Processing - A Programming Language for Image Making

We quickly explore the Processing programming language. Processing was designed by folks at the MIT Media Lab as a language for artists. Although there are significant critiques of Processing, it can be a fun language to explore.

Exploring Processing: The Basics

• Go to http://sketchpad.cc.
• Click on "Create New Sketch"
• Read through the code and hypothesize what each part does. (It's fine if you aren't really sure. Code is often confusing.)
• Click the "Play" button (the right triangle) to watch the program run.
• Change various values to better understand the different parts of the program. For example, you might change some of the calls to random(255) to a constant number like 10.
• Based on your exploration, do your best to summarize what purpose each number serves.

Exploring Processing: Alternative Animations

• Here are three other useful Processing functions
  • rect: https://processing.org/reference/rect_.html
  • ellipse: https://processing.org/reference/ellipse_.html
  • fill: https://processing.org/reference/fill_.html
• Read about those functions.
• Using those functions and your explorations above, make the program do something new and interesting.

Share!

• We'll spend a few minutes looking at each of your works.