Processing Summits – Oxford Project I

Oct 10

Friday

Processing Summits – Oxford Project I

4 Comments Post by Ira Greenberg | October 10, 2008 – 10:50 pm | Permalink |

A few months ago I had a fleeting, very (VERY) unrealistic idea that I nonetheless brought before AIMS director Glenn Platt. The idea was this: Convert an AIMS visiting professor line into a series of on campus summits, focusing on the Processing Progamming language. And (somehow) convince the developers of the language, Ben Fry and Casey Reas, to leave Cambridge (MA) and LA respecitvely for a number of extended trips to Oxford. There were many factors that would likely derail this plan (in addition to the obvious ones), not least of which was getting the administration to sign off on a very “creative” reallocation of visiting line funds. To my surprise, Glenn loved and supported the idea and offered to present it to the provost, who also was in support. The last hurdle then (which I was pretty concerned about) was pitching the idea to Ben and Casey (who I suspected got pitched a lot of ideas). Again, the stars aligned and they too liked the idea and signed on. Currently there are three books written on Processing, mine, Ben and Casey’s and NYU researcher/instructor Dan Shiffman’s. Since fate seemed to be directing this effort, I decided it would be good to try to also include Dan and bring all the Processing authors together; Dan jumped aboard.

Dan, Ben and Casey

From September 18-21, we had our first Processing summit, code named Oxford Project I. It was a great gathering–processing talk around the clock, lots of code, good food and a great developing chemistry. We had numerous discussions about Processing 1.0, which is very near release, as well as the future of Processing. Dan and I got a wonderful insider’s view of Processing, and Ben and Casey got some fresh perspectives and ultimately some long term help. Dan signed on as the tutorials czar, and I took over hacks.

I think by all accounts Oxford Project I was a great success, and now we’re currently preparing for Oxford Project II, to take place November 20-23 at Miami. This next gathering, two new developers will be joining us: Andres Colubri, a grad student in Design|Media Arts at UCLA and Julio Obelleiro, a grad at the Electronic Vizualization Laboratory at UIC. The focus of the next summit will be OpenGL and video.

Following the November gathering, 4 more summits are planned: 1 at UCLA, 2 more at Miami and 1 at NYU.

A very special thanks to Glenn, AIMS admin superhero Kate Pace, Provost Jeff Herbst and Miami for making this all possible.

Some other perspectives on the event:

Dan’s blog

Casey’s blog

Post Tags: Ben fry, Casey Reas, Code Art, Processing

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4 Responses to “ Processing Summits – Oxford Project I ”

mandellc
Oct 14, 2008
Reply
The Oxford Project is amazing. I went to some major digital humanities conferences last year, from THATCamp at George Mason’s Center for History and New Media to DH2009 in Finland. Processing is all the rage among the folks doing Humanities computing. We are trying to think about how to visualize texts to enhance our understanding of them, and Processing holds out the most promise. Kudas, Ira, for keeping Miami at the forefront. — Laura
Ira
Oct 14, 2008
Reply
Thanks Laura! That a high comment from someone on the pre-bleeding edge.
Small Business Ireland
Mar 12, 2009
Reply
Does anyone else have any experience with this?
Samuel L.
Apr 22, 2009
Reply
After reading through this article, I just feel that I need more information on the topic. Could you share some resources ?

About The Author: Ira Greenberg

With an eclectic background combining elements of painting and programming, Ira Greenberg has been a painter, 2D and 3D animator, print designer, web and interactive designer/developer, programmer, art director, creative director, managing director, art professor, and author. He wrote the first major language reference on the Processing language, Processing: Creative Coding and Computational Art, friends of ED, 2007. Ira holds a BFA from Cornell University and an MFA from the University of Pennsylvania.Ira has steadily exhibited his work, consulted within industry, and lectured widely throughout his career. He was affiliated with the Flywheel Gallery in Piermont, New York, and the Bowery Gallery in New York City. He was a managing director and creative director for H2O Associates in New York's Silicon Alley, where he helped build a new media division during the golden days of the dot-com boom and then bustâ€”barely parachuting back to safety in the ivory tower. Since then, he has been inciting students to create inspirational new media art; lecturing; and holding residencies at numerous institutions, including Trinity College (Dublin, Ireland), University of Edinburgh (UK), University of Iowa, University of Northern Iowa, Seton Hall University; Monmouth University; University of California, Santa Barbara; Kutztown University; Moravian College; Northampton Community College's Digital Art Institute; Lafayette College; Lehigh University; the Art Institute of Seattle; Studio Art Centers International (in Florence, Italy); and the City and Guilds of London Art School (UK).Currently, Ira is Associate Professor at Miami University (Ohio), where he has a joint appointment within the School of Fine Arts and Interactive Media Studies program. He is also an affiliate member of the Department of Computer Science and Systems Analysis. His research interests include aesthetics and computation, expressive programming, emergent forms, net-based art, artificial intelligence (and stupidity), physical computing, and computer art pedagogy (and anything else that tickles his fancy). One of his passions is torturing defenseless art students with trigonometry, algorithms, and object-oriented programming, and he is excited to spread this passion to the rest of the world. He is currently at work on a new Processing book due out spring 2009.Ira lives in charming Oxford, Ohio with his wife, Robin; his son, Ian; his daughter, Sophie; their squirrel-obsessed dog, Heidi; and their night prowler cat, Moonshadow. When not sitting aimlessly in front of his laptop, you can usually find Ira getting checked against the boards at the local ice rink.

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