New York City-based artist Zach Lieberman sort of stumbled into his latest project, which mixes illustration and coding. “My step-daughter was having trouble falling asleep by herself at the time and so I would hang out in her room, read some books and then as she tried to sleep, I’d code a sketch and in the morning show it to her,” he shared with Medium. “I was happy to show her that art-making is daily work and small discoveries.”
But what began as a way of passing the time – a cool experiment shared between a father and his daughter – blew up, when he posted his unique artwork on Instagram. Now he creates primarily with code, focusing on building experimental drawing and animation tools. “My main focus is how computation can be used as a medium for poetry,” he says.
In his sketches, Lieberman tries different visual ideas involving geometry, animation, gesture, and graphic form. “I had no idea what to expect but it felt like a good new years resolution and a nice way to experiment with some ideas I had been thinking about,” he says.
“The sketches are the opposite of work to me, so I try to be totally un-work like,” he explains. “I don’t use GitHub, I don’t keep code clean, I just make and record without thinking very carefully about anything. I sketch up until the point I think it’s interesting, record it, post it and clock out. It’s the opposite of how I approach commercial work. When I sketch I want to work as messy and mindlessly as possible — I don’t plan, I just see where the wind blows.”
Take a look at some of his “computer poetry” in the gallery below:
