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CC Fest is a free and friendly event for anyone curious about creative code! Will you join us?

On Sunday, July 21, 2024, from 12 to 3 pm EST (-4 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, John Maeda and Beatriz Lozano, 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, Processing Foundation, and Shristi Singh are organizing the Virtual CC Fest on Sunday, July 21, 2024, with support from Suhyun (Sonia) Choi, Raphaël de Courville, and Tsige Tafesse. To attend, please register here or below. If you have any questions, you can email ccfest@processingfoundation.org.

Schedule (all times EDT -4 UTC)

Keynotes

Workshops (45 minutes)

Infoglassics: The art of data science from Emily Thomforde (she/her)

Learn how a stained glass artist uses p5.js to transform raw datasets into visual representations that can tell a story in the physical world.
1B-DA-06 Organize and present collected data visually to highlight relationships and support a claim.
2-DA-7 Represent data using multiple encoding schemes.
3A-DA-11 Create interactive data visualizations using software tools to help others better understand real-world phenomena. (Intermediate)

Dr. Emily Thomforde is the Computer Science Department Chair at Reach University. She focuses on culturally sustaining pedagogy and connecting computing and other disciplinary areas. Emily previously served as Computer Science Coordinator at the California Department of Education and San Mateo County Office of Education. She is a BAFTA-winning video game developer with ten years of experience teaching computer programming, software development, and computing pedagogy at libraries, prisons, museums, and public schools locally and abroad. Her curriculum development credits include Vidcode, Hopscotch, Code.org, STEM from Dance, Code Combat, and BrainPOP. Emily holds a PhD in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, UK.

Open Source Creative Coding in the 6th-10th Classroom: Scratch, Wick, & Piskel, Oh My! from Shawn Patrick Higgins (he/him)

This session will showcase how to leverage open-source web apps to teach a compelling (and free!) creative coding program in your middle school classroom, highlighting a spiraling project-based design philosophy. Covering practical projects, inspiring student examples, and actionable takeaways from Higgins' 15 years of experience with Scratch and 5 years with Piskel and Wick! (Intermediate)

Shawn Patrick Higgins is a Portland, OR-based CS and Media Arts teacher with 15 years of experience working with youth in creative technology, specializing in a project-based curriculum that focuses on digital art, animation, audio, coding, and games as creative pathways to student success.

The Clark M. Williams Foundation has awarded him grants, and he is the recipient of The Best Buy Foundation’s Inspired Teaching Award. Higgins is the President of the Oregon Computer Science Teachers Association, the Oregon coordinator for ScratchEd, a 2018 National PBS Digital Innovator All-Star Teacher, a 2020 Processing Teaching Fellow, a 2020-21 CSforAll Teachers Ambassador, 2021 CSTA Equity Fellow, and a 2023 Fulbright DAST Fellow.

Introduction to Python by Alex Berman (he/him)

This workshop will give you a valuable introduction to Python, a widely used general-purpose coding language. We will teach the basics of Python, including syntax, print statements, inputs, and for loops. The workshop will culminate with the interactive programming of a customizable digital calculator. (Beginner)

I am a sophomore at Dalton in New York City, and I am interested in a wide array of computer science topics. I also teach programming languages to students! I am the co-founder of Coding The Future, a student-led tutoring program that offers free computer science education to learners worldwide. We connect high school and university students experienced in computer science to other students interested in learning or advancing their coding skills. I also enjoy working on passion projects, from making web apps and chrome extensions to Arduino toys.

Make a blog! by Naoto Hieda (they/them)

I will demonstrate how to make your first blog/website using Eleventy. Hosted on glitch.com, it's free and fully customizable! It's a great platform if you want to make your portfolio, fan website, and so on! (Intermediate)

Naoto Hieda is a researcher and an artist from Japan based in Estonia enrolled in the PhD programme at the School of Digital Technologies Tallinn University. With a background in engineering and media art, they work internationally for theater productions and in the visual arts. In their artistic work, they question the productive qualities of coding and speculate on new forms, post-coding through neuroqueerness, decolonization and live coding.

Type Your Name by Shristi Singh (she/her)

What's in a name? Whatever you want it to be. Functional and decorative, this workshop explores the art of letterforms through the chosen few that make up our names. Working in the p5.js web editor, we'll blend typography with interactivity to create eponymous "typescapes" that not only reflect our personalities but also adapt to external stimuli in real-time. Make your name move, stretch, shrink, or collapse while communicating something sincere. (Intermediate)

Shristi creates tools that people can create with. To this end, her process is sometimes playful, often data-driven, largely collaborative, and always evolving. She blends visuals, code, and the written word to set up experimental interfaces rooted in purpose, participation, and play. Her interactive works have been recognized by GD USA, Graphis, AIGA, Society of Typographic Arts, and MIT among others. She's friendly and does not talk in third person in real life.

