This is Future Learning
Find out how our This is Future Learning campaign aims to transform access to education …
Introduction to week 4
Watch Jon McCormack introduce week 4 and provide an overview of the themes to be covered - colour, image, sound and noise.
Welcome to week 4 of Creative Coding. We’re now into the second half of the course and this week we’ll be looking at a variety of media elements that go into developing more complex sketches with Processing. First we’ll be looking at colour. We’ve already seen some basic uses of colour in Processing, including greyscale models and colour based on combinations of red, green and blue, or RGB. We’ve also made use of alpha values to control the transparency of graphics objects when they’re drawn. We’ll look at more intuitive models for dealing with colour and discuss ways to work creatively with colour in a sketch. So far, all the images we’ve created have been drawn using
Processing’s built-in drawing shapes: lines, ellipses, rectangles and so on. Processing can also deal with images as well. You can read in any digital image, including your own photographs, into Processing and that’s where things can get interesting. An image is just a big array of RGB values ‘ data ‘ so of course you can massage and manipulate that data in your code to get some stunning results. We’ll also show you how to incorporate sound into your processing sketches. The easiest way to do this is to use short, pre-recorded sounds. If you have access to a smartphone or tablet with a built-in microphone you can record your own sounds,
but if not don’t worry: we’ve provided some simple sounds to get you started. Throughout the course so far, we’ve made use of randomness in a number of sketches. You’re already familiar with the random() function, but there’s a whole lot more to randomness that what we’ve looked at so far. So we’ll look further into other random functions and show how they can be used effectively in your sketches. Beyond random functions its important to look at why and how randomness is so often used. Artists have successfully used randomness and random processes for centuries, from the dice music of Mozart to British artist Tm Knowles’ wonderful drawings made by the random movement of trees in the wind.
So we’ll be discussing what might be called the philosophy of randomness and the aesthetics of noise.
So if you’re ready’let’s begin!
Watch Jon McCormack introduce week 4 and provide an overview of the themes to be covered – colour, image, sound and noise. This week we’ll be looking at colour, image, sound and randomness. We’ll look at different colour models beyond the Monochrome and RGB numbers we’ve used so far. We’ll also look at how you can incorporate images and sounds into your Processing sketches. We have two coding challenges for you to try: improving an interface to creatively choose colours and ‘one pixel cinema’ which will challenge you to create an ambient generative animation from image data.We’ll also look further at random functions and the role randomness and chance plays in art.
Learning outcomes for week 4
At the end of this week you should be able to:- Appreciate the use of colour in software art and know how to use different colour modes in Processing;
- Incorporate images and sounds into your Processing sketches;
- Understand the basics of random functions in Processing;
- Have an appreciation of how randomness has been used in a creative practice.
What is machine learning? – A beginner’s guide
What is machine learning, and why is it so useful? We take a detailed look …
How to reduce your carbon footprint – 20 top tips
If you’re wondering what a carbon footprint is and why it’s so important, we’ve got …
Explore: the data industry in detail
We take a look at what the state of play is in the data industry. …
Our purpose is to transform access to education.
We offer a diverse selection of courses from leading universities and cultural institutions from around the world. These are delivered one step at a time, and are accessible on mobile, tablet and desktop, so you can fit learning around your life.
We believe learning should be an enjoyable, social experience, so our courses offer the opportunity to discuss what you’re learning with others as you go, helping you make fresh discoveries and form new ideas.
You can unlock new opportunities with unlimited access to hundreds of online short courses for a year by subscribing to our Unlimited package. Build your knowledge with top universities and organisations.
Learn more about how FutureLearn is transforming access to education
