Sketch code on Github
I put the code for some of my sketches on Github. Hopefully they'll be of interest to someone interested in creative coding. Reading other people's programs is a great way of learning. Feel free to play around with the code. Look at the code, download it, run it, change it. If you make anything interesting, let me know!
One is titled Teohuatican, in which I color grids that have a fractal pattern within the cells.
The following is called Tracking, an exploration of the results of coloring in Lissajous curves, equations that, when drawn, make a line with varying numbers of intermediate curves in it.
The last one is titled Let's See, an extension of one of my favorite algorithms, the one to draw a spiral with Perlin noise in it.
The underlying algorithms used to make these are simple, but their applications in creative coding produce an infinite amount of interesting results. It's funny; I make a lot of sketches and write lots of code to try out different ideas, but it's the sketches with the least amount of code that tend to turn out better than those with a lot.
Teohuatican is named after an ancient city in what's now Mexico. It's what I was thinking about when making it. The second one is titled Tracking because of how the shape tracks the Lissajous curves.
The idea for the third title came from the Japanese epic Musashi. It's ending is my favorite story ending that I've read so far. I'll quote it below. Apologies if it's a faux pas to spoil the ending of a book. The book is still worth reading. The journey is the fun part anyway. Here's the quote, summing up the main character's reasons for traveling around Japan, testing his swordsmanship (at the expense of the lives of his opponents):
"The little fishes, abandoning themselves to the waves, dance and sing and play, but who knows the heart of the sea, a hundred feet down? Who knows its depth?"
The spirals evoke the image of diving below the surface of the sea to hunt, play, or live, unafraid to go to unknown territory or leave the group. Or school, in the case of fishes.
Creative coding is my way of understanding what's underneath the surface of the day-to-day activities of life. What's there? I don't know, but I'm there to find out. Let's see.