Create a-personal-history-of-the-creative-coding-zeitgeist.mdx

Author: jules-kris

blogs/2026/a-personal-history-of-the-creative-coding-zeitgeist/a-personal-history-of-the-creative-coding-zeitgeist.mdx

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+---
+title: "A Personal History of the Creative Coding Zeitgeist"
+description: "Julien shares his personal history of the creative coding zeitgeist."
+seoImageLink: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/codedex-io/blog/refs/heads/main/blogs/2026/my-intro-to-creative-coding/assets/header.png
+uid: 
+dateCreated: 2026-08-27
+published: beta
+tags:
+  - Community
+  - Resources
+---
+
+## Hi There
+I will be honest. I have been feeling a sense of malaise about the state of creative technology. 
+
+Yikes. It feels strange and forbidden to say that out loud. I'm a creative tech educator. 
+
+Where is the spark I once felt? Is this just a classic kind of nostalgia that hits you deeper in your career, when you're several years removed from early career idealism?
+
+I have wanted to excavate the spark that got me into Creative Technology in the first place.
+
+To do that, I'm going to dive into a history. I'm calling this A Personal History rather than The History since I'm just one Julien. :~)
+
+## Who Is He
+Depending on who you ask,
+
+```txt
+Julien Kris is a Senior Curriculum Developer at Codédex. Before that, he was a Creative Technologist in Advertising, a UX Engineer in Tech, and a Tutorial Developer in Open Source. He has taught at An Art School™️ in NYC. He holds a bachelor's degree in Design Media Arts from A Public University in California.
+```
+…or
+```txt
+Julien Kris is the prince of soups and silly dances, constant doodler, eldest brother, artist & code person interested in play, former ESL student, current bookworm, cowboy boot collector, aspiring botanist, and occasional baker.
+```
+Let's hear it for multitudes.
+## Book Of Ideas
+To set the stage, I'm going to ask you a few questions.
+- Is interactivity magic? <sup>1</sup>
+- If the internet just stopped working one day, what is the first thing we would miss? <sup>2</sup>
+- How can we build systems that embody more than just human agendas? <sup>3</sup>
+These are all quotes from artists who contributed to the [Eyebeam Book of Ideas (2016)](https://www.eyebeam.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Eyebeam-Book-of-Ideas-1.pdf). 
+
+Specifically, these are questions from artists <sup>1</sup> [CHiKa](https://imagima.com/), <sup>2</sup> [Joanne McNeil](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joanne_McNeil), and <sup>3</sup> [Tega Brain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tega_Brain).
+
+Before I moved to New York, I visited a handful of times. In 2017, the summer before my senior year of college, I visited a dear friend here, right around the time [Eyebeam](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyebeam_(organization)) was moving to their new location. They were having a studio sale. I dug through bins and bins of nuts and bolts and microcontrollers, with an actual shovel. 
+
+![image]()
+Ancient artifacts at the yard sale
+
+I found old CD-ROMS and even some floppies. And, most importantly, I found the [Eyebeam Book of Ideas (2016)](https://www.eyebeam.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Eyebeam-Book-of-Ideas-1.pdf), a book of ideas, queries, and meditations by artists who had completed Eyebeam's residency program.
+
+![image]()
+Another gem from the Book of Ideas
+
+I opened it, and was struck by a familiar brain-buzzing feeling. I felt such a sense of possibility, looking at the recent history of Making, thinking through my own potential future of Making.
+
+I was panicking about what life would look like after I graduated college in 2018, oscillating between trying to commercialize my design practice to land a gig, and leaning into the weirdo creative tech stuff I held so dearly. I figured it out about as much as I could without smoothing out my edges too much. At least not forever. More on that later.
+
+So, what has shifted between then and now? What came before? Let's investigate.
+
+## History
+The Creative Technology industry, like any other industry, goes through trend cycles. Creative Tech is unique in its position between ~Art & Technology~. It encompasses art, design, technology, computation, academia, software engineering, commercial production, and ✨more✨.
+
+You can check out a more complete [Creative Tech Timeline](https://github.com/laserpilot/creative-tech-timeline) by Blair Neal, but for the sake of this blog I'm going to talk about what has most intimately and immediately formed my world.
+
+So where did it all begin?
+
+### MIT Media Lab
+The MIT Media Lab, founded in 1985, has taken on a nearly mythological quality for engineers and designers alike. It's made up of specialized research groups that graduate students can apply to for hyper-focused studies. They all have super interesting names like Mediated Matter, Opera of the Future, Lifelong Kindergarten, Sculpting Evolution, and so many more.
+[Muriel Cooper](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muriel_Cooper) was a pioneering designer who was the MIT Media Labs Co-Founder and its first Director, as well as the Design Director for the MIT Press. At her death in 1994, she was the first (and only!) female tenured professor at the lab.
+
+![image]()
+Muriel Cooper, Poster to promote The Bauhaus, 1969
+
+### Processing & p5.js
+My first exposure to creative coding was [Processing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Processing), the first widely used programming language for artists, invented by Casey Reas and Ben Frye in 2001 while they were graduate students at the Aesthetics and Computation Group at the lab. Processing was inspired by John Maeda's 1999 project, [Design By Numbers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_By_Numbers), developed in the same research group. 
+
+![image]()
+Some early Processing examples from 2003
+
+I stumbled across Processing in 2014 after a lifetime of avoiding coding (I'm an artist! I don't code…), and quickly found myself making my [very first game](https://www.codedex.io/projects/build-a-conversational-game-in-p5js) with the language.
