We were generously given permission to publish the English text online. The full text is at CreativeApplications.net and the beginning is here:

Technical mastery and innovation are part of the rich history of visual design. The printing press is the quintessential example of how a shift in design technology can ripple through society. In the Twenty-First Century, innovation in design often means pushing the role of computers within the visual arts in new directions. Writing software is something that’s not typically associated with the work of a visual designer, but there’s a growing number of designers who write custom software as a component of their work. Over the last decade, through personal experience, we’ve learned many of the benefits and pitfalls of writing code as a component of a visual arts practice, but our experience doesn’t cover the full spectrum. Custom software is changing typography, photography, and composition and is the foundation for new categories of design practice that includes design for networked media (web browsers, mobile phones, tablets) and interactive installations. Most importantly, designers writing software are pushing design thinking into new areas. To cut to the core of the matter, we asked a group of exceptional designers two deceptively simple questions:

1. Why do you write your own software rather than only use existing software tools?

2. How does writing your own software affect your design process and also the visual qualities of the final work?

The answers reflect the individuality of the designers and their process, but some ideas are persistent. The most consistent answer is that custom software is written because it gives more control. This control is often expressed as individual freedom. Another thread is writing custom software to create a precise realization for a precise idea. To put it another way, writing custom code is one way to move away from generic solutions; new tools can create new opportunities. Experienced designers know that off-the-shelf, general software tools obscure the potential of software as a medium for expression and communication. Writing custom, unique tools with software opens new potentials for creative authorship.

The Pace Digital Gallery presents Codings, an exhibition curated by Nick Montfort, from 28 February – 20 March 2012:

Codings shows the computer as an aesthetic, programmed device that computes on characters. The works in the show continue and divert the traditions of concrete poetry and short-form recreational programming; they eschew elaborate multimedia combinations and the use of network resources and instead operate on encoded letters, numbers, punctuation, and other symbols that are on the computer itself.

The exhibition includes work from Giselle Biguelman, Adam Parrish, Jörg Piringer, Casey Reas, and Páll Thayer.

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Anderson Ranch (Snowmass, Colorado)
http://www.andersonranch.org/

July 16 – 20, 2012
From Digital to Physical: HYPE Framework and a Techno-Isel CNC Router
Joshua Davis

July 16 – 20, 2012
Scrapyard Challenge
Jonah Brucker-Cohen, Katherine Moriwaki

30 July – 3 August, 2012
Processing: Visualizing Data and Creating Code
Ira Greenberg

August 6 – 10, 2012
Studio Mashup: Photography, Video and Processing
Casey Reas

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Shakerag (Sewanee, Tennessee)
http://www.shakerag.org/workshops/

June 10 – 16, 2012
Moving and Shaking the World: Physical Computing for Artists
Shawn Decker

June 17 – 23, 2012
Curious Systems: Explorations in Art and Algorithmic Behavior
Chris Sugrue

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Eyeo Festival (Minneapolis, Minnesota)
http://eyeofestival.com/theprogram/

These are three-hour workshops that run on June 5, 2012

Each of the artists in this exhibition uses data as a source to define  the visual outcome of the pieces. Random Access explores the stories  that are revealed as data becomes visualized as works of art. Joelle Dietrick mixes data regarding foreclosed homes and Sherwin-Williams 2007  Color Forecast paints. Reese Inman uses mapping source imagery of an existing space and remixes it with the visual surface of another to  create a visualization of the space between them. George Legrady focuses on aesthetic research through integrating data mapping, data  visualization and self-organizing algorithms into interactive art  installations. Nathalie Miebach translates scientific data related to astronomy, ecology and meteorology into woven sculptures. Casey Reas illustrates the forms, behaviors, and elements that are the foundation of software that combines drawing with generative processes to explore a  network.

Interested in combining the creative potential of new photographic and software technologies? This workshop considers how modern software is used by artists to reproduce traditional tools, manipulate photographs and splice together video. Come see what happens when we combine photography with emerging ideas within creative coding to explore the potential of a hybrid image/software space. Use the Processing programming language to explore techniques such as altering images pixel by pixel and slitscanning, working with live camera feeds and scripting languages for altering images.

The details are available on the Anderson Ranch Website.

William Rowe visited my studio early this fall. He shot this interview for Protein.

An exhibition featuring work from myself, Hans Dehlinger, Jean-Pierre Hébert, Manfred Mohr, Vera Molnar, Frieder Nake, Roman Verostko, and Mark Wilson. The exhibition runs from 19 November 2011 to 14 January 2012, with an opening on 18 November from 7 – 9 pm.

