This is the world's first book specializes and focus on openFrameworks, aim at learning openFrameworks with practical sample works as including variety of samples from basic to advance. openFrameworks is C++ framework, and it is the most remarkable programmings in the field of media art and interaction design.This book is suitable for everyone; beginners with no experience of programming or has interests in media art and interactive design, and also for who already has programming skills such as Processing and Flash but looking for more powerful programming environments.
Author: Atsushi Tadokoro, Satoru Higa, Akihiro, Kubota
Price: 3,400 yen + tax ( ISBN 978-4-86100-670-8 )
Format: 256 x 184 mm, 304 pages ( Full Color )
Language: Japanese / Release date: 24th February 2010
welcome
openFrameworks is a toolkit for creative coding in C++, designed to help artists, hackers, and experimenters jump in and make software with minimal overhead.
It began in 2004, when I was teaching a group of graduate students at Parsons School of Design in New York City, and I wanted to give them a set of tools, similar to the kinds of tools I was using as a practicing artist, to make their work with. I had just started teaching and other professors warned me, Art students aren’t going to want to learn coding, and definitely not with C++. However, my students proved them wrong. Not only were they able to understand and jump in to the code in a way no one could never have predicted, they were able to make great, creative, compelling works.
Since those early days, the openFrameworks team has grown. We are now three core developers: Theo Watson, Arturo Castro and myself, and work with an ever larger development team. The OF community has also grown, but the roots of openFrameworks - a tool designed to help beginners get up and running has always stayed the same.
In addition to teaching and making artwork, I sometimes feel that I am also working as a preacher. One thing that I often preach is that artistic practice is a form research, just like the other sciences. In the way that a company would have a R&D (research and development) department, to develop products of the future, artistic practice is a form of R&D for humanity, imaging possible futures. openFrameworks is an attempt to take this idea of “art making as laboratory” seriously -- we publish our research in the form of open source tools. In that way, the code is /use driven/: we take the things we learn as we make projects and put them back into the toolkit to help others make work.
Another idea I preach is DIWO (Do it with others). There's been a big push recently for DIY culture (Do it Yourself), things like Make magazine and Instructables. The next step is doing with others. With openFrameworks, we've been trying to foster a tight community of hackers and experimenters, meeting both online, but also in workshops, informal gatherings, and research labs. We've even had the privilege of teaching several workshops in Japan, including YCAM (Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media) and Kyushu University, each time we've been excited by how diverse and enthusiastic the OF community in Japan is.
The last thing I often preach is that making art is not hard, writing software, even in C++ is not (that!) hard, and we should try to have as much fun as possible along the way. It's my sincere hope that you have fun with this book, that you have fun with openFrameworks, and that if you are not already a part of the community, *welcome*.
Developer of openFrameworks
Zachary Lieberman