Creative Coding for Absolute Beginners

2022

A series of beginner-friendly creative coding workshops for people without any coding experience.

[ Watch recordings on YouTube | View code examples in p5.js Web Editor ]

2022 | Creative Coding Workshop at Sikka Art and Design Festival, Dubai, UAE 2022 | Creative Coding Workshop at Sikka Art and Design Festival, Dubai, UAE
2022 | Creative Coding Workshop at Dubai Design Week, Dubai, UAE

In early 2022, I was invited by organizers of Sikka Art and Design Festival, an annual event housed in Al Fahidi Historical Neighborhood in Dubai, to teach workshops at the event. I decided to offer two introductory creative coding workshops that teach participants how to use p5.js, a creative coding framework that focuses on making code accessible and inclusive. These workshops were very successful, with participants ranging from professionals to elementary school students and stay-at-home moms. I was very touched by the enthusiasm of the participants, which inspired me to continue offering similar workshops at other events for free.

2022 | Creative Coding Workshop Series at New York University Abu Dhabi
[ Watch recordings on YouTube ]

Most recently, I offered this series at DigitalFUTURES 2023 and ITP Camp 2024. Here is a list of workshops in this series:

Workshop #1: Let’s Start Sketching Workshop #2: Repeat, Repeat, and Repeat
This workshop provides an overview of creative coding and helps participants get started with sketching using p5.js. This workshop shows how repetition can be used to create mesmerizing patterns and seamless transitions.
Workshop #3: Beauty of Noises Workshop #4: Object-Oriented Creativity
This workshop introduces Perlin noise, an algorithm that helps to make sketches appear more organic and natural. This workshop introduces object-oriented programming and how it can be used to create interactive sketches.
Workshop #5: Virtual Reflections Workshop #6: Friendly Machine Learning
This workshop shows how a webcam can be incorporated to create sketches that reflect images like a mirror. This workshop demonstrates how to create sketches that respond to body movements using pre-trained machine learning models in ml5.js.

You can watch recordings of this workshop series on YouTube or view code examples in p5.js Web Editor.