Code, machines and data techniques that can be brought into practice.
A Linz, Austria–based institution exploring art, technology and society. It comprises a festival, the Prix Ars Electronica competition, a museum (the Center) and the Futurelab R&D unit.
The International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology, publisher of Leonardo, the journal founded by Frank Malina in 1968. It is a long-standing home for research and criticism at the intersection of art and science.
A cultural facility in Tokyo Opera City Tower, Hatsudai, Tokyo. Since opening in 1997 it has presented exhibitions and an archive on the dialogue between science, technology and the arts.
An arts centre in Yamaguchi, Japan, opened in 2003. Its in-house R&D team, YCAM InterLab, works with artists to develop and present works using media technology.
A cultural institution for art and media in Karlsruhe, Germany. It combines exhibition, collection, research and production of media art, and has staged major exhibitions on art, science and technology.
A mathematics channel that explains linear algebra, calculus, number theory, neural networks and more through animation. Its way of building understanding through moving diagrams is a model for turning mathematics into film.
The site of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan's project for turning astronomical research into images. It offers Mitaka, free software for travelling from Earth out to the large-scale structure of the universe, along with simulation-based films and VR works — reference material for visualising celestial motion and orbits.
A personal site collecting algorithm experiments and visual toys. Fractals, reaction–diffusion, chaos, the n-body problem, boids, the travelling salesman problem, Voronoi diagrams and more can be set in motion and explored in the browser.
A desktop drawing machine that holds a pen and draws vector images such as SVG onto paper. Widely used for plotter art, its site provides product information, control software and documentation — a way to turn code-generated lines into real pen drawings.
An article listing signed distance functions for primitives such as spheres, boxes and tori, along with operations like union, subtraction, intersection and smooth blending — all with GLSL code. A reference dictionary for building solids from equations.
A browser-based globe that renders global wind, temperature, ocean currents, waves and other weather data as flowing streaks, with switchable projections and layers. Its way of drawing a vector field as countless moving particles carries straight over to visualising mathematical vector fields.
A Japanese project led by artist Ei Wada that rebuilds retired household appliances into electronic instruments and plays them as an ensemble. CRT televisions, electric fans and barcode readers become instruments, built with participants in several cities and performed at concerts and festival-style events — an inspiring way of turning everyday machinery directly into material for expression.
A huge archive of mathematical and physical simulation images by a researcher at École polytechnique in France, with more than ten thousand pictures and animations grouped by theme — real numbers, fractals, quantum physics, astronomy and more. The site is old-fashioned and easy to get lost in, but it is still being updated.
A Japanese art unit that presents itself as a small electrical-goods manufacturer. It builds its own mechanical instruments and devices and takes them to live shows, exhibitions and even mass-produced toys. The official site covers works, performances and products.
A collection of musical toys to play in the browser. Musical Spirograph turns a spirograph into musical patterns; others include pendulum waves, Polyrhythm with its polygons, Cellular Sequencer built on the Game of Life, and Wave Drawer for drawing a waveform and hearing it — many let you see and hear a mathematical mechanism at work.
The official site of a Japanese composer and artist who works with sound and data. It organises his large-scale audiovisual installations such as datamatics and supersymmetry, his concerts and his recordings by series. A leading example of making numbers and data themselves into the work.
Under the banner "Coding Adventures", this channel implements fluid simulation, ray tracing, terrain and planet generation and more from scratch. You see how physics and algorithms turn into images step by step, which makes the techniques easy to adopt.
The website of a British artist duo. Working from scientific data gathered during stays at research facilities, and from astronomical tracking, they turn natural forces and scales of time into films and installations. Their choice to keep the noise and roughness of measured data is a useful reference for turning scientific data into moving images. The "Field research" section shows how the work grows out of time in labs.
A creative-coding channel built around p5.js and similar tools. Its "Coding Challenges" build small pieces on fractals, prime spirals, physics simulations and other mathematical and natural phenomena from scratch, on camera. By the same author as The Nature of Code.
Articles on computer graphics, mathematics, shaders and fractals. Its explanations of signed distance functions and raymarching are standard references for anyone drawing shapes with equations.
A studio that designs products and artworks with simulations inspired by natural processes. Founded in 2007 by Jessica Rosenkrantz and Jesse Louis-Rosenberg, it makes 3D-printed jewelry, jigsaw puzzles and more.
An open-source C++ toolkit for creative coding. It handles graphics, video, sound and sensor input, and is used to build large installations and performances.
A JavaScript library that brings the Processing approach to the web browser. It is designed to be accessible to artists, designers, educators and beginners, with an extensive reference and examples.
A personal site with a vast collection of notes and examples on geometry, fractals, curves and surfaces, visualisation and dome projection. Equations sit alongside code, making it a long-standing reference for makers.
A flexible software sketchbook and language for learning to code within the visual arts. Started in 2001 by Casey Reas and Ben Fry and now stewarded by the Processing Foundation, it remains a classic entry point to generative art.
A Tokyo-based creative team including Daito Manabe. It uses data, sensing and robotics to create media artworks and to stage live performances.
An artist and researcher working on human–machine collaboration, known for performances and installations in which the artist draws together with self-built robotic arms.
A Japanese art collective of artists, programmers, engineers, mathematicians and architects. It creates immersive digital installations that respond to visitors, shown in Japan and around the world.
A book by Daniel Shiffman on simulating natural systems with code. It covers physics, particles, autonomous agents, cellular automata, fractals and genetic algorithms with p5.js, and is freely readable online.
A node-based visual programming environment developed by Derivative in Toronto. It is widely used for real-time visuals, projection and sensor-driven interactive work.
A generative artist who uses algorithms to create painterly work. Besides the work itself, the site publishes essays explaining techniques such as flow fields.