Programming Art
Mathematical Techniques for Artistic Coding
Inspired by real artists
Amber 🌸 Whitehead
math witch
Jun. 28, 2026
Amber 🌸 Whitehead
- Univ. California, Santa Cruz, PhD Computer Science
- Worked at NVIDIA, Amazon Lab126, Qualcomm
- GPU math libraries
- AI inference
- general performance optimization
- Retired / indie software developer
- Website (incl. slides): https://shimmermathlabs.com/
https://github.com/amberwhitehead/- Source: https://github.com/amberwhitehead/codeisart/tree/main/art1
math witch
Danielle Navarro
- PhD Univ. Adelaide
Mathematical psychology - Works in pharmacometrics
- R language
- Author:
Learning Statistics with R
ggplot2: the book
data witch
Silhouettes (2021)
Night Tree 05 534
how do you make that background texture?
first you need randomness
Pseudo-randomness at every pixel independently
unsafe translate
unsafe static
safe translate
safe static
simplified for graphing
value depends mostly on how you sample it
The only algorithm to win an Academy Award.
(Ken Perlin, Academy Award for Technical Achievement, 1997)
Tron, 1982.
smooth noise
translate xy
translate z
basic idea of simplex noise
natural noise
translate xy
translate z
basic idea: f(f(f(p) + p))
Use noise as prob. density function for accept/reject (whitenoise dither)
translate z
static
colors points based on closest seed = Voronoi
Creative Programming
Tacoma Library, Wheelock Meeting Room
Tuesday, July 7, 2026
6:30p - 7:30pm
Short presentations about interesting code stuff.
I'll present an artist and a few of their art pieces then talk about some code related to the art.
You are also encouraged to present your own work.
Hearts, Sampled Unwisely (2020)
Heart 01 09