Introducing The Creators Project Lecture Series

In case you haven’t noticed, we’re assembling quite the braintrust over here in the form of our ever-growing roster of Creators. Representing the best and the brightest of their respective fields, these innovators are changing the way we think about the role of the artist and his or her creative process with the help of technology. The best place to absorb some of their wisdom is sitting front row at one of our panels, workshops or meetups, but we understand that may not be possible for the vast majority of you. So, let us present The Creators Project Lecture Series.

We’ve started recording and archiving our very best panels, lectures, and meetups so we can put the conversations online and share them with all of you, regardless of what far-reaching corner of the world you live in. The series launches with three of our favorite panels from the past year:

The Artist As Researcher Panel, filmed at The Creators Project: New York 2011
Today’s artists are engaging in a form of creative inquiry with technology that’s not too far removed from what goes on in the world’s laboratories. At our New York event last year, Zach Lieberman of YesYesNo, Jamie Zigelbaum and Marcelo Coelho of Zigelbaum + Coelho, and Rejane Cantoni and Leonardo Crescenti of Cantoni & Crescenti discussed how research plays into their artistic practice and the artist’s role as researcher.

The Art Hackathon Panel, filmed at The Creators Project: San Francisco 2012
The winners of our Art Hack Weekend SF take the stage to present their projects and discuss the importance of creative hackathons for bringing innovative ideas to the forefront, why it’s crucial to experiment with and “hack” emerging technology, and the fading divide between “artist” and “programmer.” They’re joined by Creator Aaron Koblin and Josette Melchor, Executive Director of Gray Area Foundation for the Arts.

Artist Talk with Casey Reas, filmed at Intel Labs in April 2012
Artist and UCLA professor Casey Reas discusses his own artistic practice, focused on process-driven generative artworks that build upon the tradition of artists like Sol Lewitt, except using software as a medium. He also talks about Processing, the immensely popular open source creative coding language he co-created with Ben Fry.

With The Creators Project Lecture Series, we hope to make our Creators more accessible to you because hearing it direct, straight from the source, is always the best way to obtain information. Trust us, we know. We could barely wrap our heads around Processing and the idea of “Drawing with code” until Casey Reas broke it down for us in his lecture, with animated diagrams and examples to boot.

At our San Francisco event, Reas turned the concepts behind generative drawing into an actual drawing workshop—with, like, markers and paper and stuff. Below, we’ve selected three of our favorite drawing exercises from his talk for you to experiment with at home.

This last one is based on the code of designer Jared Tarbell. When he creates these drawings with code, they look a little different:

Stay tuned for more talks, panels and workshops from The Creators Project Lecture Series in the months to come!