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Creative Code Intensive

Creative Code Intensive

Apply for the Intensive:
Studio Art Course in Computer Science

Our Creative Code Intensive is designed as a 12-week course in creative code and interactive art. Our expert instructors guide participants through a sequence of topics that are designed to build a foundation of core techniques while strengthening students’ professional practice in the field of art and technology.

Over the course of the program, students learn the technical skills and gain the creative inspiration to design, prototype and install an interactive artwork in a final public showcase attended by the creative community, industry, and museum professionals. Students explore a wide range of skills, techniques, and open tools over the course of 3 months. Instructors from different disciplines guide studio projects, group critiques, and theoretical discussions, setting students up for success throughout their major coursework.

Now accepting rolling applications for the Online 2023 Spring Session.
Deadline to apply for the online Spring Session is March 30, 2023.

Program Features

• Extend your art practice into the digital realm
• Learn how to create an interactive experience
• Scope the production of technical artworks
• Develop your artistic sensibility
• Historical understanding of creative code
• Collaborate using a javascript framework
• Learn how to teach others artistic coding
• Be able to troubleshoot and solve problems independently
• Over 100 hours of classroom instruction
• Build a portfolio of 10+ creative code projects
• A network of peers, alumni, and professionals
• Creative and professional development
• Low enrollment fee of $4,000 (monthly payment terms are available)
• Offering learners support in the midst of Covid-19

Prerequisites

The Creative Code Intensive is designed to help introduce new mediums to artists, though the pace of the program requires a certain amount of foundational knowledge in both HTML & Javascript development.

To help us gauge your coding skill level we require all applicants to take both the w3schools Javascript Quiz and w3schools HTML Quiz. Once you have completed these tests, select Check Your Answers and save a pdf of your results.

Syllabus

Week 1: Web Skills
Week 2: Javascript I
Week 3: P5.js
Week 4: Physical Computing I
Week 5: Node.js
Week 6: Web Audio (Sound Art)
Week 7: 3D for the Web (with A-Frame)
Week 8: Physical Computing II
Week 9: Projection Mapping
Week 10: Interactive Environments
Week 11: Development Week
Week 12: Final Project Public Showcase

Dates

2023 Spring Session: Online
April 4th – June 17th, 2023
Showcase Opens: June 2023

Visit Our Spring 2022 Showcase

Classes are held online
Tuesdays & Thursdays (6–9pm) &
Saturdays (12–4pm)

The application deadline is rolling and kept open until all seats have been filled. Check out our Academic Calendar for more details.

Diversity Scholarship

To help creators of all backgrounds reach their goals, we are proud to offer a diversity scholarship to sustain and advance an inclusive community at Gray Area and beyond. This scholarship is for outstanding students from diverse backgrounds that are underrepresented in higher education and the fields of art, design, and technology. Recipients will receive a $1000 discount towards partial tuition for our bi-annual Creative Code Intensive Program.

The Diversity Scholarship gives preferences to artists who identify as women, queer, gender nonconforming folks, and people of color. We highly encourage students to apply for this scholarship.

 

Student Showcase

Every Intensive session culminates with a media arts exhibition, showcasing work from students alongside artists in our Incubator program. This highly attended event invites the public and industry leaders to see new work from our artist community.

See some previous examples from final showcases below.

 

 

Over 250 alumni have joined the Immersive and our private email list which provides upcoming opportunities.

Watch a testimonial below from one of our alumni.

 

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Creative Code Intensive Project: “Water Pixels” by Francis Li
Instructor(s)

Niki Selken 👩🏻‍💻 (she/her) is an artist, technologist and educator. Niki spent over a decade working across game design, physical computing, experimental theatre, interaction design and education. As a designer and technologist, Niki focused on working with nonprofits and small businesses in the inclusion and social impact space (Ms. Foundation, Girls Write Now, LYRIC, Hesperian Health Guides) and as an educator, she taught a range of creative coding courses in both New York and San Francisco. A graduate of Parsons School of Design, Niki has taught at her alma mater, at St. Joseph's College in Brooklyn, at the University of San Francisco, at the Bay Area Video Collective and at Gray Area—where she is the Creative Development Director and manages the artist incubator and creative code education programs. Niki's work has been featured by Yahoo Tech, Buzzfeed, Make Magazine and Adafruit, among others. Niki identifies as Latina and hails from a long line of Mexican artists and craftsmen.

David Sasson is a creative technologist born and raised in the Bay Area. He holds a BA and MS in computer science from Brown University where he specialized in data visualization and human-computer interaction. David greatly enjoys building audiovisual systems for play, and is thankful to Gray Area for providing a space for this.

Michael is an engineer, team builder, and artist who is passionate about finding simple solutions to complex problems. He has spent his career helping startups build their core technologies and teams from the ground up. He has built everything from interactive computer network visualizations to zero-maintenance, solar-powered PCs for remote villages in Africa.
As an artist, Michael is interested in making tangible, technological artifacts that do not reveal their inner workings or intentions. This presents opportunities to showcase the power of technology as an instrument of both joy and misery. His aesthetic is best described as minimalist.
Michael holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from UCLA (with a focus in network protocols) and a B.A. in Computer Science from UC Berkeley.

Born and raised in Turkey; Ayse is San Francisco based, multidisciplinary advanced analytics and data visualization professional with a passion of seeing and creating beautiful things. In all aspects of life, she loves working with complexity; while finding clarity, truth and balance in it. Outside of data and design world, she's a certified yoga teacher working to bring more strength, gentleness and awareness to her communities. Her interest and curiosity in variety of areas help her build meaningful connections and understand the world as it is.

Alex Abalos is an electrician, musician, sound artist, instrument fabricator and synthesizer nerd who enjoys piecing together unlikely partners, instruments, found sounds, and venues, creating unique and meaningful experiences that help neighborhoods think outside of their barriers and boundaries. Born and raised in the San Francisco Bay to a working class, immigrant family with a mentality of “working with what you got,” Alex attributes his success to his DIY attitude. Realizing later in life that he could use it as a tool to connect with people, he brought his passion for music to alternative educational spaces where he can bridge the gap between the avant garde music that he loves and the street culture that he grew up in.

Nat is an artist and programmer currently living in the Bay Area. They grew up in California's Mojave Desert before leaving to study Computer Science at Stanford University. They have worked as a creative technologist in XR for several companies, most recently TikTok. Currently, they are taking time off to cultivate their art practice before deciding what to do next. Their work uses simulation, computer graphics, and mixed media to speculate about language, ecology, and identity. They live with a bunch of plants and isopods, and one big mystery snail.

Matthew Nelson is an educator, artist, and activist who believes in challenging systemic inequities through the radical reimagining of tech education. He is a program manager at an ed-tech organization that teaches web development to incarcerated individuals, and a musician who explores the intersection of hardware and software processes through immersive ambient compositions. Matthew's introduction to coding came in 2017 when he discovered the live-coding music platform, Sonic Pi. Since that time, he has become passionate about coding as both a professional skill and a creative endeavor.