Creative Coding Fest
CC Fest is a free and friendly event for anyone curious about creative code! Will you join us?
On Saturday, March 15, 2025, from 9 am to 1 pm PST (+8 UTC) join us on Zoom for a virtual creative coding fest. We’ll make interactive and engaging digital art, animation, and games, work with AI or hardware, and explore other options in various workshops. Hear from our keynote speakers, Saskia Freeke, Olivia Jack, Kawandeep Virdee, on important and timely topics related to creative coding!
We welcome:
Students, artists, hobbyists, creatives, and tinkerers who are curious to learn
Educators and community organizers who are looking for inspiration
Everyone who would like to learn more about creative code and our community
Saber Khan is organizing the event. If you have any questions, you can email mrkhanatndv@gmail.com.
You can donate as you RSVP below. Funds will be used to cover the cost of the event, Zoom license and paying keynotes, and rest will be shared with presenters.
RSVP below
Schedule (all times PST +8 UTC)
Schedule for #virtualCCFest on March 15, 2025
Keynotes
Based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, Saskia, is an artist, creative coder, and designer exploring structure, geometry, and playfulness. Since 2015, they have maintained a daily generative art project, experimenting with patterns and animations. Their work spans digital and physical media, using digital fabrication to create tangible pieces. Passionate about interactive design, they research the relationship between humans and machines, creating playful installations. A former lecturer at Goldsmiths and the University of the Arts Utrecht, they now work as a freelance designer, organizing events, leading workshops, and giving talks on creative coding, interaction design, and digital fabrication.
Olivia is a Berlin-based programmer and artist working with open-source software, cartography, live coding, and experimental interfaces. She created Hydra, a browser-based platform for live-coding visuals, enabling users to reimagine pixels, glitch screens, and collaborate online. With a background in computer engineering, she discovered live coding in Bogotá, reshaping her approach to software development. Her research explores algorithmic uncertainty, chaos, and peer-to-peer networking. Featured on the Art && Code Podcast, she continues expanding creative coding’s possibilities.
Kawandeep Virdee (@whichlight) makes art, ranging from interactive web experiments, to public art, to spaces to be creative together. He is the author of “Feeling Great About My Butt.” He has previously shown work at SFMOMA, the MIT Media Lab, Transmediale, and EYEO, and his work has been covered in publications including the Atlantic, Science, the New York Times, and The Guardian. You can find him most Thursdays drawing, talking ideas, and making zines at drink & draw & hang in Oakland. Currently, he a creative technologist prototyping future experiences with AI at Google Labs.
Workshops (1 Hour)
Teachable Hydra by Naoto Hieda & Flor de Fuego
In this workshop we will go through different examples on how to use Hydra + ml5js and Teachable Machine to control Hydra functions with the camera (Your body and objects) for generating visuals on the browser.
Intermediate
Naoto Hieda (they/them) is a researcher and an artist from Japan based in Estonia enrolled in the PhD programme at the School of Digital Technologies Tallinn University. In their artistic work, they question the productive qualities of coding and speculate on new forms, post-coding through neuroqueerness, decolonization and live coding. Mastadon
Flor de Fuego (she/her) is a digital-craft artist who primarily works with programming and live coding to create performative experiences. She has participated in several international festivals across Europe and the Americas, both individually and in collaboration with other artists. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Fine Arts from the National University of La Plata, Argentina. Flor is actively involved in the live coding community. She is also an active community collaborator for Hydra, a live coding browser-based software developed by Olivia Jack. Mastadon
Code Less, Make More with Web Spinner by Caleb Foss
Web Spinner is beginner-friendly JavaScript library designed specifically for creating web content. Make visualizations, animations, user interfaces, and more with less code than other tools! The project is currently in development, and this session will demonstrate its features and invite feedback.
Beginner
Caleb Foss (they/them) is an artist and educator who develops mess-making systems using media technologies. They make software, games, videos, digitally-fabricated objects, and multimedia performances. Foss' methods draw from amusement parks and magic tricks, and their work seeks opportunities for amorphousness in the future of human media interactions. Their work has been showcased in film festivals including Chicago Underground, Imagine Science (Brooklyn), and FRACTO (Berlin) as well as Hand Eye Society's WordPlay Festival for writing in games (Toronto) and BitBash at the Chicago Humanities Festival. They are an Assistant Professor of Web Development, Design, and Social Media at Joliet Junior College.
Which Code Witch : Live Spells in Creative Coding 🐈⬛🔮 by M DeNardo
If presented in a creative and approachable way, software engineering concepts can be easily understood by children. MDN presents three lessons, sharing how to get kids excited about learning concepts in software engineering ... using Scratch, Twine, Python Turtle, and Teachable Machine …
Intermediate
M DeNardo (MDN) (they/them/we) is Lead Educator of the After3 Coding Club (b. 2014) , at NEST+m;
Which Code Witch is their online program; teaching software engineering,
through the lens of creative coding 🐈⬛🔮
3D Printing with p5.fab! by Blair Subbaraman
p5.fab is a Javascript library to control digital fabrication machines using creative code. In this workshop, we’ll introduce p5.fab and work through 3D printing examples to make physical things with creative code!
Intermediate
Blair’s (he/him) work explores machine automation as a creative medium. He’s most interested in how domain experts like artists and scientists can leverage their existing skills when using machines. Blair is a PhD student at the University of Washington where he works in the Machine Agency. Instagram
Anatomy of Letters by Julien Gachadoat
Uncover the invisible architecture of letters using p5.js and opentype.js
This workshop will guide you through extracting curve data from glyphs and transforming typography into dynamic, interactive visuals.
