Product Description

If you're interested in creating cutting-edge new media art, you've come to the right place! Processing, available at processing.org, is a revolutionary open source programming language and environment designed to bridge the gap between programming and art, allowing artists to learn programming fundamentals as easily as possible, and programmers to produce beautiful creations using math patterns. With the software being freely available, it provides an accessable alternative to using Flash for creative coding and computational art. This book is written especially for artists, designers, and other creative professionals and students exploring code art, graphics programming, and computational aesthetics. The book provides a solid foundation in basic programming and the easy-to-grasp Processing language, so no previous coding experience is necessary. The book then goes on from here, through the basics of lines, shapes, and motion, coontinuing to to the point where you'll have mastered Processing and can really start to unleash your creativity, with realistic physics, interactivity, and 3D! Summary of Contents Introduction: Chapter 1. Code Art Chapter 2. Creative Coding Chapter 3. Code Grammar 101 Chapter 4. Graphics Programming the "fun easy" Way Chapter 5. Processing Language Chapter 6. Lines Chapter 7. Curves Chapter 8. Shapes Chapter 9. Value and Color Chapter 10. Motion Chapter 11. Interactivity Chapter 12. 3D

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #216943 in Books
• Published on: 2007-06-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 840 pages

About the Author
The author is a professor at Miami University, and teaches this stuff all
the time. He will be instrumental in getting to book exposed to his course,
and similar courses who could use the book as course material. He seems
very enthusiastic to do so. He had this to say:
"The Center for Interactive Media Studies at Miami will adopt the book as a
textbook. I also plan on lecturing and leading workshops on Processing/code
art at other institutions/conferences and of course plugging the book."
He is also speaking at a book promotion at the International Digital Media
and Arts Association Conference, April 6-8 2006 at Miami University. The
conference will have many academic and professional attendees in the
digital arts area. The book will be showcased here.

Customer Reviews

Just because it wasn't written by Ben Fry, don't overlook this book
Of the three books available on Processing at the minute, Ira Greenberg's book is the one for those with the least background in computer science. The author manages to explain some difficult concepts of programming using great concepts and simple English, and even includes an appendix covering all the bits of algebra that I've forgotten since school.

While some reviewers of this book say that the first 200 pages can be removed, you'd be missing out a clear introduction to the language and the concepts behind Processing, interspersed with some code. If you are already well versed with Processing or Java, this might be quite dull for you, but I personally found the writing fresh and interesting.

To sum up, this is almost certianly a great introduction to Processing and programming for artistic purposes, but if you are looking for a blow-by-blow reference to Processing in a paper form, you would be better off with the Reas & Fry book. This 800-odd page text is perhaps best for those without a firm background in programming, but are willing to learn. If that's the case for you, then this book is certainly one to consider.

Lots of unorganized code
In respect to Reas' book on the Proce55ing language, this one remarkably fails.
You can tear off the first 200 pages, unless you're interested in a bland history of computer science / art mixed with doubtful examples of what can proce55ing do.
Concepts are presented pretty unorganised.
Projects presented are not that interesting.
The author is logorrheic and too "confidential" (I hate that fake colloquial - yo buddy - style)

I rated it 3 stars just because at the moment there are only 2 books on this language.
I repeat: Reas one in my opinion is much better, and probably even better will be the one by Daniel Shiffman :)

a Customer
As a technologist and budding artist I have been eager to explore Processing's 3D & animation capabilities. This book was recommended to me as a great way to quickly and simply discover the potential within this open source program and has allowed me to apply many cutting-edge methods to my projects both within work and recreationally. I would definitely recommend this book to any creative looking to develop their programming skills to produce visually engaging computational art.