VISUAL PROGRAMMING AND ARTISTIC THINKING IN CONTEMPORARY MEDIA ART

Abstract

This article examines visual programming as a distinctive form of artistic thinking that has evolved at the intersection of digital technologies, conceptual art, and contemporary media practices. The rapid development of environments such as Processing, Max/MSP, TouchDesigner, and p 5.js has contributed to the emergence of new models of authorship, interactivity, and generativity, in which the algorithm operates not merely as a technical tool but as an integral component of artistic intentionality. The theoretical basis of the study draws on the works of John Maeda, A. Michael Noll, Frieder Nake, Christiane Paul, and Dominic Lopes, whose research provides philosophical, aesthetic, and methodological foundations for understanding software-based art. The article offers a detailed analysis of emblematic artistic projects-including Casey Reas’s MicroImage, LIA’s Tissue, James George and Jonathan Minard’s CLOUDS, and Jer Thorp’s Just Landed-highlighting how code structures visual processes, enables interaction, and generates procedural variability. The findings demonstrate that visual programming constitutes an autonomous artistic method grounded in algorithmic logic, systemic thinking, and dynamic forms of representation. It establishes a conceptual and aesthetic framework in which digital materiality, procedural authorship, and generative structures become central to artistic practice in the 21 st century.