How can we use technology as a vehicle to create art?
Where does coding fit in the creative arc of human history? How can we use it to scale our creative powers?
When I first learned to code in college, I found it thrilling how easily coding could invoke the feeling of flow. The problems were difficult to solve, but not impossible. The dopamine rush from solving problems was immediate. The possibility of creating the next billion dollar app was like an opaque vision that was just out of reach. “I can do it! I can be the one! Others do it all the time!”, I would tell myself.
Learning to code gave me a new way to interact with world, or possibly, exert my command over it.
I made a bunch of friends. I familiarized myself with the landscape of technology. I ate pizza at some hackathons. I took my data structures and algorithms courses. I applied to software engineering internships like the rest of my friends. I partied like a college student does, and I was grateful that both sides of my brain felt so engaged by life. Basically, everything was simple.
It wasn’t until after I started working full time as a software engineer that I began to see the cracks.
I was unhappy going into work almost every single day. Coding was no longer about discovery and creativity, it was a tool. I ran into an identity issue, you see.
If code was a creative expression that was birthed from my brain, and I was leveraging it in a way that made me unhappy, I must be unhappy. The cognitive dissonance between the tool and the creator built everyday from the hours of 9am to 5pm.
Coding quickly lost its luster in the smoky boardrooms of bureaucracy.
But what was the way out? Tech is quite insular, you see. People talk; and the lingo is very monochromatic. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it “thoughtcrime”, but there’s a certain unspoken way of interaction within the culture of tech that is not meant to be disobeyed.
Maybe it’s a defense mechanism against the way that “non-coding” people’s eyes glaze over when coders geek out over some new algorithm, or how some new test framework builds 12% faster than its competitor. Or maybe it’s a source of pride, a walled garden of knowledge, an invitation to the tech elite, where t-shirts and sweatpants can create billions of dollars of value.
My prevailing theory is that once someone discovers the power of willing their creative ideas into the world with a few keystrokes, it becomes difficult to interact with people who don’t possess that same level of command over reality.
Whatever the case, once you get pulled into the vortex, good luck finding your way out. The path of the software engineer is clear you see, as clear as the path of the textile factory worker was, and the farmer before them.
And so the viola plays.
After a few years of this, the “screaming” in my head became too loud to manage. I was leading a double-life, pretending to care about the goings on at work, and how we could optimize our production servers by rewriting all the code we painstakingly wrote three times before.
So I saved up. I saved with the intention of quitting, of becoming an artist. Specifically, an actor. I’ve always admired how actors tell stories, how they can insert themselves fully into the mind of another. And plus, I did some runway modeling in New York Fashion Week, so I assumed I had the look to land something. I intended to move to L.A., and follow the path of the thespian.
But wait.
The world of acting classes and auditions was no better. People were cutthroat, and desperate. Roles were landed not on merit, but by how well one looked the part. And the worst of all, the most unforgivable sin to me, was the lack of control.
Actors and actresses bent to the whim of whoever held rank in the room, prostrating themselves to the mercy of directors and producers with a show that just got picked up by some big name TV network. They drove hours to audition, just to sit namelessly in a room with a bunch of other pretty faces, competing in a zero sum game to see their name up in lights.
I missed the leverage that coding provided. I missed the quiet whispers of creativity that would flow out of my mind, through my fingers, and into the machine. But coding was dead to me, right? What could I do if I had no intention of returning to the traditional software engineer path?
In October 2019, I found Processing. Processing re-awoke in me a feeling that I didn’t know how much I missed. It allowed me to use code the way I always thought it should be used, as a form of human expression. I began finding tutorials on the Internet, and making silly sketches.
I moved into Augmented Reality libraries, dabbled in shaders, learned about procedural generation, used hyper powerful AI tools to make silly work, and brought my curiosities to life. I posted my creations to the web, and formed an agency with the hope that others would also appreciate what code can do as a tool for expression, not agile delivery (and be willing to $$ for it).
I found others doing creative coding, I read a phenomenal book, and woke each day, excited to throw myself into the challenging and rewarding world of using strict mathematical concepts to create art.
But again, reality reminded me that life is rarely simple.
As it stands (I’m writing this in July 2020), I’m living off of my savings. I’ve been fortunate enough to land a few freelance opportunities in technical writing and education, but building up my agency to profitability has felt like using a feather to slice a rock in half. Not impossible, but the laws of physics would have to be feeling very generous.
I’m not sure where the future will take me. If I have to go back into tech, will I become unhappy again? Is there a way to be an actor and tell stories, while also leveraging the power and control of coding? Can creative coding be a lucrative path, or is this one of those wrong place, wrong time scenarios?
Maybe creative coding is to 2020 as freeform jazz was to the 1910s, and it’s too early to make its mark on the mainstream (“Get outta here with that noise you call ragtime!”).
Time will tell.
I’ll close with this.
At what point in our evolutionary history did we go from developing beautiful cave art for the sake of it to becoming hyper efficient machines meant to work until we collapse or retire at 65? When did we become slaves to the very technology we create?
And most importantly, how can we take back control? How can we fulfill our creative destiny, and use the most powerful tool humanity has created thus far (the computer), and the knowledge we have shared to make the world beautiful and meaningful to the living?
I guess we’ll have to find out.