The Art of Processing

I've been involved recently in an Open University project to write a collaborative book on Processing, a Java based computer art API. The project has been driven by the creative energies of Darrel Ince, Professor of Computing at the OU. The original idea being to tempt 85 volunteers into writing a chapter each on the subject, plus a program, aiming to teach Processing as well as illustrating what could be achieved by it.

The project was fuelled by the amazing enthusiasm of its many participants last September and should have reached its conclusion about now. Originally, it was intended that all the participants would put their works in progress in cyberspace using a blog. The sheer awkwardness of doing this without losing any of the formatting proved a real barrier in practice, but a considerable number of the chunks are now there for all to see. Hopefully the book itself will be available in its entirety at some point as I'm looking forward to reading everyone else's efforts. "Processing", according to Holly Willis[1], "is allowing designers to push the boundaries of design". I wouldn't go that far with my simple sketches, but I have to admit they were great fun to do, if a little time consuming. My efforts can be can be found at http://writinginbytes.blogspot.com/


[1] Willis, Holly (2007) The Amazing Visual Language of Processing [online] http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/the-amazing-visual-language-of-processing (accessed 06 May 2009)