Panel Statement 

Panel: Computer Programming Education and Creative Arts

Computer programming education often focuses on the algorithmic design, with its step-by-step problem solving and thinking process. Logic and procedure are the building blocks for most education materials for teaching and learning computer programming. Students spend a lot of efforts to struggle with the syntactic correctness of the codes and the semantic soundness of the logic. Gradually, they developed the tendency to avoid every form of bugs and errors. On the other hand, media art and digital design practices have adopted increasing use computer programming to deliver the outcomes. In creative arts, we, however, treasure students’ risk-taking and self-exploratory abilities, and that may go in the opposite direction with the error avoidance attitude they develop in the encounter of computer programming. The presentation proposed the investigation of visual composition principles of graphic design in order to understand and relate with the practices of computer programming. Classic texts in graphic design, such as books from Wucius Wong and Ellen Lupton have already incorporated the use of computer software to illustrate and explain the visual concepts with the use of computer-generated examples. In the presentation, I would like to further establish the missing link between visual grammar and the linguistic grammar of the procedural programming languages. Students’ sample works and teaching materials will be drawn from one of my courses, Evolutionary Graphics, from the Academy of Visual Arts, Hong Kong Baptist University, and Generative Arts, from the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong.

• Dr. Wai Ching Chung (Bryan),  Academy of Visual Arts, Hong Kong and Baptist University, Hong Kong

Full text (PDF)  p. 399-400