So you want to be a… creative coder

Code is just another language, an artificial one, but a language none the less, says Zach Lieberman. You can do many wonderfully creative things with it if you stay curious, ask questions, and combine the things that interest you with code

To explain it in the most simple way possible, Zach Lieberman does playful, delightful things with tech. He’s an artist whose medium is code; he makes trippy animated blobs dance around a screen, works with magicians to create AR/VR illusions and much more.

At YesYesNo, a company he co-founded, he makes large scale interactive audio-visual installations for brands and public spaces. He developed an AR app called Weird Type which lets users create typography in ‘mid-air’; layering lettering over photos and videos in interesting and interactive ways.

He’s the mind behind The EyeWriter; an open source, collaborative project which helps people with neuromuscular disorders (i.e. people who have impaired use of their limbs) draw using their eyes. The project has developed a pair of eye-tracking glasses which reads the users’ eye movements, translating them into typographic art.

In 2013, Lieberman founded the School of Poetic Computation, which “approaches code like creative writing”, with the aim of training students to think creatively about the possibilities of coding. Here Lieberman speaks to us about how his career began, why he founded the school and more.