Form+Code

"Software is a tool for the mind... It encourages new and different ways of thinking." So begins page 17 in a terrific new book, Form+Code: In Design, Art and Architecture, written and designed by Casey Reas, Chandler McWilliams and LUST. Reas and McWilliams both teach in the Design | Media Arts program at UCLA, and LUST is a graphic and interactive design studio located in the Netherlands, and together they've created a broad and compelling overview of code and its impact, looking specifically at some of of the core themes in coding. After an introduction that surveys technical advances that gave rise to computers and the widespread of activity of coding, the book looks at themes such as repetition, visualization and simulation, connecting technical attributes, such as pattern and modularity, with the ways in which these get used by artists and designers. Each section of the book is full of examples, which are in turn made easily accessible via links on an accompanying website, which also includes sample code.

The book's design is lovely, capturing the divergent ways in which code gets manifested, from the visually captivating instances of image repetition to the realism achieved by some artists through code. The books key feature, however, is its advocacy for code literacy, and the idea that there is great power and creativity for all of us in being able to speak directly to computational devices. Engaging with code, in turn, alters how we think, giving us access to a new understanding of an increasingly computational world.