AC

Research Platter

Full knowledge base for Aesthetic Computer papers and research.
362 pieces · 76 lib modules · 95 functions · 162 plans · 109 reports · 8 studies · 87+ readings · 28 papers
No matching documents.
▼

Papers

28 publications
Aesthetic Computer '26 — A Mobile-First Runtime for Creative Computing (arXiv, 5pp) Aesthetic Computer '26 — JOSS Summary (2pp) Pieces Not Programs '26 — The Piece as a Unit of Creative Cognition (arXiv, 4pp) notepat.com '26 — From Keyboard Toy to System Front Door (arXiv, 3pp) KidLisp '26 — A Minimal Lisp for Generative Art on a Social Platform (arXiv, 6pp) KidLisp '26 — JOSS Summary (3pp) AC Native OS '26 — A Bare-Metal Creative Computing Operating System (arXiv, 5pp) Repository Archaeology '26 — Tracing the Evolution Through Git History (arXiv, 4pp) KidLisp (ELS 2026) — A Minimal Lisp for Generative Art with Social Composition (ACM SIGS, 4pp) KidLisp Language Reference '26 — 118 Built-ins in 12 Categories (arXiv, 4pp) Whistlegraph '26 — Drawing, Singing, and the Graphic Score as Viral Form (arXiv, 4pp) Radical Computer Art '26 — Goodiepalian Approaches in Aesthetic Computer (arXiv, 4pp) Dead Ends '26 — Failed Experiments and Abandoned Approaches (arXiv, 4pp) Who Pays for Creative Tools? '26 — Funding, Burnout, and Survival (arXiv, 4pp) Network Audit '26 — Who Uses AC and What Do They Make? (arXiv, 4pp) Citation Diversity Audit '26 — Diversity and Inclusion in AC Paper Citations (4pp)
▼

Dashboards

visual indexes
live Jeffrey's Instagram — 457 confirmed-self selfies from @whistlegraph, face-matched and GPT-4o described
▼

Opinions

4 essays · rendered at aesthetic.computer/opinion
md Lotus Notes and the Blank Canvas 2026-03-19 md Digital Art as Medium; NFTs as Mechanism 2026-02-22 md What Is Happening to Writing? 2026-02-19 md You Are Not (Just) Your Brain 2026-02-17
▼

Whistlegraph

10 scores · pieces · album · zine · paper
Paper & Cards
Whistlegraph '26 — Drawing, Singing, and the Graphic Score as Viral Form (arXiv, 4pp) Whistlegraph '26 — Cards format Dansk Español 中文
Graphic Scores (10 — Feral File edition, 2022)
Butterfly Cosplayer png Time to Grow png I Don't Need an iPhone png Lately When I Fly png Loner png Mommy Wow png People Pleaser png Slinky Dog png Puzzle png What's Inside Your Heart png
Performance Videos
Butterfly Cosplayer mp4 Time to Grow mp4 I Don't Need an iPhone mp4 Lately When I Fly mp4 Loner mp4 Mommy Wow mp4 People Pleaser mp4 Slinky Dog mp4 Puzzle mp4 What's Inside Your Heart mp4
TikTok Compilations
Butterfly Cosplayer compilation mp4 Time to Grow compilation mp4 I Don't Need an iPhone compilation mp4 Lately When I Fly compilation mp4 Loner compilation mp4 Mommy Wow compilation mp4 People Pleaser compilation mp4 Slinky Dog compilation mp4 Puzzle compilation mp4 What's Inside Your Heart compilation mp4
Album
Music 2 Whistlegraph 2 — intro video mp4 Music 2 Whistlegraph 2 — cover webp Music 2 Whistlegraph 2 — spines webp
Pieces (AC Runtime)
wg.mjs Hub — practice, record, learn wgr.mjs Recorder — real-time stroke drawing + audio capture whistlegraph.mjs Launcher/router whistlegraph-cards.js Interactive card viewer (Feral File edition)
Context
Form invented 2019 · Trio: Jeffrey Alan Scudder, Alex Freundlich, Camille Klein (2020–2023) 2.6M TikTok followers · Rhizome / New Museum commission (2022) · Feral File exhibition (2022, 45 ed.) Zine: 60pp, ed. Asher Penn (Sex Magazine), essay by Jacob Ciocci (Paper Rad), 750 copies (2023) Studio album: Music 2 Whistlegraph 2 (Dec 2022, prod. Charlie Kamin-Allen) Trio separated Nov 2023 · Form feeds directly into AC's piece model and prompt-as-instrument metaphor Merle Nunneley — article on Whistlegraphs (UCL London) txt
▼

