Alan Kay's definition of full literacy: "The ability to 'read' a medium means you can access materials and tools created by others. The ability to 'write' in a medium means you can generate materials and tools for others. You must have both to be literate." The clear implication is that one can only be a fully-empowered citizen of a digital age if one understands just how the tools which shape our environments and experiences were made - and Reas and Fry get just what a daunting prospect that is for most of us. To a surprisingly great degree, acquiring even a rudimentary familiarity with Processing-the-language will help demystify exactly what's happening in the black-box machines that surround us. (Because Processing shares important syntactic elements with general-application languages like Java and C, the insights you pick up from wrestling with it will transfer with relative ease to those environments.) "Processing" does a great job of helping even an absolute novice like me ramp up to that level of familiarity quickly and painlessly. But honestly, that's icing on the cake: Processing is really about placing all the computational power sitting on your desktop in the service of beauty. The sheer joy of seeing your imagination take shape on the screen, seeing a creation respond to external input, watching something organic and vivid take shape from a bare few lines of code - these are tremendous feelings, and the book places them within ready reach. Also particularly gratifying is their commitment to the open-source ethos, a fundamental statement of belief in the power of openness and sharing which infuses every page. In "Processing," Reas and Fry talk quite an impressive game...and then go on to walk it. I can't recommend it highly enough to any artist or designer - no matter how "non-technical" or computerphobic you feel yourself to be - who would incorporate software's unique capacity for dynamic evolution and interactivity in their work.
17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Painless programming for the visual arts,
This review is from: Processing: A Programming Handbook for Visual Designers and Artists (Hardcover)
This is a great book on that new Java-based language designed with the visual arts in mind - Processing. Tons of essays, examples, tutorials, and interviews are in the book to convey a proof of concept of the language as well as instruction on how to program with it. The writing style - for you Java programmers out there - reminds me of a cross between "Core Java" and "Head First Java". The book uses Core Java's "assume nothing" approach with instructions and code examples for all facets explained and combines that with interviews that are something like what you see in the "Head First" series of books from O'Reilly. Although the emphasis is on the visual arts, of course, there is coverage of the parts of Processing that makes it a complete language - networking, printing, object orientation, interfacing, and language extensions. Highly recommended for anyone interested in using this new language.
Note that this new language is not just getting the attention of computer artists. It is of use in electronics projects as seen in the book Making Things Talk: Practical Methods for Connecting Physical Objects and in the art of information presentation for business purposes in Visualizing Data. The following is the table of contents for this book: Processing... 1 Using Processing 9 Structure 1: Code Elements 17 Shape 1: Coordinates, Primitives 23 Data 1: Variables 37 Math 1: Arithmetic, Functions 43 Control 1: Decisions 51 Control 2: Repetition 61 Shape 2: Vertices 69 Math 2: Curves 79 Color 1: Color by Numbers 85 Image 1: Display, Tint 12 Data 2: Text 101 Data 3: Conversion, Objects 105 Typography 1: Display 111 Math 3: Trigonometry 117 Math 4: Random 127 Transform 1: Translate, Matrices 133 Transform 2: Rotate, Scale 137 Development 1: Sketching, Techniques 145 Synthesis 1: Form and Code 149 Interviews 1: Print 155 Structure 2: Continuous 173 Structure 3: Functions 181 Shape 3: Parameters, Recursion 197 Input 1: Mouse I 205 Drawing 1: Static Forms 217 Input 2: Keyboard 223 Input 3: Events 229 Input 4: Mouse II 237 Input 5: Time, Date 245 Development 2: Iteration, Debugging 251 Synthesis 2: Input and Response 255 Interviews 2: Software, Web 261 Motion 1: Lines, Curves 279 Motion 2: Machine, Organism 291 Data 4: Arrays 301 Image 2: Animation 315 Image 3: Pixels 321 Typography 2: Motion 327 Typography 3: Response 333 Color 2: Components 337 Image 4: Filter, Blend, Copy, Mask 347 Image 5: Image Processing 355 Output 1: Images 367 Synthesis 3: Motion and Arrays 371 Interviews 3: Animation, Video 377 Structure 4: Objects 395 Drawing 2: Kinetic Forms 413 Output 2: File Export 421 Input 6: File Import 427 Input 7: Interface 435 Structure 5: Objects II 453 Simulate 1: Biology 461 Simulate 2: Physics 477 Synthesis 4: Structure, Interface 495 Interviews 4: Performance, Installation 501 Extension 1: Continuing... 519 Extension 2: 3D 525 Extension 3: Vision 547 Extension 4: Network 563 Extension 5: Sound 579 Extension 6: Print 603 Extension 7: Mobile 617 Extension 8: Electronics 633 Appendixes 661 Related Media 693 Glossary 699 Code Index 703 Index 705
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
a different, and beautiful, approach to programming,
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Processing: A Programming Handbook for Visual Designers and Artists (Hardcover)
As a high school physics teacher with a lot of advanced students, I've been trying to work a bit of computer programming into the course over the last few years. I always wanted to do graphics programming with the students in order to help them visualize and simulate systems, because the pictures produced are a lot prettier and more rewarding than just the formulas on their own, but the languages I tried were just too difficult to teach from scratch in the time we had. Processing seems to be just what I'm looking for: it's free so the kids can download it themselves, and it really doesn't take much to produce stunning graphics. Now I would NOT recommend the book to someone with no programming experience at all - the emphasis of the book is clearly (and rightly) on how to get up to speed making images, not on what a variable is. That said, this book is a terrific resource for me; anyone with a basic programming course under their belt ought to have no trouble making sense of Processing's syntax, and the power of the language is phenomenal. The authors have done a fine job of both explaining the use of the Processing language, and showing off what it can do with all the examples. Processing is letting me do what I always wanted to do with a computer - make stunning graphics from mathematical information - at a level high school students can understand. If you are at all interested in Processing, download the free software and go here next.
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