I spent most of the first week getting comfortable with Processing 3. I learned how to make simple geometric shapes and write code to position it where I wanted.

Processing is a unique program that allows you to write code and turn it into visual art. Even though it definitely has a steep learning curve, and it being hard to do simple things, I enjoyed it very much.

Making design using code, gives a unique opportunity to iterate different designs from a system. In the example above, you can press 'C' or 'V' to generate new random curves and values. 

All this work in Processing leads down to an assignment for Design Matters '21. For the assignment we had to make a generator that uses a tweet as an input and the spits out a visual design. 

I choose to work with the mathematic concept of Langton's Ant. Langton's Ant is turmite system that can create some interesting and unexpected patterns from a simple set of rules. In the above pictures, you can see those rules printed at the bottom. L stands for left and R for right. 

I always wanted to make something and to explore Langton's ant, so I found this an obvious possibility. I choose to just make the Langton's ant program work first, and then find out how to use the tweet to generate patterns.

These are some designs generated from tweet like the ones that could come @designmatters conferences. 

The program looks at the individual characters of the tweet and the checks if the character is in the first part of the alphabet and if it is assigns a L rule to it. If not, it gets a R rule. The color scheme is generator as a gradient from 2 randomly generated colors.

Processing is definitely going to be a part of my design workflow. I think it's such and interesting and different way of creating visual art that I ought to use it for some projects or just for fun in the future.