Runtime Source

boot · bios · disk · 76 lib modules
Core Runtime (3 entry points)
boot.mjs Entry point — loads BIOS, service worker, WebSocket module loader bios.mjs Main runtime coordinator — piece lifecycle, routing, API surface module-loader.mjs WebSocket-based dynamic module loading + hot reload
Core Libraries (key modules)
lib/disk.mjs Disk API — graphics, audio, input, UI (~572KB, the main piece API) lib/graph.mjs Graphics primitives — wipe, ink, line, box, circle, plot, paste lib/kidlisp.mjs KidLisp evaluator — 118 built-in functions, 12 categories lib/pen.mjs Pen/touch/mouse input handling lib/keyboard.mjs Keyboard input + event system lib/speaker.mjs Audio output — Web Audio API, synthesis, samples lib/microphone.mjs Audio input — mic capture, analysis lib/ui.mjs UI components — Button, TextInput, cursors lib/text.mjs Text rendering — bitmap fonts, write/type lib/store.mjs Persistent storage API lib/socket.mjs WebSocket client for real-time features lib/parse.mjs URL/command parsing — piece:param:colon routing lib/num.mjs Math utilities — random, lerp, clamp, dist, vec lib/geo.mjs Geometry — Box, Point, Line primitives lib/help.mjs In-app help system
Rendering & GPU
lib/gl.mjs WebGL2 rendering context lib/glaze.mjs Post-processing shader pipeline lib/webgpu.mjs WebGPU renderer lib/gpu-primitives.mjs GPU accelerated drawing primitives lib/gpu-effects.mjs GPU shader effects lib/3d.mjs 3D rendering support lib/2d.mjs 2D canvas operations
Music & Audio
lib/midi.mjs Web MIDI — keyboard, controller, instrument support lib/chord-detection.mjs Real-time chord recognition lib/melody-parser.mjs Musical sequence parser lib/note-colors.mjs Note-to-color mapping lib/radio.mjs Radio streaming
Shared Modules (system + session)
shared/filter.mjs Content filtering shared/redact.mjs Content redaction shared/kidlisp-syntax.mjs KidLisp syntax highlighting shared/audio-analyzer.mjs Audio analysis utilities
▼

