Abstract

This talk will explore different ways in which thoughts can bring things into existence, and the importance of tools in this process. We will try to look critically at the current state of programming, and try to imagine different futures through experiments and demos. This talk will cover ideas ranging from visual programming languages and notebooks, through custom tooling and DSLs, to using gradient descent for running programs “backwards”. We will mainly focus on making tools, and their impact on building things, mainly in the context of computer art and sketching in code. We will look at both high-level ideas, and implementation details of the presented demos, and examine them through the lens of their usefulness when teaching, playing, making art or writing code.

Bio

I’m a toolmaker, researcher, technologist and artist from Poznań, Poland. I hold masters in Computer Science from Poznań University of Technology, and I also studied Interactive Media at Adam Mickiewicz University. My main focus is building digital tools for creative expression, data-driven interfaces and visualizations I work on professional projects through a boutique creative technology studio called flow/control I created complex ui & data visualizations for the Mayor of London, huge generative data-art for Google, tools to help Humanitarian OpenStreetMaps team track their progress, wrote low-level software for Raspberry Pi/Arduino addons, and more. I also consult on technical projects, speak at conferences, give workshops and teach (currently at School of Form in Poznań).