Programming

In case you weren't aware, there is actually a whole mastodon instance dedicated to this subject! Take a look at https://genart.social/tags/genuary2026 for some recent examples. Many posters include details of what software they are using or links to their code

SuperCollider

Does writing SVGs by hand count?

I'm usually programming, but I've got a few bits and pieces that can be shared:

• Weird blobs
  • made while offline on a plane, uploaded later
  • https://codepen.io/spartanatreyu/pen/mydyrea
• Cellular automata experiment
  • A classic for anyone exploring creative coding
  • https://codepen.io/spartanatreyu/pen/ExEqmaJ
• CSS-only mosaic pattern
  • Was exploring how different browser engines render the same instructions differently, ended up with this. Changing the zoom also affects the visual
  • https://codepen.io/spartanatreyu/pen/Yzbmvbr
• Fixed grain noise texture overlay on animated elements
  • Was experimenting with a textured shadow effect inspired by the music video Lorn - Anvil
  • https://codepen.io/spartanatreyu/pen/qBKBgPN
• CSS/SVG water color text effect
  • A friend wanted a water color effect on a website, I knew that a simple SVG shader could do it and came up with this as an example for them that they could customise later. For those who don't know SVGs were originally intended to be a shader language. Plus by using an SVG as a shader instead of canvas, the text is treated as text (selectable, accessible, etc...)
  • https://codepen.io/spartanatreyu/pen/xggjWz
• An animated background experiment
  • https://codepen.io/spartanatreyu/pen/OYrWpW

The rest are too experimental, or are released commercial projects.

Ah, the real generative art, before 'AI generative "art"'

You should look into shader art. Basically "drawing" using code that runs purely inside GPU. Which reminds me I recently found an artist that does this with code that fit within Twitter character limit. Sadly I can not remember the name rn.

Open-source projects to make music:

• https://github.com/bintracker/bintracker
• https://tildearrow.org/furnace/

OK, it's not code but still fun though.

ChucK is a "programming" language: https://chuck.stanford.edu/

I made a sorting algorithm visualizer.

https://sciactive.github.io/libsortjs/demo/

It’s not really any different than a lot of other sorting algorithm visualizers. It has some additional features, like different visualizations, but it doesn’t have sound.

I didn’t do it to make something better though, I did it to make it myself. I wanted to implement all of those sorting algorithms myself, which was very fun.

I don’t know if you consider that art, but I think it can be beautiful, so maybe.

(Btw, it will happily crash your browser if you try to sort an enormous list using a really inefficient algorithm, so be careful.)

During covid I tried out processing with python, I threw my code up on github: https://github.com/GammaGames/processing

Random rainbow with a gamma that I sometimes use for my banner:

Some blossoms I got from unsplash:

My tattoos are all simulations I built and ran

I personally enjoy playing around with fractals - I've built several fractal rendering programs (this is the latest), and they are quite fun to play around with. While they are more art from math than art from code, there are a lot of creative things you can do in code to visualize different features of fractals - Inigo Quiles has great examples of this, as well as non-fractal procedural art such as SDFs.

Through trial and error on https://nudel.cc/

I did make some things using html canvas which I think can be considered art.