Tensioned threads, a large scale mural, filigree drawings – gallery [DAM] Berlin is happy to invite you to the exhibition Think Line 2 where you can get involved with an expanded form of drawing using algorithms. The exhibited artworks range from large to small pieces from a spectrum of 40 years of media art. Along with the some pieces the exhibition attaches as well the written concept of them. This allows the viewer to follow (or understand) references and different ways of realization.

In her installation Rectangle Path Vera Molnar takes up an idea, an algorithm, from 1997 and executes this work for the first time as a thread installation of 3 x 3 m size. Rectangle Path follows the rules of concrete art, but opens up the strict concept by using an organic material. “A line is a dot that went for a walk” (Paul Klee) – after the thread has walked its long geometric path, his tail lies soft and formless on the ground.

Casey Reas presents a 4 x 3 m sized mural based on his Tissue Series. This series goes back to 2002 and visualizes the movements of thousands of synthetic neural systems creating delicate formations and a rich visual output by drawing fine lines. In an earlier interactive version of the software people were able to influence the movement of the lines by positioning a group of points on the screen.

Manfred Mohr exhibits 3 small plotter drawings from the early 1970s that he developed even before focusing on the cube. These works are shown for the first time ever.

New large plotter drawings from his series of “blurred” images will be presented by Hans Dehlinger. These pieces evoke an irritating impression of blur for the human eye by overlapping structures created by very fine lines.

The paper works from Mark Wilson are based of fine geometric multilayered structures. They are dense landscapes that Wilson creates in bright high-contrast colors. The exhibition features new works as well as a piece of 2 m length which was shown in the exhibition Ornamental Structures at the Stadtgalerie Saarbrücken this summer.

Seven Sisters – The Pleiades is a series of 7 colored plotter drawings inspired by the Taurus zodiac sign. Roman Verostko created them in his typical style emphasizing the nature of a shining star by using leaf gold in the upper part of the plotter drawing. From this family of 7 similar “sister-forms”, 2 pieces are featured in the exhibition.

The delicate plotter drawings by Jean-Pierre Hébert are likewise influenced by the Asian masters. His characteristically abstract dense structures have their seeds in natural systems, but are as well the result of a precisely defined concept.

Frieder Nake, who was beneath the first representatives of this art form by exhibiting plotter drawings together with Georg Nees already in 1965, shows some of his earliest pieces.

Curated by Gund Gallery director Natalie Marsh, the inaugural exhibition Seeing/Knowing explores the experience of information in contemporary art. After 50 years of new media culture—the world of TV, the internet, and virtual reality—and 50 years of new media art—creative computer-based and digital expression—technological ways of thinking have permeated the creative processes of artists working in all media. Gathering together works of art from multiple continents, Seeing/Knowing offers a global view of the expanded ways that art represents thought.

@sansumbrella (David Wicks)
writing is the most direct interface for describing systems and interactions.

@peregrintook
code is a medium; many tools constrain you to narrow subgenres. Knowing the fabric and pigments of the medium permits exploring more.

@voxels (Michael Edgcumbe)
so I can understand why the choices underlying the design seem like the most elegant solution

@barrythrew (Barry Threw)
Because the tools don’t exist to accomplish what I want to do. There is nothing more I would like than not to have to write software.

@robmyers (Rob Myers)
to learn, to gain understanding, to not be limited by affordances, and to be able to share all of this

@simonski (Simon Gauld)
why? because programming is a creative expression itself

@vormplus (Jan Vantomme)
because it’s easier to iterate through ideas and compositions. “Industry standard” tools don’t allow me to do this.

@brainSteen (Christopher Warnow)
When code goes through my hands, it has my gesture in it. Else it would be like painting with another cold dead hand holding a brush.

@eskimobloood (Andreas Köberle)
With other peoples software I can replicate other peoples dreams, with my own software I can dream my own.

@manovich (Lev Manovich)
Because writing software is a form of thinking and making theory; its a big part of cultural analytics strategy

@AlexKarasev (Alex Karasev)
Somebody has to write those tools! Not me; I just write “glue pieces” filling the functionality gaps. Some folks write to stay current

@miskaknapek (Miska Knapek)
1. it’s much more fun 2. existing software doesn’t conform to my way of working/desires 3. i want to be free :)

@admsyn (Adam Carlucci)
I use existing tools to make things that don’t exist yet (or I hope they don’t, anyway)

@madronalabs
Why do you write rather than just reading words other people have written?

@lankybutmacho
That’s the beauty of Processing for me: coding as exploration/research. Also, then the product can be concise & elegant without bloat.

@lennyjpg (Leander Herzog)
adobe is a cheeseburger, processing is like crack. it should have a warning on it. i gave it my hand and it ate my arm.