Readings Library

48+ texts with full-text extracts
Art Theory & Aesthetics
BIBLIOGRAPHY.md Full bibliography check-in with tier rankings Susanne K. Langer — Problems of Art (1957) txt Rudolf Arnheim — Art and Visual Perception (1974) txt Paul Klee — Pedagogical Sketchbook (1925) txt Wassily Kandinsky — Point and Line to Plane (1926) txt Mierle Laderman Ukeles — Manifesto for Maintenance Art (1969) txt Ruth McEnery Stuart — Gobolinks (1896) txt · rough
Media & Critical Theory
Marshall McLuhan — "The Medium is the Message" (1964) txt Friedrich Kittler — "There is No Software" (1995) txt Mark Fisher — Capitalist Realism (2009) txt Viktor Shklovsky — "Art as Device" (1917) txt Theodor Adorno — "Punctuation Marks" (1958) txt Graham Harman — "Revenge of the Surface" (~2011) txt Rosa Menkman — The Glitch Moment(um) (2011) txt · 2199 lines Rosa Menkman — A Vernacular of File Formats (2010) txt · 1298 lines Rosa Menkman — Beyond Resolution (2020) txt · 2747 lines Philip Auslander — Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture (Routledge, 2nd ed. 2008) borrow · archive.org Philip Auslander — "Live from Cyberspace, or, I was sitting at my computer this guy appeared he thought I was a bot" (PAJ 70, 2002) txt · condenses the Liveness argument into chatterbots Philip Auslander — "Looking at Records" (TDR 45:1, 2001) txt · OCR'd preprint Philip Auslander — "The Performativity of Performance Documentation" (PAJ 84, 2006) txt Philip Auslander — "Music as Performance: Living in the Immaterial World" (Theatre Survey 47:2, 2006) txt
Making & Materiality
Tim Ingold — "The Textility of Making" (2009) txt Tim Ingold — Lines: A Brief History (2007) txt David Joselit — "Marking, Scoring, Storing, and Speculating" (2016) txt Michael Gallope, Natilee Harren, John Hicks (eds.) — The Scores Project (Getty Research Institute, 2025, text CC BY-NC 4.0; images excluded) txt · 7687 lines
Music Theory & Cognition
Carmel Raz — Hearing with the Mind: Proto-Cognitive Music Theory in the Scottish Enlightenment (Oxford University Press, 2025, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) txt · 12048 lines
Computing & Language
Ron Eglash — African Fractals (1999) txt Friedman & Felleisen — The Little Schemer (1996) txt Dr. Robert van Engelen — "Lisp in 99 lines of C" (2022) txt Felix Roos & Alex McLean — "Strudel: live coding on the Web" (ICLC 2023) txt
On Jeffrey's Work
Merle Nunneley — article on Whistlegraphs (UCL London) txt Asker Bryld Staunæs — "Stiegler's Concept of Idiotext" (2021) txt Thomas Lawson — "Last Exit: Painting" (Artforum, 1981) txt Goodiepal / Sami Sänpäkkilä — The Goodiepal Equation documentary transcript (2017, auto-generated English from YouTube) txt · 1505 lines
Social Software (UCLA SoSoft)
Casey Reas — Software Art References (2000+) txt · curated index Casey Reas — Nam June Paik's Social Software (Smithsonian research, Mar 2026) txt Casey Reas — Social Software Reading List #001 (Winter 2026, 16 texts) txt Digital Art Enters the Museum Age — 8 institutional exhibitions 2018–2025 txt Carlos Sanchez — Conversation (May 2025) no content available at source
Software Art & New Media Theory (from SoSoft list)
Alexander R. Galloway — Protocol: How Control Exists after Decentralization (MIT Press, 2004) txt · 10498 lines Lev Manovich — Software Takes Command (Bloomsbury, 2013) txt · 13804 lines Matthew Fuller — Behind the Blip: Essays on the Culture of Software (Autonomedia, 2003) txt · rough OCR Vilém Flusser — Into the Universe of Technical Images (U Minnesota Press, 2011) txt · 6910 lines McKenzie Wark — A Hacker Manifesto (Harvard UP, 2004) txt · 6402 lines Christopher M. Kelty — Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software (Duke UP, 2008, CC BY-NC-SA) txt · 15808 lines Wendy Hui Kyong Chun — "On Software, or the Persistence of Visual Knowledge" (2005) txt · 1133 lines Gene McHugh — Post Internet (Link Editions, 2nd ed. 2019, CC BY-NC-SA) txt · 11839 lines Domenico Quaranta — Beyond New Media Art (Link Editions, 2013, CC) txt · 11337 lines Domenico Quaranta — In Your Computer (Link Editions, 2011, CC) txt · 8511 lines Philip Galanter — "What Is Generative Art? Complexity Theory as a Context for Art Theory" (2003) txt · 894 lines Eric S. Raymond — The Cathedral and the Bazaar (O'Reilly, rev. ed., OPL) txt · 11446 lines Olga Goriunova (ed.) — Readme 100: Temporary Software Art Factory (2006) txt · 5366 lines Addie Wagenknecht (ed.) — Deep Lab (Frank-Ratchye STUDIO, CMU, 2014) txt · 5482 lines Lev Manovich — The Language of New Media (MIT Press, 2001) scanned PDF · needs OCR Wendy Hui Kyong Chun — Programmed Visions: Software and Memory (MIT Press, 2011) MIT OA · needs extraction Matthew Fuller (ed.) — Software Studies: A Lexicon (MIT Press, 2008) Monoskop · blocked Mansoux & de Valk (eds.) — FLOSS+Art (GOTO10, 2008) Monoskop · blocked
Games & Play
Ben Robbins — Microscope RPG (2011) txt
Platform Hegemony & Critique-as-Content (Sucking the Complex)
Human Rights Watch — "Video Unavailable": Social Media Platforms Remove Evidence of War Crimes (2020) txt Claire Bishop — "Digital Divide: Contemporary Art and New Media" (Artforum, Sept 2012) txt · full text from Monoskop PDF Jerry Saltz — "MoMA's Glorified Lava Lamp" (Vulture, Feb 2023) paywalled · source Martine Syms — "The Mundane Afrofuturist Manifesto" (Rhizome, 2013) txt · reconstructed from multiple sources Kyle Chayka — Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture (Doubleday, 2024) book · no open access Anil Dash — "NFTs Weren't Supposed to End Like This" (The Atlantic, Apr 2021) txt · summary + follow-up (paywall) Strafella & Berg — "Twitter Bodhisattva: Ai Weiwei's Media Politics" (Asian Studies Review, 2015) paywalled · academia.edu Eyal Weizman — Forensic Architecture: Violence at the Threshold of Detectability (Zone Books, 2017) book · no open access Kylie Budge — "Objects in Focus: Museum Visitors and Instagram" (Curator, 2017) txt · abstract only (Wiley paywall) Joanna Zylinska — AI Art: Machine Visions and Warped Dreams (Open Humanities Press, 2020, CC BY-SA) txt · 4823 lines
▼

