A creative programming session that is designed for those who are interested in the idea of artificial life. It’s a great opportunity to find out more about contemporary digital art practice concerning artificial life, generative collage, programming and narrative.

Participants will learn about the context, art practice, critical discourse, and techniques concerning artificial life, and the theories and art practice concerning the interrelation between life and technology.

You’ll learn technical skills for using artificial life algorithms (some examples of Game of Life) and real-time image processing function through Processing and HTML, and to incorporate the results into real-time montage and collage using artificial life systems.

This workshop will aim to demystify the technologies and help participants see the critical or contextual values beyond the technical utility.

No computer programming skills necessary, although basic computer skills required. Please see list below of what you will need to bring with you to the workshop.

About the Artist

Shinji Toya is a London-based multi-media artist born in Japan. He is currently a Visiting Practitioner at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design. Toya’s practice is predominantly digital in the process and involves a range of diverse disciplines such as video, computer programming, Internet, installation, and painting. The approaches of the practice may be described as multimedia poetry, multimedia collage, and speculative design of algorithmic systems. http://shinjitoya.com/

*Please bring your own laptop with the pieces of software below pre-installed:

 – Processing (https://processing.org/download/)

– HTML editor:

            – Atom (https://atom.io/)

            – or Brackets (http://brackets.io/)

– Web browser:

            – Chrome (https://www.google.com/chrome/)

            – or Firefox (https://www.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/new/)

*Please be noted, the workshop will mainly run for computers with the MacOSX platform. If your laptop is not running on MacOSX (for instance if you are a Windows user), please understand you may be able to install and use the same software as above to attend the workshop. But, it is not guaranteed that those who use a non-MacOSX computer can fully participate with all the workshop activities. In addition, likely the facilitator will not be able to advise on or help with any OS-related problems or questions for the non-MacOSX computers during the workshop.

This workshops is part of our Trajectories II exhibition, Technology Never Sleeps.