Making Musical Patterns with Code: Intro to Strudel by Liam Baum (he/him)

Strudel is an online live coding environment for algorithmic musical composition and performance. In this workshop, we will examine some of the underlying musical concepts of how Strudel works, explore some basic commands to make sounds, and discuss how it can be used as an instrument for live musical performances. No coding or musical experience is necessary.

Intro to Machine Learning by Erim Keresteci (he/him)

In this workshop, I will teach you the basics of image classification using machine learning. We will use the Google Collaboratory environment to do our programming. (Intermediate)

I'm Erim Keresteci, a rising senior at the Dalton School. I have a background in machine learning, software engineering, and game development. I have worked on multiple large projects, such as developing games, applications, and machine-learning models for finance and medicine.

Free and Beginner-Friendly Game Design Tools by Caleb Foss (they/them)

Getting started making video games can be intimidating and frustrating for beginners. Explore tools and teaching techniques that lower barriers and focus on creativity over technical challenges. (beginner)

Caleb Foss is an artist 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.

Using game design principles to level up computational art by Kristen Marcinek (she/her)

Join game designer and creative technologist Kristen Marcinek as she explains the basics of Ludology and interactive design and how they intersect with creative coding. She will discuss the creation of games and gameful experiences, provide resources for techniques, and walk through implementation in p5. (beginner)

Kristen Marcinek is a game designer and creative technologist in the DC metro area. She's passionate about providing non-traditional educational experiences and accurately representing intersectional and marginalized lenses grounded in tangible realities. She focuses on how to properly portray social justice topics through ludonarrative.

Beyond the Browser: Creative Code at Scale by Pedro Sanches (he/him)

Discover how to use APIs and n8n to scale your creative coding projects beyond traditional browser limitations. (Intermediate)

Pedro Sanches 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.

Draw on Your Face with p5.js and ml5.js by Akanksha Vyas (she/her)

In this session, we learn how the use the ml5.js library with the p5.js library to identify points on on a live video of your face and and use them to draw fun shapes on your (or your friends) face. (Intermediate)

Akanksha is the co-founder and CTO at Pinky Promise, an AI-powered instant clinic for Women's reproductive healthcare in India. She has been teaching as a visiting faculty member across design institutions in Mumbai, with a focus on technology for designers. She has taught courses on Intro to Coding, Blockchain and NFT's, Emerging Technologies, Design Research, and Make your Own LLMs. She also leads a Women Who Code community in Mumbai. Akanksha has been working in technology for over 12 years, primarily at small startups, with expertise in medical 3D-printing, ML applications, and Blockchain. She loves building things. In her free time she works at a bookshop.

Generative Phenakistoscope by Aleksandra Jovanic (she/her)

Join Aleksandra for a session on creating a generative phenakistoscope using code. In pronounceable words, phe-na-kisto-scopes are discs with looping animations that, in this case, combine the principles of first optical devices with modern technical advancements. The discovery of the persistence of vision in the 19th century laid the ground for the invention of myriad devices for displaying the illusion of motion. After understanding how imperfections of the human eye were, and still are, used for entertainment, the session will focus on combining a record player, digital camera, and p5.js to generate an alternative phenakistoscope. (Intermediate)

Aleksandra Jovanić is an artist and programmer from Belgrade, Serbia. She holds a doctorate in Digital Arts and a BSc in Computer Science. In her research and artistic practice she combines various media, mainly in the field of interactive art, art games, and generative art. Jovanić’s recent works focus on the aesthetic of data visualization and optical illusions and explorations of accepted concepts of truth and reality. Her work has been exhibited internationally in exhibitions at Unit London, Feral File, Vellum LA, ArtBlocks, and ArtBasel. As an associate professor, she currently teaches at all three levels of study, at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade, at master studies of the Faculty of Applied Arts, and at art doctoral studies at the University of Arts in Belgrade.

The beauty of recursion by Julien Gachadoat (he/him)

Students will get to learn the recursion principle from a graphic and artistic point of view by coding a square partitioning algorithm in p5.js editor. Random parametrisation will be used to create different sets of graphical outputs that might be exported as vector files for printing thanks to p5.js-svg extension. (Intermediate)

Julien Gachadoat (aka v3ga) 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 ever since.

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.