Intermediate
Julien Gachadoat (aka v3ga) (he/him) has been exploring generative drawing for many years. He grew up in the 90s amid the avant-garde demo scene, making visuals with code. Ever since, programming languages have been his creative tool.
Creating unique art with algorithms, he works with the emergence of abstract form. Combining monochrome, geometric shapes, he plays with repetition, using random operations to generate an element of surprise. Julien Gachadoat uses the computer - "this unique performer" (Vera Molnár) - to develop his own creative tools based on simple graphic rules, and then to explore the formal possibilities that ensue.
By printing these unique pieces with a plotter, he creates a link between text and code, between computer and pencil, and between the rigour of code and the poetry of art. "To leave a unique mark, aesthetically palpable, that is not in defiance, but rather in aid of the digital": this is his philosophy. Instagram
Vibe Coding: Co-Creating with AI by Pedro Sanches
An honest exploration of AI-assisted coding, how to avoid common pitfalls, and how to use it to unlock new creative possibilities and explore territories beyond the syntax you know.
Beginner
Pedro Sanches (he/him) is a designer and technologist from Brazil, he has a BA in Graphic Design from the School of Visual Arts in NY. He worked for Sagmeister & Walsh as a designer and then Google's Creative Lab before later co-founding the design and technology studio HAWRAF. Now, he runs a company called Work In Progress LLC, which uses code to create generative designs for clients like Telfar, Spotify & Google. Instagram
strike a pose: an htt(p)erformance by Shristi Singh
Instead of moving to music that already exists, what if our movements made the music? Or art? Or games?
Unlock the possibilities of your body as an interface from sonic compositions to playful experiences. The workshop will dive right into the expressive outputs of working with real-time pose estimation and hand-tracking using mediapipe and blazepose in the browser.
Beginner
Shristi Singh (she/her) is a new media artist born in Bombay, based in Brooklyn. Her practice is play. Her medium is browser-based. Her process is participatory. From old media beginnings to new media explorations, she blends craft, code, and culture into interfaces that are sometimes ephemeral, often odd, largely multisensorial, and always evolving.
Her computational experiments have been recognized by institutions across, art, media, and technology including Graphis, American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA), Society of Typographic Arts (STA), GD USA, Communication Arts, and Indigo Design Awards among others. Shristi holds a Master of Fine Arts in Design and Technology from Parsons School of Design at The New School. Instagram
Stories Decoded, Recoded & Encoded: Multisensorial Storytelling by Kofi Oduro
Stories Decoded/Recoded is an interactive modality reflecting role playing games & imporv that explores the connections of Art, movement,our daily routines, our senses and Code. The audiovisual mixed with the senses is developed by different creative coding environments as well as incorporating the client's strengths and characteristics that will be translated by the code.
The narratives devised in “Stories Decoded, Recoded & Encoded”, will not only be formed through dramatic output but also carry satirical, comedic and musical traits in both a cohesive and chaotic model. As this ensures, the clients can’t predict what is next. The nature of this is to demonstrate that even through our differences , we are similar to each other. By not only having a diverse amount of stories or tools, we can give an experience that provides connection through differences.
Beginner
Kofi Oduro(Illestpreacha) (he/him) is an award winning Experiential Storyteller, Creative Coder & Data Practitioner that transforms sounds, images, data, words & code into experiences that nurtures discussion, reflection & interaction. He creates/designs/research through his decade plus involvement in performance and event production.
Designing with his sports,health & computational skill sets through a multi-sensorial perspective, his process is an observation of the world around us & then puts it into artworks/experiences for others to relate to or disagree with. Aiming to highlight the realms of human performance & their mindset in different scenarios. These correspond with factors such as social, internal,& biological, which we face in our daily lives. Instagram
paint.stx — live-code custom brushes with hydra by Siiri Tännler
In this workshop we will explore paint.stx, a browser-based drawing tool that combines hydra and p5.js. Participants will live-code their own custom brushes, experiment with generative visuals, and turn their drawings into zines—including a collective edition featuring everyone's contributions.
Beginner
Siiri Tännler (she/her) is a Swiss-Finnish graphic designer and art director currently based between New York City and Switzerland. Her practice focuses on concept-driven design systems that span print and digital environments, taking form as books, environmental graphics, exhibitions, visual identities, and websites. She has collaborated with leading design studios and cultural institutions including The Museum of Modern Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and Brooklyn Museum, as well as publishers like Rizzoli, Phaidon, Primary Information, and the Brooklyn Rail. She is currently pursuing a master's degree in Digital Communication Environments at the Basel Academy of Art and Design FHNW. Instagram
Trash Sorting with Machine Learning by Paul Way & Jake Lerner
In this session we will discuss an app built as a student project that uses machine learning to determine whether garbage is recyclable, garbage or compost by image categorization. We will discuss the process and timeline for the build and offer suggestions for attempting similar work in your own community.
Intermediate
Paul Way (he/him) is the Innovation and Technology department chair and advanced CS instructor for Crossroads School for Arts and Sciences.
Jake Lerner (he/him) is a current 10th grade student.
Delightful motion loops by Sai Ram Ved Vijapurapu
In this workshop, we'll graph looping trigonometric easing functions in Desmos and bring them over to p5.js to let them drive the movement of simple shapes. We'll then see how to record these as perfectly looping animations to share over the interwebs!
Beginner
Sai Ram Ved Vijapurapu (he/him) is an information designer crafting delightful experiences with data & technology who draws inspiration from natural phenomena, often using code as a means to that end. In the past, his work has been recognised and celebrated by CultureHub, Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Bangalore International Center and Information is Beautiful, among others. Sai is currently at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program where he continues to evolve his practice by imbuing interactivity in his work. Instagram