Programming Logic for Artists

For quite a few decades now, society as a whole, and particularly the artistic community, have had to get used to new concept derived from the introduction of new technologies into our way of life and our work. The advent of the Internet, and using computers and electronics on a daily basis have become part of artistic practices: not only in production but also in the concepts underlying creation. Nowadays, whether in creating a short script in Flash or a sophisticated artificial vision program, certain basic programming concepts are needed.

In this workshop, basic programming concepts will be taught to be able to understand and write programming source code. We will do so by focusing on artistic uses, with no previous computer knowledge necessary. We will do samples in several programming languages used in artistic creation (ANSI C/C++, Processing, Pure Data, Arduino, etc.). We will explore the algorithms that lie behind some historical art works made via programming, and we will work on them with today's tools.

Program

Part 1 The bare bones of the machine

• Computer structure. CPU, memories, additional hardware, etc.
• Instructions and operations in the machine
• Using the CPU and the concept of process

Part 2 Algorithmic breakdown of a problem

• The pseudo-code and the algorithmic breakdown of a real problem

Part 3 A program's structure and elements

• Editing, compilation, loading, and execution
• Hello World! A program's structure
• IDEs and environments
• Variables, definitions, and several obligatory rituals in different programming languages
• Types of data
• You're not alone in the world: comments and documentation
• Debugging a program
• Exercises

Part 4 How do I make my program?

• Decision structures
• Data visibility
• Methods and functions
• Exercises
• Access to files
• More exercises

Part 5 Programming on programming platforms

• Processing
• Arduino
• Pure Data