Medialab Prado

"Every artist must decide if they will work collaboratively or directly with software and this has a major impact on the work. Working directly with code leads to a deeper understanding of the conceptual potential of the medium. The number of artists writing their own software has increased significantly in the last thirty five years, especially since the introduction of the personal computer. Another increase in software literacy happened with the rapid adoption of the Internet in the mid 1990s. While the communities of artists writing software continues to grow, there are many remaining cultural and technical barriers to be removed. One of the largest obstructions is the lack of tools for writing software created for the needs of artists. Existing programming languages and environments have been written by software engineers to meet their specific needs which have always been different from the needs of artists. The open source software movement has provided a way for artists to collaborate on the production of their own tools. It's my hope these open source art software initiatives(6) will serve as a catalyst for a dramatic shift in the use of software within the arts."

Excerpt of Casey Reas' site http://reas.com/texts/processdrawing-ad.html