Citation Diversity

audit & reading list
Current Audit (across 9 papers, 68 unique works cited)
Women authors: ~11% (9 of ~80 unique authors) Non-US/UK/EU authors: ~5% Black / Indigenous / LatAm / Asian scholars: ~6% Goal: each paper cites at least 30% women, 20% non-Western authors Full audit paper: Citation Diversity Audit '26 (4pp PDF)
Women in Creative Coding & Live Coding
Joana Chicau — "Choreo-graphic-hypothesis" (web choreography as live coding) Shelly Knotts — "Algorithmic Interfaces" (ICLI 2016) txt Amy Alexander — software art, browser-based performance Phoenix Perry — physical computing, game design pedagogy Allison Parrish — "Language models can only write poetry" (2021) txt Kate Compton — "Casual Creators" (ICCC 2015) txt Ramsey Nasser — non-Latin programming languages (قلب), language design
Black Computing & Technology Studies
Ruha Benjamin — Race After Technology lecture (Harvard, 2019) txt Safiya Umoja Noble — Algorithms of Oppression introduction (2018) txt André Brock — Distributed Blackness introduction (2020) txt Charlton McIlwain — Black Software (2019) — no open access available Ron Eglash — African Fractals (1999) [already cited] txt
Latin American Creative Coding
Hernando Barragán — Wiring: Prototyping Physical Interaction Design thesis (2004) txt Hernando Barragán — "The Untold History of Arduino" txt Aarón Montoya-Moraga — creative coding education, p5.js community Cássia Bel — live coding, feminist creative tech (Brazil) Andrés Monroy-Hernández — Scratch community research [already cited]
Asian & Non-Western Media Theory
Yuk Hui — On the Existence of Digital Objects (2016) — digital ontology, technodiversity Yuk Hui — interview on Recursion and Contingency (2019) txt Hito Steyerl — "In Defense of the Poor Image" (2009) txt Kodwo Eshun — More Brilliant Than the Sun (1998) txt Sadie Plant — Zeros and Ones (1997) txt
Indigenous & Decolonial Computing
Lewis, Arista, Pechawis, Kite — "Making Kin with the Machines" (2018, CC-BY 4.0) txt Sasha Costanza-Chock — Design Justice introduction (2020, MIT Press OA) txt Arturo Escobar — Designs for the Pluriverse (2018) txt
Suggested additions per paper
AC '26: Yuk Hui (digital objects), Costanza-Chock (design justice), Parrish (creative coding edu) KidLisp '26: Nasser (non-Latin PLs), Compton (Tracery), Eglash (already cited) notepat '26: Perry (physical computing), Knotts (network music), Eshun (sonic fiction) Pieces '26: Benjamin (design bias), Plant (computing history), Steyerl (digital materiality) OS '26: Barragán (Wiring), McIlwain (Black Software), Lewis et al (Indigenous AI) Archaeology '26: Brock (Distributed Blackness), Chun (already cited), Hui (technodiversity)
▼

Studies

8 documents
papers · aesthetic.computer · source