Creative code is a multitouch prototype I made for media class at University. The task was to create a folder (print/movie or digital) about/inspired by important designers and artist from the last century. The context of it should be a fictional exibition of the specific designer. I chose Ben Fry and Casey Reas and wanted to create a tool which is fun to interact with but also tries to illustrate the concept of using custom programs/code to create art.
In concept the multitouch application would be placed as some sort of terminal in an exhibition about generative art. A screensaver encourages the visitor to interact with it since most people are not used to multitouch in their daily life.
The main tool is just a blank canvas you can draw and move circles on. You can toggle different behaviours to get various visual results.
The bottleneck of the whole thing is that you can flip the canvas and see some pseudocode, explanations and controls of how the current image gets created. The toggles are also available there to see the direct impact on the code and output as soon as you toggle something. The "codeside" is kept in a really sketchy style to enhance the metaphor of using code as a brush or artistic tool in general.
The program is not finished at all but it's enough to proof the concept I had in mind.
Everything about the software aswell as the hardware setup was done really quickly and roughly but the video is still ok i guess.
I know the title is a total rip off from john maedas book but it simply fits perfect for the application and since reas and fry are his students there is nothing wrong with that.

Technical details:
I wrote a small 2D Verlet Physics engine which can handle up to 500 particles with collisions at 60fps (on my 3 years old MBP). I could have used box2D but I thought it would be a good chance of learning a little bit more about physics simulation.
Other than that it uses a work in progress version of the next ofxTuio client for openFrameworks I am working on from time to time. Tracking is done with CCV :)

If you want to have a little more insight about the concept I can recommend you to look at the linked concept designs.

Music:
Paul Kalkbrenner - Queer Fellow(excerpt)