“Do You Have Time For Butterflies?”

Computer Programmed Short Film using Processing Programming Language

Thank you for enduring my writing, design, & code.

Inspiration

This project in particular has been an exercise in “time” to allow me a space to think philosophically, “Do you have the time to look at butterflies?”

On a more technical inspirational level, I was inspired by the animator, composer, and inventor, John Whitney—considered to many as the father of computer animation—who did tremendous digitally harmonious work that drew me to my own abstract film titled “Do you have the time to look at butterflies?”, because I was interested not in the complexity of the code, the flashiness/gimmickry nature of digitized art, but out of the desire to explore sequential art and experimental motion graphics through computer programming. I am very thankful for one of my dearest friends, Katherine Yang, for supplementing and aiding me toward learning how to use if-else statements and more in my programming. Also Kris Yuan was a huge influence! She taught me patience, love, and kindness.

Moreover, I am thankful for the opportunity this semester to take IML 288 that allowed me fundamental knowledge to create sequences and animation in my art work. Because of the audio-visual composition of my work, I did exactly what I intended to do from the very beginning: make an abstract art animation film exploring time. One sketch built upon a sketch!

The Narrative

Moreover, another work that drew particularly to use very basic shapes and minimal style is “The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics (1965)”, a short film that won the Academy Award for Animated Short Film. It is a captivating work that personally informed my own story as I reimagine my protagonist in a one-dimensional universe like the on in “The Dot and the Line” , which deals with a personal narrative of a undefined shape that comes into existence as an ellipse but explores her self as other shapes, morphing and shifting, through different undefined parts of her lives as a square, triangle, and eventually I hope the viewers come to understand that for the undefined shape that is not hopelessness in the lost passage of time. Instead, there is time to actualize and realize your potential, and eventually the shape chooses to become a butterfly, and there is beauty in there because she isn’t alone. She is a butterfly among butterflies. I think similarly to human nature no matter how different, radical, or intense we are as human beings, some of us want to build communities and understand that our love is reciprocated. But, I am honestly open to other people’s interpretation of this short film/drama. I am still practicing with writing, although at times my writing is messy and chaotic. I sincerely enjoy writing to get it out of my head space into the virtual world/sphere or physically on paper with no rhyme or rhythm.

Time is a pressuring foe in this narrative that demands a lot of things, and as much as there is consciousness to defy time and pursue one’s own desires and wants, it is an incredibly antagonistic force in the drama. Much of the writing is honestly hopeless and bleak, and near the end the drama is supposed to re-loop to ACT I from ACT VII revealing the cynical, cyclical nature of how all of us are this shapeless blob that must learn the conditioning and personalities of lives. We must all begin to peel behind the social constructions and understanding of who we are to become who we are. . .but it seems as if we can’t transcend that knowledge to everyone. So, that experience is an isolated experience for every user and person to experience endlessly. And, it is an endless cycle of the doom of realizing too late who we are, which is unfortunate. It takes a while for many people to learn who we are.

Iterations via Sketches!

One of my favorite things about this project was the multiple revisions! My messy code but ideas all visualized!

Some Example Of Code!

Please click through the images to read my code!

Personal Reflection On Coding As a First-Gen

Female Humanities Major

The aim of this class was to learn how to code through Processing (open-source code built and supported by an amazing community that sees the positive possibility of open source programming language) that has allowed artists, designers, and pretty much anyone to create new media, electronic arts, and visual art. Processing Foundation also has the mission of teaching the basics of computer programming through a visual lens. Particularly, what I love about Processing is how radical and political it is as a programming language that focuses both on software literacy and visual literacy within technology.

With each program I created, which is adorably called sketch, I started to question the hegemonic foundation of coding. Traditional coding dictates a resolution of solution and defined goal from the offset of the first line of “code” that is written. However, the nontraditional, radical goal of Processing programming language allowed organic, fluid programming with the aim of allowing the sketch to drive human creativity and exploration. Sketching after sketching, I realized the power of natural human thinking to process ideas and translate them into code built upon each other than for an intended purpose.

Inspired by BASIC and LOGO, Processing was intended to be a program that focused on creating visual, interactive media, and the first program of it focused on initializing “drawings” and “sketching” and introduced students to the awe-inspiring ideas of them making something from the mind into something that materialized from their codes immediately.

Despite the mainstream consciousness of Processing—many people who are in the tech industry and in my college tech culture—many do not know the history or the power of processing and its wide-reaching, innovative coding curriculum that has been the backbone of many visual arts programs in art schools and traditional universities. (“In a National Science Foundation-sponsored survey, students in a college-level introductory computing course taught with Processing at Bryn Mawr College said they would be twice as likely to take another computer science class as the students in a class with a more traditional curriculum.”)

Recently, I’ve been interested in utilizing the power of narrative to transcends those artificial borders that delineate poetry from cinema. Above all, I am interested in emerging aesthetic media that highlights the technical aspects of design but also has philosophical considerations of design and art. Having a passion for global knowledge of literature and a consciousness of equipping myself with vocabulary to discuss complex issues and a passion for simplifying and deconstructing complexity into simplicity, I was mesmerized yet intimated by the impact and power of Processing! Because it allows me to do many things: design my sketch, write my code, direct my film, and be able to empower myself the ability to create from beginning to end.