+
+Processing led to the development of [p5.js](https://p5js.org/people/) in 2013, a JavaScript framework created by Lauren Lee McCarthy that brought the functionality of Processing to the web. This took Processing from something that could only exist locally (with occasional ports to the web) to a fully fledged JavaScript library. It could now be seamlessly integrated into websites of all kinds.
+
+Processing exists within an ecosystem of creative coding. Here is a diagram from Casey Reas's [2018 blog post](https://medium.com/processing-foundation/a-modern-prometheus-59aed94abe85), connecting Processing to some other languages you may have learned in school or here on [Codédex](https://www.codedex.io/p5js).
+
+## Academia
+[Talk about the way academic programs are structured to respond to what artists are making/what the industry is making/how that loop works]
+
+### UCLA Design Media Arts
+UCLA's Design Media Arts program recently announced that they'll be splitting their degree into [3 separate bachelor's degree programs](https://www.design.ucla.edu/events/announcements/dma-launches-three-new-majors). When I attended, it was one huge interdisciplinary program with 3 concentrations:
+- Visual Communication & Image
+- Video & Animation
+- Interactivity & Games
+All under one bachelor's degree program. The concentrations only applied to students senior thesis classes but were not formally reflected on their degrees.
+
+The new structure will be 3 distinct BA degrees:
+- [Design](https://www.design.ucla.edu/programs/design) (encompassing visual design and motion)
+- [Games](https://www.design.ucla.edu/programs/games) (its own field separate from Interactivity)
+- [Computational Art](https://www.design.ucla.edu/programs/computational-art) (ding ding ding! Our creative coding degree).
+
+### NYU ITP
+[Fill this out]
+
+### CMU STUDIO for Creative Inquiry
+[Fill this out]
+
+## Can You Vibe Coding Learning?
+Nah, but [teaching is weird right now](https://garden3d.substack.com/p/can-you-vibe-code-learning).
+
+A lot of the time, when I tell people I teach coding, they immediately ask if/how my industry is changing with AI. 
+
+No shade, but it feels like a kneejerk question, almost obligatory, the way your aunt might ask if you're still single during the holidays. Ok, maybe not that bad.
+
+But it really is weird. Every exercise I write, I am accounting for the fact that people could easily use AI as a shortcut and never actually absorb anything. I try to justify my own work by reminding myself that there is still value in [Coding The Web From Scratch](https://www.codedex.io/blog/coding-the-web-from-scratch).
+
+People who want to understand the code they're writing will do the work to actually learn to code. And they continue to! Despite the increasing temptation to outsource technical thinking to a robot.
+## ~The Industry~
+Oh, the industry. As a bright eyed and busy-tailed undergraduate, I wanted nothing more than to become a Creative Technologist. In my mind, this would entail making a living from creative direct interactive art for clients who wish to be delighted. The industry itself turned out to be pretty different.
+
+I remember I had a UX interview for one of the FAANGs 🧛 my senior year, and I confidently explained that the games in my portfolio were designed to be mysterious and not entirely knowable. The engineer on the other line was silent. You can see why I didn't move forward. 
+
+The industry eats itself. This has contributed wildly to my malaise.
+
+In my time working, I've observed the following progression:
+
+Microsites -> Interactive Installations -> Augmented Reality -> Mixed Reality -> Trend cycle falls off -> AI Boom.
+
+Hiring cycles have followed the ups and downs of the industry. Creative Tech teams at agencies sit on the bench and then get laid off and get rehired, first as freelancers and then as full-timers depending on where the industry is in the trend cycle.
+
+If you look at the moodboards for these agencies, they're often digging through Pinterest for decontextualized/decapitated inspo. 
+
+Blair Neal's [Advice for Creative Technologists]​​(https://ablairneal.com/advice-for-creative-technologists) has an excellent bit about how CTs can ethically work with creative technology when they are inspired by artists without ripping them off.
+
+> Respect the arts and artists. There are a lot of parallels with projects you’ll work on and things going on in the art world. Make sure you’re taking time to gather inspiration from those works and uses of technology. However, there is a fine line between feeling inspired by something and ripping it off — make sure you’re following good ethics. If you find yourself getting too close to an existing work, work with your team to change the direction — or reach out to the original artist directly. Make sure you give back to the arts community as well — donate money or time, host meet ups, do some writing, contribute to open source initiatives, etc.
+## Influencer Culture
+[Creative tech influencers]
+
+[Maybe this could fold into the industry section rather than being its own section]
+
+## Brain Buzz 2.0
+I've been searching for the spark again.
+
+A friend reminded me of [CLOUDS](https://vimeo.com/917357948), an interactive documentary made in 2014, capturing the state of Creative Technology at the time. The film interviewed 40 artists and technologists, but rather than just taking video, it captured their interviews immersively using depth cameras and openFrameworks.
+
+Trailer: https://vimeo.com/917357948
+
+Unedited snippets: https://vimeo.com/42852185?fl=pl&fe=vl
+
+The open source code was literally released on GitHub: https://github.com/CLOUDS-Interactive-Documentary/CLOUDS 
+
+## Hopeful Conclusion
+[Neat sentence to wrap up my feelings]
+
+Alternative models:
+- [EMMA Coop](https://emma.coop/) 
+- [School For Poetic Computation](https://sfpc.study/)
+
+## Resources
+- [Creative Tech Timeline by Blair Neal](https://github.com/laserpilot/creative-tech-timeline)
+- https://medium.com/processing-foundation/a-modern-prometheus-59aed94abe85
+
+
+