Code == Art
There is currently no next meeting, you’ll hear about new meetings here!
Posters
What
This is a small Tacoma meetup to talk about art in relation to programming. Previous meetings were in Boise, ID, current meetings are in Tacoma, WA.
At each meeting the presenter will showcase a different artist. We’ll cover:
- Introduction to the artist, who they are, their personal and artistic story
- Presentation of curated selection of artist’s works
- Discussion about some of the computational techniques used
If anyone attending the meeting has digital works in progress to share we can also have a section for audience presentation of their works.
When
The intention is to have the meeting monthly (TBD).
Past meetings (Boise):
- Wed., Aug. 6, 6-7pm, 2025, covered Danielle Navarro, presented by Nathan Whitehead.
- Wed., Sep. 3, 6-7pm, 2025, covered Inigo Quilez, presented by Jim McKeeth.
- Wed., Oct. 1, 6-7pm, 2025, covered Julien Gachadoat, presented by Nathan Whitehead. We also covered Quines and code as art, presented by Katia Hayati.
Where
Tacoma Public Library, Wheelock Branch, Meeting room, 3722 North 26th Street, Tacoma, WA 98407.
Who
I’m Nathan Whitehead, the organizer. I’m an independent software developer specializing in mathematical programming. I’m interested in how computers and art intersect, I feel like this is still an underexplored area even though people have been using computers to make art for decades now. This meetup is an excuse to talk about cool artists and discuss how they are creating their work. I’m particularly interested in artwork that involves algorithms and code as an integral part of the artwork.
Me trying to help a student debug their code at a programming summer camp (COSMOS UCSC, 2006).
You should stop by if you are interested in seeing some cool art and hearing about the techniques used to create it. You don’t need to be an expert programmer.
Some of the techniques I’m interested in:
- Shaders and pixel filters
- Pseudorandom number generation
- Iterated function systems (IFS)
- Cellular automata
- Tiling and tessellation
- Vector flow fields
- Fractals
Artists
Some artists I’m thinking about covering:
This exhibit has lots of artists to investigate: Bridges 2025 Exhibition of Mathematical Art, Craft, and Design
Other potential themes to explore:
- Code poetry
- Live music coding performance
- Live shader programming competitions
- NFTs and generative art
- ByteBeat algorithmic music
Presenting
If you would like to present, email me at nwhitehe@gmail.com.