The most important aspects of Processing is its radical philosophy of empowering visual artists and non-traditional computer science programmers to explore, research, visualize, and PERMIT themselves a space within computer science/ programming. Much of the barriers that prevent many people from exploring these fields is lack of barrier (whether it starts at feeling uncomfortable in people first introductory classes or feeling afraid of seeking help). IML 288: Critical Thinking and Procedural Media within USC’s Media Arts and Practice program has inspired me to seek ways utilize fundamental computer science principles, algorithms, and creative coding community to visualize my vision with the available technology resources.

If it wasn’t for the work of Casey Res and Ben Fry who started the Processing programming language project in 2001, there wouldn’t be this reimagining possibility of using programming for more artistic, creative, and even socially impactful projects. The work they did coming out of MIT Media Lab (out of John Maeda’s Aesthetics and Computation research group) came out of the idea of the intersections of ideas and technologies. The results of being able to see how computer science and graphic design were not mutually exclusive, they combined what would describe as “visual principles of design with ways of thinking about systems from computer science.”

Much of the history of processing can be read here on their Medium post, A Modern Prometheus:The History of Processing by Casey Reas and Ben Fry. But, it can not be understated how the accessible the program is for emerging visual artists like myself. For the longest time, I thought of myself as a lesser artist because most of what I make is online and digital media; however, through the understanding of the beauty of Processing, which invited me to the possibility of using my basic programming knowledge to understand that allowed me to create canvas sizes (with pixels), set the parameters of colors, reimagining anything I could think of into the spaces that allow 2D art, interactivity, movement, speed/velocity, and visualizing with such ease, allowed me a chance to reclaim that self-identifying title of artist.

One day I hope to expand this personal essay to explore the design of Processing environment called the PDE, the Processing Development Environment. I am very happy I had an opportunity from August 2018 to December 2018 to live through code and technology. On a personal level, coding has never been easy for me. But once I started to take initiatives to explore math again by reviewing trigonometry and reading my textbook, I started to become more confident. Then, once I had all my big commitments out of the way during the beginning of the semester, I started to really think about programming on both abstract and practical level. As someone who is not practical, it as difficult for me to open the programming screen and feeling comfortable to write any code. I felt like a imposter that I was lying to myself for weeks that I could do the same things that everyone else in my class could, but once I started to do it and also watch my other peers. . . I wanted to impress people who mean a lot to in that class.

As a result, building comradeship is one of the MOST important aspects of coding, because that is how you can compare and contrast your gaps in knowledge. Other people reviewing and guiding your codes are one of the most important aspects of coding. Although, I knew the code, I still had a hard time recalling how to code or even construct my code once I left class. So, I found a way that I could compromise with: that if I don’t anything then I should ask someone. If I didn’t know anything then I’d google it. And, if I really didn’t know it, then to ask my classmates and professors for their solutions and see their perspectives to approach coding. As someone who values feelings before logic, and it doesn’t mean that I am illogical or irrational, it is just my primary mode of learning and doing is based on a fixed sets of ethical and moral guidelines that is my own instructions of rules of how I run and live my life. (This is an interesting metaphor between my morals—the instructions of my life—and code which are literally sets of rules and instructions on how to write a program). Having to force myself to think outside the box, think logically, and think in a way that was different all proved to be difficult but very valuable experiences that can translate into writing future sketches to allow me to explore more mental exercises in empathy, because I was focusing in ways to think about things I wouldn’t typically think about in my own self-centered, normalized ways.

Overall, while I can cite so many statistics and anecdotes about what prevents women and girls from learning how to code, I personally don’t think there isn’t as a necessity to learn coding to get a job. I think learning for the sake of learning enhances a person’s perspective and allows people to have a better literacy of what kind of life they want to lead, what kind of role they want to have in society, and overall acknowledge the many tools to think broadly, critically, and deeply.

I am happy with my end result, because I get to write poetry in a technical, computational way. I’ve taken web development classes with the intention of being a designer or professional in the tech industry, but I find that my original intentions long ago no longer reflect what I want now, because the pursuit of an education for a professional end goal is dull and meaningless. But, now I know how empowering and wonderful education is for the sake of building community, social justice, and the genuine pursuit of happiness. Whether it is coding together with one or two people, I believe that is empowerment. Or, being motivated to continue to read about tech news and researching internet/tech histories, I am equipping myself a lifelong skill of learning more than just coding but being able to read and write code in its entirety—from its philosophy, history, and personal quirks.

To whoever is reading this, future employers or people who randomly stumble upon this, I want to say learn everything because it will make your conversations interesting, it will make your life enriching, and make everything in life better. While I did make something technical, I made it with the sole intention of making something personal and enriching for the soul.

One quote that definitely shaped how I viewed about learning has been this:

"We are very good at preparing to live, but not very good at living. We know how to sacrifice ten years for a diploma, and we are willing to work very hard to get a job, a car, a house, and so on. But we have difficulty remembering that we are alive in the present moment, the only moment there is for us to be alive.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

Thanks to this class I hope to make kind, soft, and poetic computational art, because that’s how I want to live my life radically.