Computational & Interactive Art

Overview

​​This is a 1-day course at Shoshin College.

​​Shoshin College is an independent experimental school in London, England. Read more about our philosophy on our website shoshincollege.org and our Substack shoshincollege.substack.com.

​​Course Description

​A one-day beginners' workshop in both the practical skills for, and a philosophy of, computer based / interactive art using P5 and OpenProcessing.

​I have distilled this from my practice over the last 15 years. And from material I've taught everywhere from postgraduate seminars at university, to small-town, rural schools in the heart of Brazil. This course is slightly unusual in that the goal is to teach both the practical / programming technique in conjunction with a philosophy of computational / interactive art.

​Note that this 1-day, compressed version of the course is aimed at those who have at least some programming experience already. Students will be expected to be familiar with the concept of programming languages, variables, if statements, loops and arrays, objects and libraries.

​This course it taking place on Saturday, 1 March 2025. We start at 9:30pm. The day will be split into 3 sessions. Location: 133 Bethnal Green Road, London E2 7DG.

​Please come with your laptop and your headphones!

​Session 1: An introduction to Processing and Computational Art (3 hours)

• ​A basic overview of P5 and setting up account on OpenProcessing
• ​We'll then go through creating a simple but aesthetically interesting painting app,
• ​while simultaneously introducing a philosophy of computational / interactive art works which focuses on what I call a “triptych” structure of input / transformation / output. And discusses ideas like intelligibility and proportionality in this context.
• ​finally, students will have some time to develop their own works using the resources discussed.

​Lunch

​Session 2: State: The inner life of your art-work (2 hours)

• We'll discuss variables and the management of data within a program as a way of giving an "inner life" to your computational art work.
• And then use these ideas developing a very simple "multi-agent system". Where behaviours can include parts of the work interacting with each other as well as the user.

​Break

​Session 3: Your own project (2 hours)

• In this session I will present some further useful functions and libraries available in P5. Including camera input and sound.
• We will look at some further examples of interactivity
• You will then use this to develop your own more complex work, with support from the tutor.

Sign up »

​Phil Jones is an electronic musician, programmer, digital artist and music software developer who works with soundtracks for contemporary dance and exhibition openings, and writes software in a number of contexts.

​He has an MA in Computational Studio Art from Goldsmiths. For many years he lived in Brasilia, where he taught computer science in the university, was a member of the Brasília Laptop Orchestra (bsblork.org) and Nômade Lab (nomadelab.gitlab.io) He founded and runs Dionysian Industrial Complex, a netlabel of "Experimental Beauty, Devotional Noise and TechnoShamanism" (dionysian-industrial-complex.net) and the "Musichacking" meetup in Brasilia's hacker / makerspace (calango.club/projetos/musichacking/inicio).

​More recently he has started Gilbert Lister Research, a "micro-research lab" into melody and music software. He produces his own music under a number of identities, including Mentufacturer, Ovnilounge and River of Electrons. He also runs a YouTube channel of code and music: Synaesmedia. All these activities can be found via his personal music site: synaesmedia.net