Electronics Faire - Creative Coding for the Permacomputing Age: A Code Jam and Introduction to Creative Coding with L5

As artists, programmers, makers, and learners — particularly those of us working in creative coding — we depend on hardware that was designed not from cradle to cradle, but from mine to desktop to landfill. Too often, creative computing culture chases novelty: faster machines, newer frameworks, shinier tools. But what happens when we take a different tack, and treat computational constraint as an aesthetic and ethical commitment? This workshop draws inspiration from oldschool one-liner BASIC programs, the contemporary Tweetcode (Mastocode?) movement of creating complete computational artworks in under 280 characters, and online literary journals like Taper that publish small, self-contained computational pieces. These traditions ask: what can you make with almost nothing? What does it mean to write software that runs on the machine you already have? 

We’ll begin with a brief introduction to L5 (https://L5lua.org), a new creative coding library in the Processing family built around permacomputing principles. L5 is designed to run on old hardware — aging laptops, outdated phones — extending the useful life of machines that might otherwise be discarded.

Previous experience with creative coding or programming is helpful but not required. After the introduction, we’ll run a short jam: the goal is to create as many small creative code pieces as we can in the time we have. At the end of the session, works will be collected and published together in Random Walk, an online magazine of computational art (https://randomwalk.club/) — an artifact of the day’s making.

Participants should bring any laptop. (Programming on a phone is possible but more difficult to setup!)

About the Instructor: 
Lee Tusman's artwork spans computational poetry, experimental games, net art, and creative coding tools. He creates browser-based and desktop software, zines, and installations exploring digital culture, sustainability, and DIY practice. Lee has been artist-in-residence at ZK/U Berlin, Pioneerworks, and Signal Culture, and organized events at Babycastles NYC. He co-founded Processing Community Day NYC and hosts the Artists and Hackers podcast. He is an organizer with Flux Factory in Queens, NY. Lee holds an MFA from UCLA and is an associate professor at Purchase College, SUNY, where he teaches new media art and computer science.