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by thesystemis 5662 days ago
There is a market for creative coders -- I am one, and I make a living making art through code.

I'd recommend you check out media art festivals to get a feeling for the intersection of art and technology -- the biggest ones are in europe and asia. See for example, ars electronica, Dutch Electronic Arts Festival, FutureEverything, Sonar, OFFF, Transmediale, etc. You can get a feeling for the current state of media art. In the US, see Zero One, Eyebeam, Rhizome.

I have a background as an artist, got into writing code, and now teach programming to artists / designers at a design university, Parsons School of Design. The media arts field is getting bigger and more accepted, and although it's much harder to collect then say a painting, there's definitely a way to make a living doing this kind of work -- I do, and many of my friends do also. We typically do a few commercial projects a year and make more experimental work as well. Between that, commissions, teaching, workshops, talks, etc you can certainly make a living doing this kind of work.

petervandijck is right - make some interesting work and make a name for yourself. especially within communities like processing, it's not hard to get involved and get a good reputation, find collaborators and get feedback.

you can see some of the work I do in my profile. happy to answer any more specifics about the marketplace.

1 comments

How does the market break down? How much of your commercial projects are performance based? installations? producing video to be streamed/aired later?

I'm working on Blender and looking to get more into the 3D and AR space. It would be good to know whats in demand now, and what kind of demand new tech is going to create.

btw I'm learning OpenCL and a while back I saw that OF was experimenting with it, is that still happening?

I do a few freelance jobs -- things like:

http://www.vimeo.com/5233789 http://www.vimeo.com/8525186

they are either events (outdoor projection) or for performances / online videos. Usually are 1-3 weeks of coding solo or in a group, and tons of organization / planning time.

in terms of opencl, I think Memo is pushing that pretty far -- see for example:

http://www.memo.tv/opencl_particles_at_okgos_design_miami_20...

I think markerless AR is going to be big soon -- the work from EPFL come to mind, such as:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZOeRhQdew8

the other thing which is huge is kinect -- this pretty much changes the game for interaction, and you can see some great work being done by artists and hackers within the community with it:

http://www.creativeapplications.net/kinect/