I’m playing with Processing.

At the same time, I am making my way through this lovely book by Casey Reas and Ben Fry, which is “a programming handbook for visual designers and artists”. It’s not just a pretty book (the book is very pretty); it’s a compelling philosophical collection of essays and practical tasks for visual designers-who-wanna-be-programmers. The chasm between code and art has never been so narrow.

Processing is definitely an art platform but if you can do maths that helps. People can do some very cool interactive stuff with it. Though it’s also used for making quick interactive prototypes (I want to see what mobile-design extraordinaire Bryan Rieger has been up to with it.)

I don’t expect to accomplish anything particulary grand with it; at least not yet—I’m having fun typing out the code and seeing what I can do, and picking up the syntax.

Oh, and here’s some lines that stick to your cursor.

Pretty cool, eh?